During World War II it was common for British families to split up and move into rural areas or commonwealth countries for safety. Boarding schools had also become common for children of families who worked abroad. This idea horrified my mother. She had of course grown up in a close-knit family from the north of Norway and hated the idea of leaving me at a strange school with strange people for 3 months at a time! But as my parents had by now spent many years apart, they began to consider the alternatives.
Growing up I read Swallow’s and Amazons and the Enid Blyton books and grew to love the idea of summer camps and boarding school. I don’t remember how the idea of boarding school was first introduced to me, but I do know I was enthusiastic!
My parents were keen to find one where the teachers were understanding of their work and found Penrhos College in North Wales where several of the teachers were in the MRA team. They wanted to be able to communicate with people who were understanding of their work if they were away with a task force and this school checked most of their boxes.
They applied to the London County Council and got a financial grant for my schooling as the ‘daughter of religious workers’. This would cover the tuition and they enrolled me at Penrhos. Granny Strong and several of my parents’ business friends in Britain generously supported the extra monthly expenses and the requirement of 6 pairs of grey socks and 6 pairs of white socks; a grey woollen suit, grey school hat, white shirt and tie for weekends; yellow T-shirts, a grey cardigan, a white V-neck sweater, a grey blazer and 2 pairs of grey woollen pleated shorts for every day; to say nothing of the bedding, towels, shoes, sportswear, dressing gown and a school trunk to transport all this and my personal belongings back and forth to school every term.
At boarding school I was introduced to a whole new world. I had been living in idyllic Swiss village half-way up a mountain. I had grown up with a daily spiritual experience based on a practice of inner listening and the belief that if one listened to God and obeyed, he would guide and provide. Basically straight forward, trustingly simple, and also my personal experience. Honesty and openness, a pure heart, love and unselfishness were the code that I had grown up with.
My best friend truly was Jesus. My experience of Jesus was one of being deeply loved and totally accepted however naughty I was! I learnt that the key to forgiveness was to be ready to say sorry, to change and to forgive. A big ask, but I trusted that he would take care of me and I felt loved. I still do. It was a natural friendship. I would kneel down by my bed at night and talk to Jesus – but this was far from natural to the 5 girls who I shared a dorm with at Penrhos! They lined up on their knees in the middle of the room, laughing and waving their arms up and down intoning “Allah! Allah!”. Praying was apparently strange at a British Methodist girls’ school and I soon stopped doing it by my bed. I never stopped doing it in my heart.
I hadn’t realized how different our lifestyle was till then. Coming as I did from this little Swiss village where life focused on caring for the needs of others and inspiring change in the world, I struggled to get into sync with the other girls at school.
During the first term we were not allowed to see our parents till half term but three weeks into my first term I was told that my parents were going to visit me. It turned out that they had been given special permission as they were going to America for work and would be away for the whole of the term. This was of course unheard of and didn’t go down well with my roommates.
My parents were going to take part in making a feature film called The Crowning Experience at the MRA center on Mackinac Island. The initial plan was that they would be away till Christmas. This was a huge challenge for me but I had been brought up to rise to challenges that were in a good cause and I took it in my stride. And because boarding school was in the end my own choice, I wasn’t about to give up however tough it became! But when my parents came to visit, I cried. I told them how I had been ridiculed in the dorm. We agreed that they would tell my House Mistress before they left. And as my parents drove away I was hopeful that things would get better. My housemistress apparently commented to the head mistress that they had never known a child who was comfortable talking about her problems with adults before.
That first term made a huge dent in my self-perception and how to deal with new situations. I didn’t have a bad image of myself but months of being disliked and ridiculed was tough. I was always on my own when I got a slap in the face, was whispered about or left to walk to school alone.
When a girl in a friend’s 4-bed dorm had to leave school, because of asthma, my House Mistress moved me to her room. We four became firm friends. We still cried ourselves to sleep every night that term but I wasn’t alone – we were all in this boat together.
My parents kept the letters that I wrote to them nearly every day for those first 3 months, telling them how things were, sharing my pain but also recognizing theirs. Although I was physically alone I also told all this to Jesus and knew that I didn’t carry it alone. For a girl who normally lands sunny-side up this was no doubt how I didn’t become scrambled eggs.
This was a lot for an 11-year old to experience and I longed for Christmas and to be with my parents. But as Christmas came closer I heard that they were staying in America over Christmas. What? Where was I going to spend Christmas? The obvious choice to my mind was for me to fly to America! It took several weeks before I got a letter to say that I would be going to Caux. Even if my parents would not be there, this was a ‘home’ that I had known all my life and where I had many friends, young and old, who knew me well and loved me. Auntie Vi, who had been with me on and off for the past 6 years, would travel with me.
In retrospect this was probably the most fun alternative. Christmas at Caux totally gave me back my own self confidence and love of life. I refound my joy and my true friends. I discovered that I wasn’t abnormal. I also came to realize that what we had in our world family was truly special and I didn’t need to explain it or get others acceptance. I also knew that prayer and quiet times strengthened and were important to me. When I left Caux to go back to school I was actually looking forward to it.
From then on school was different. The letters I wrote home were more about life at school and less about a little lost girl.
