Campion is just at the back of our temporary house, and the campus is alive again, full of high school students on a summer program there. There's not much better than a college campus full of young people, especially since I am a sort of mature person who can appreciate their youth and hopes more than they can. It is a gift the older can give the younger.
Yesterday, I walked over there--just down the sidewalk, and up a road through big, green gates, to an avenue of eucalyptus trees, forming a great, cathedral-like arch over the simple, gravely road. I noticed that the lawns were all mowed around the long brick building, and yet the wildness of the trees and bushes and the areas around, unused, remained untouched. I love walking around the campus; it has places in it that are little slices of heaven, just corners of it. The agapanthas rows are like Egyptian servants with purple fans, at attention, along the soccer pitch. There's a lot of potential on this campus, my garden-appreciative eye imagining lots of great places to get away and study in the light. The little chapel has a beautiful but old, small organ with painted pipes, and Ana likes to go and play the organ there. Oh. I'm now supposed to call her 'Anatolia.' She likes her name.
Anatolia and I walked up to the dining hall, a large room with a grand piano in the bay window which looks out the front of the campus. It is wonderful to hear your daughter far outstrip you on an instrument your mother got her really started upon, to have her weave with her own music, music that sounds eerie and moving like Michael Nyman's music from The Piano. There were some students around, and we met Elyse, Frank, and Josh. They are very kind and young, and full of hope. They are just a little more mellow, or reserved, perhaps, than students at WCC in a similar situation.
But some mischief belied their reserve. They were busy preparing for a mock trial: "Summer Program High Court: Tea and Executions Afterward" read the signs. They invited TJ, now in heaven, to help them make a horrible shake as a punishment: sardines, nutella, milk, and nevermind. I didn't say it out loud, but I thought that TJ would be perfect for such a job, so I told him he could stay and help them.
I walked home to make chook kebabs (chicken). I got the things at Woolie's for 62 cents each. Pretty good, so I bought all they had, thinking we'd have lots of leftovers. I forgot about Thaddeus and TJ. As I walked home in ignorance of this, though, I looked around me, enjoying the light and the beauty. The brick building with its white pillars and brick, the cloister walks and the great deck in the back, seems homey and sort of ivy-league at the same time, a great juxtaposition I seem to encounter here in Australia: proper formality, controlled spirits somewhat, but with fun outbursts of quite wicked humor (my favorite kind...I am a Jackass fan). I bet they do some original pranks with a nice, polite, unobstrusive, "Hello." Great stuff.
Thaddeus had a similar experience in his first intro to the staff and faculty; he thought them more quiet, less animated than at WCC: "Makes me appreciate all the fun we had at those meetings," he said. I asked him if he'd livened it up a bit. All he did was to make a joke about the new pizza oven. Ryan wanted the students to have fun with it and name it. What should it be called? "St. Lawrence Pizza Oven, of course," replied Thaddeus. There was laughter.
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