Wanda and Letty made the best bean with bacon soup ever! It was delicious. We had it in the basement of Farm School, almost every day, and I remember that I could not wait to get lunch.

Yes, Farm School. Perhaps my earliest memories. I took the bus to get there, more of a large truck, really. We had haystacks to sit on and stopped at the railroad crossing in Northbrook, Illinois and counted the number of train cars going by: 10, 20, 30…

When we arrived at the school, which was opposite a large farm on the left side of the road, we were greeted by Wanda and Letty and our day began. We never knew what would happen. Sometimes we would play basketball up in the hay loft, shooting a ball through a wooden basket with the bottom cut out. Sometimes we would make candles by standing in a line walking around in a circle dipping the center string into a container of hot wax, walking around until the hot wax hardened, and then dipping it again, over and over. Before long, we had made a candle! What fun!

At other times we played “Mother May I”, a game where everyone in the school lined up in front of one person, “Mother”, who was the one who said: “Yes, You May”. We were arranged in rows of about four each and we all stuck up our hands to ask “Mother” if we could take a step forward, and “mother” would say Yes or No. The person who got to step forward the most won! (Yes, it was a silly game, but we loved it anyway!)

Sometimes we had a talk on sex; it was a farm school after all, but I don’t remember much of that. I do remember cutting off the heads of chickens with a hatchet and watching them hop around headless. And I remember chopping off the legs, too, and pulling on the hamstrings to make the claws go in and out, and chasing the girls who were scared! What fun!

And we danced around the Maypole, a pole with any red, white, yellow and blue ribbon ropes that dangled down from the top of the Maypole. We would dance in and out in a circle until the Maypole was no longer just a pole with ropes dangling but a pole covered with many colored ropes wound together to make a beautiful pole.

We walked to the woods several times a week to explore plants, trees, and wild animals. It was perhaps where is learned to love all gardens, all nature. More than love it, really, perhaps where I learned that all life is in nature, and gardens are the most important metaphor in life.

I remember Miss Ide, who later became Mrs. Burge (more about her later) who taught me to play the recorder from as early as I can remember (pre-kindergarten?) until fourth grade when she switched me from the recorder to the flute. I played the Dushkin recorder named after Mr. Dushkin who made these recorders in Winnetka, Illinois. He was a special man, and Miss Ide was probably the most influential person in my life. I wrote a eulogy the day she died and her loss was devastating.

Perhaps most importantly, beside my recorder lessons, was woodworking. We learned very early in life how to use a saw, how to use a hammer, make birdhouses, cut boards, to sand, how to make anything we wanted out of wood. It was an important lesson for me, one that I passed onto my children. They can fix or build anything, and they love it. It is a part of their life. My eldest son, Michael, can build and design anything from a house to an art studio, from handmade bricks to building roofs, to gardens and paths. My son, Timothy Griffith, who learned to sculpt in Carrara, Italy, can make beauty out of marble or wood. My dear daughter, Erika Louise Mark McFarlane, learned to do pottery at Hotchkiss from her freshman year and has done it all her life. My kitchen is full of her precious work as are many other dining rooms and dining tables, and every day I am reminded of her and what she does from the coffee cup I hold. And finally, my son, Andrew, the musician, who has played an instrument of one kind or another all his life, from a violin at a very young age, then a cello, then from high school on, drums. Where and why did they learn these things? I do not know, but I do know that Wada and Letty, Farm School and what I learned there, shaped me, and perhaps in some way shaped them.

Farm School, where I learned to Grow.