Author's Note 8: Your turn
An invitation to share your thoughts and memories
Dear Readers,
I’m nearly there. Only a few chapters to go now.
I started serialising The Drying Rooms: Memories of an English boarding school on January 24 2024. That first post had 3 subscribers. It’s been a steady climb since then. Today’s count is 258 subscribers - with many more ‘followers’.
I want to say thank you to all of you for reading it, for hitting the heart/like, and for your comments and messages. You have kept me going! But before The Drying Rooms enters its final chapters, I would love it if you’d like to share some of your own thoughts and memories …
About your childhood, your schooling, the nature of memory, reading The Drying Rooms … anything you want. Do leave a comment, short or long …
Thank you,
Emma
I was at a boarding school from the age of eleven to eighteen. My parents were posted throughout my childhood to several different countries, so I spent my early years being taught in local convents or international community schools. Boarding school was to provide educational stability in my secondary school years. It certainly did that. But it denied me experience in the real world… I spent my formative years in a protected bubble… and felt at an acute disadvantage when I finally left, despite having received a privileged education. I felt naive and lacked confidence. Nevertheless, my memories of boarding school are mainly happy ones and I was treated kindly. I didn’t experience any cruelty - the only person who intimidated me was the headmistress, who taught Latin. She was known for hurling the board rubber across the room at you, if you got an answer wrong. I gave up Latin for German quite quickly! Several of the friends I made I am still in close contact with, more than 50 years later. They were my family of course, throughout my time at school.
However, the overriding memory for me, was excruciating homesickness. The first two years at school I only saw my parents during the Christmas and summer holidays, when I would fly unaccompanied to Singapore - a journey at that time that involved several stops en route. To this day, whenever I go through Singapore airport (which I did two weeks ago), that feeling of excitement and longing to be reunited with my Mum and Dad hits me in my solar plexus! I almost look for them at the airport! I am sure that those separations have affected me at a deep level. Sure, I learnt resilience and independence but there’s a fragility within that remains. Reading the Drying Rooms, Emma, has helped throw some light on that fragility. Thank you.
Thank you for everything you've shared and aired. I haven't read all of the 'drying rooms' chapters because I've been cautious about stirring up too much - boarding school was over 50 years ago and I'm glad many of my memories have faded. Your writing has sent me on a journey though since we 'met' (virtually) in January 2024. My boarding school experience was buried. I was keen to 'do well'. For the 5 years I was there I came top of the class and was selected for all the school sports teams. I learnt how to be independent (I understood that to be the main thing I was expected to gain from the experience) and to this day I value my independence above all else. Unlike Gisu I never made any friends or attachments that continued beyond the day I left. In my 20s & 30s I was a passionate and effective advocate for diverting other children from institutional care and custody. I understood I was 'privileged' and I consciously distanced myself from my social class in every choice I made.
Through connecting with your writing, I have in this last year come to understand how my internal world has been indelibly shaped by 'boarding school syndrome.' Throughout my life, close attachments provoked intense anxiety that I've masked as best I could. Masking hides the wound but doesn't heal it! So last Autumn I decided to explore the connection between these two things with a therapist who is aware of 'boarding school syndrome'. It is early days but I am so enjoying what is emerging - my relationship with my (grown up) children has relaxed and deepened to become more fully enjoyable and heartfelt as I learn to trust that I am safe to be attached and vulnerable. Priceless - and proof that it is never to late to grow!