What do you think of when you think about ‘home’? The place where you grew up? A physical building, the literal home in which you live at present?
Or does ‘home’ mean something different entirely: a community; a town; or even a nation?
It might make us think of the people that make up a home: our family; friends; neighbours; community members.
Or is it a more abstract notion, conjuring up images in your mind of belonging, stability, sanctuary, solace? The feeling of acceptance, the warm embrace of being loved. As the saying goes, home is where the heart is.
Perhaps ‘home’ means all of these things.
A Welcome Home
I have been thinking on the notion of ‘home’ recently following the arrival of a few new members to our school community. The first I knew of their arrival was during the Easter holidays, and I heard them before I saw them…
What’s all the commotion, I thought, as I looked out of our kitchen window as the early morning stillness was disrupted by an incongruous cacophony of noise. Pulling up the blinds, I was confronted by a rather proud-looking male pheasant strutting his stuff and making himself at home whilst the campus was unusually quiet with the pupils all away for the Easter break.
Soon enough a female pheasant was spotted, and during the course of the three week break, my family and I grew rather fond of the pair who were quickly christened ‘Dave’ and ‘Guiney’ (after the founders of Oswestry School: David and Guinevere Holbache). To begin with they were happy to confine themselves to the environs of our garden and the surrounding area (we live on site at the school), though they soon became a little more adventurous in their campus explorations. It made for a rather entertaining Easter as we sought out Dave and Guiney (forget an Easter Egg hunt; anyone for Find My Pheasant?!) and they quickly gained celebrity status on the school’s Instagram account.
As we closed in on the start of the summer term, however, I anticipated that this would mean a fond featherly farewell as the return of over 500 pupils on campus would put an end to their blissful existence, and an end to the peace and quiet of an empty school site.
No such thing. The pupils returned, and Dave and Guiney remained. Seemingly unaffected by the invasion of their new home by a swarm of teenagers, they continued to potter around Potter’s Lawn and pad around the Paddock; they were a part of our community now and very much at home.
Last week, however, it became clear just why they were here. With Guiney having relocated to the Chapel Garden a few days previously, outside of my study window one afternoon I could see on the lawn the scurrying of many little feet and not one pheasant, but a whole brood of little pheasants. Yes, Dave and Guiney were the proud parents of a dozen little pheasant chicks! The cuteness levels were off the charts, and very little work was achieved by any of us working in School House that afternoon. Never in the space of an hour period have I heard the word “Aw!” expressed so gushingly and so often. Mainly by myself.
The Importance of Place
Now perhaps I’m reading a little too much into it, but I viewed this happy moment as something of an endorsement of Oswestry School and our community. Yes, yes… I would say, that wouldn’t I? !
I’m no expert on pheasants nor poultry in general, but as I began to retrace their time with us on campus, I realised that Dave and Guiney had arrived here in search of a suitable place for the birth of their little family. In search of a sanctuary, in search of safety, in search- in short- of a home.
Get a grip, Middleton, I hear you cry! You’re letting your emotions get the better of you again! You’re turning a run of the mill everyday occurrence into an overly-sentimental Disney-esque vignette all for the sake of finding something to write about in your next blog- pathetic!
Say what you will, but I was rather touched – and moved – that they had found that place of sanctuary and safety on our school campus, that they had found a place that they could call ‘home’ for their little chicks, even if it is just temporarily, even if they are just passing through.
A Home from Home
After all, that’s what each one of us are doing: passing through. Home is but a temporary place and space as we journey through life (and we will of course call many places ‘home’), but there is a deep connection to those places that we call home, and when we put roots in a place, those don’t simply wither away when we leave. As the writer Michael Allan Fox puts it, “home always travels with us, preserved in some form or another.”
Whilst schools such as ours are often rooted in centuries of history (Oswestry was founded in 1407 by David and Guinevere Holbache…who weren’t actually pheasants I should add), pupils and staff alike are but passing passengers on that long voyage. Whilst our time here at the school is but temporary (and thank goodness for that, some might add!), in a small, close-knit campus community such as ours, school means so much more than just school.
For our boarders – who come from over 30 nations around the world- our school and their boarding house is very much a ‘home from home’, a sanctuary and solace, a place of belonging. Their parents choose our school because they recognise that this is an environment in which their sons and daughters can thrive and flourish (though alas, probably not fly, at least not literally), and somewhere they can temporarily call home.
Likewise for our day pupils, whilst of course each day they go home to their families, for many there is a deep connection to the school that will stay with them their entire lives; it is likewise a kind of home. That’s bound up in the friendships that they have made and in the experiences that they have had, but also in the sense of belonging and acceptance, and having been part of something that spans the centuries yet touches each and every individual who passes through it.
Homeward Bound
For our Upper Sixth who finished their final day of lessons last week and now embark upon study leave before the next couple of months of A Level examinations, they are readying themselves for their leave-taking. Some have been here their entire school careers from the age of 4 years old -young fledglings now ready to fly- but as they ready themselves to depart, I hope that they will sense that their time here has been more than just about turning up for lessons or turning out for the sports teams, or a star turn on stage (though all of these are still important). Hopefully they’ll sense, too, that this has been a place – and a space – where they’ve belonged, a place they’ve been able to call home.
And that doesn’t change when they leave. This school will remain a part of them, I hope, as they travel through life, and will always be a place where they will be made to feel welcomed whenever they return. And when they do return- which many of them will- I hope that it will feel very much like a coming home. For home really is where the heart is.
“And though home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, in strongest conjuration.”
-Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
Peter Middleton 