Email from Hannah CdeP 2013 mid-week:  “Can Brittany and I come by to see you Saturday? She’s home on fall break, and I’m coming up for the weekend.” Of course. They knocked on the door late morning, bounded in for hugs, beelined for the kitchen.

Both girls—ok, young women–had been part of my Golden Trout Camp freshman group four years ago September, singing and giggling their way up the trail to Muir Lake and back down again, energy to spare. They’d been in my English 1 class, then, three years after that, had circled around as seniors in back-to-back English IV Honors courses I’d offered. We’d put in many hours together, in reading and discussing and writing–not counting a million and one moments in the d-hall and the dormitories, in the bleachers or on the sidelines, at Open Houses (ours) and open houses (dorms), here, there, and everywhere that faculty and students cross paths on campus in the course of a week, a month, a year, four.

We settled in on counter stools to talk about their post-Thacher experiences, Britt at college going after a nursing degree and running cross country and Hannah in a gap year, living in Pasadena, taking classes in French and sewing, and working as a nanny to save money to get herself abroad for the winter and spring.

After catching up on the details of their two very different paths, the challenges and the rewards of their work, I wondered what had surprised them in the big old world out there. (Both grew up as faculty children here.)

“How much food costs,” Hannah offered, no hesitation. “I’m eating dinosaur chicken nuggets basically all the time.”

“Hannah, do you know what those are made of? My philosophy teacher showed us a picture–some kind of gross pinkish slimy stuff. He was getting us to think about how how things aren’t always what they seem.”

After some chatter about the theme of appearance vs. reality in food choices, we got back to my question–but it wasn’t long before the two were talking about what they missed at Thacher and in Ojai. It was a long list, woven quickly as each jumped in before the other had finished to affirm and add another item. Brittany finally got a whole sentence out:

“You feel . . . so . . . completely loved here.” The two looked at each other, then at me. We all smiled in the simple truth of it. Odd–I felt as if I’d just heard it somewhere else. Recently. It was only a wisp of a thought–and then it was time for them to go, Britt on a flight back to school, Hannah back to her house to spend the afternoon with her family. 

The door hadn’t closed before I remembered why it had sounded so familiar. It was in an email a week ago from Jackson, who’d graduated in 2012. His final paragraph:

I think of Thacher a lot, not in specifics but just in terms of missing that community, that feeling of unconditional love always surrounding you. I realize that the rest of the world doesn’t work like that. . . Not to say I haven’t met great people, because I have. It’s funny. Whenever I think of Thacher, my first thought actually isn’t of my friends or classes or specific memories even — the first image that pops into my head, every time, is that golden light that floods the Pergola right before the sun sets. I feel like everything I want to say and am still unable to say about Thacher can be expressed in that moment. Just warm and present and so real.