By the time I reached my teens I had sussed the boarding school scene and decided that the best way to survive was to adapt to how things were done there and go with the flow. At least to a large extent. There were three terms at school with a month’s ‘holiday’ at Christmas and Easter and close to two months in the summer. These holidays were spent with friends in Caux or with family in Norway. I would come to Caux with a strong Liverpuddlian accent and leave with an American twang after spending time with my American friends.
Changing my accent was one thing but I also swung between the extremes of the MRA existence in Caux and that of Penrhos College.
In Caux it was basically a sin to think of my own wants and desires. We lived in an environment that had a focus on the needs of the world. Even as a child I learnt to care for the needs of others around me and had a child-like interest in what was happening in other countries.
But this was the age of the Twist, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Twiggy and Mary Quant. Teenagers were no longer small adults who were to be seen but not heard. During the early sixties we evolved to become an entity with an identity of our own, with our own music and our own style of clothes. It was an exciting time to become a teen and our school was enticingly close to the Cave, the ‘home’ of the Beatles, in Liverpool. As a budding artist and seamstress I soaked it all up and identified fully.
I was also my mother’s daughter and a bit of a rebel at heart! I succeeded in forcing changes to the school curriculum; getting two teachers to leave because of my pranks in class; winning the competition for flipping butter pats up onto the dining room ceiling 5 meters up; missing fire drills because I slept through the alarms; skipping classes and dancing the night away whenever possible. Nothing serious and yet far from the life I led during my holidays!
Sewing and art were my favourite subjects at school but you wouldn’t have known it when I started boarding school. In our first sewing class we sewed gym-bags. For our next project, skirts, we could choose from hundreds of beautiful coloured fabrics. At first I chose a black, grey and white motley/striped fabric. I imagine that this was what I was used to seeing in Caux and so would be accepted when I went back to Caux next holiday when my parents weren’t there! But our sewing teacher Mrs Edwards, known as MaEddy, wasn’t buying it and told me to think again! The blue and white stripe was what I finally chose. It took a while before my true creativity started to blossom into romantic styled nighties and even creating a broderie anglaise bra with pink ribbons!
Most of my holidays were spent with other MRA kids or with my cousins. Then when I was 15 my parents were invited to move in with a teacher who lived near Croydon close to where my father had grown up. She had a big house and nice garden and enough bedrooms so that we could all have ample space. It was spring 1963 and this was my first experience without any of my “siblings” or cousins. I felt very alone. There was a boy who lived on the opposite side of the street who was a little older than me and tried my best to catch his attention before I left to go back to school. I succeeded and he asked me over. He told about his job, we chatted about school, we listened to music and had a normal teenage chat. I was leaving for the summer term next day but he said he would be coming up to Wales and would come and visit if he could.
Next day my father drove me to Euston station to catch the school train. I was now in a senior class with more license to do as I chose. I wore my red sweater under my school blazer and as we drove I chatted about looking forward to school. I told him that I had been chatting to the guy across the street and that he may be coming to visit. At this point my father exploded and stopped the car, telling me to get that red sweater off and dress appropriately. Once we were back in the car, he said that he would be talking to that boy and telling him that he couldn’t visit me at school. I was tongue-tied. I didn’t tell him how much I had missed my friends and how I longed to get to know kids my age. That if I was going to be spending my holidays in this suburban dump, the least I could hope for was to get to know some other kids in the area. Surely he wanted me to have friends? Didn’t he trust me? We continued our silent trip to the station and from that day and for about 25 years I found it impossible to understand him. I got the feeling that his imagination was working overtime and he was more concerned about what his colleagues would think of him when they heard that I had gone and got pregnant. He didn’t see my needs as his daughter. He never spoke about it again. But 6 years later he invited this boy to our house for a Christmas party I had for my friends. I should have told him then how false I felt he was.
Some people might call an organization with high ideals a sect. This has negative connotations like: ingrown, controlling and although my father was controlling at the time, I don’t connect this to the lifestyle of the people I grew up with. On the other hand I hated when those 4 standards of honesty, purity, love and unselfishness became electric fences that were used to keep me in order.
Meanwhile back at school my academic focus was on art and sewing. I won the school Art Cup, the school Art prize, and my teachers thought I was headed for Art College. But I had wanted to be a nurse all my life from the time I made little “medicine bottles” filled with coloured water and “operated” on my cat and dolls. So I applied to the Westminster Hospital to become a nurse. By the end of that school year I had 12 O-levels (ordinary) and was embarking on an Art A-level (advanced) the coming year. I was 15 years old and had been called on to be House Captain for Ashcroft, ‘my’ house at school, and a prefect. One of the highest signs of respect and trust that anyone could get at our school. My headmistress obviously saw me differently from my father.
Letter from Frank Buchman to Children at Caux New Year 1957
Tomorrow is New Years Day. This is a very special year. I shall be 80 years old. A very old man and MRA will be 20 years old, and you will be the ones who will follow on and see this old world change and obey God. I cannot run around the way you can and I have to spend a lot of time in bed, so you will be the ones to carry on.
God will tell you what to do and the thing that gives me the greatest joy is to know that you are listening to God and beginning to give the answer to nations just the way your parents are doing. That will make this the happiest New Year and we will go ahead together.
Always your grateful friend
Uncle Frank
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