Part of growing up in a third culture is not knowing “how things are done” when you come to your next port of call. I would observe my surrounding carefully and watch how others did things before actively engaging. But by the time I reached my teens I had sussed the boarding school scene and decided that the only way to survive was to adopt to how things were done there and go with the flow. At least to a large extent. There were three terms at school with a month’s ‘holiday’ at Christmas and Easter and close to two months in the summer. These were spent with my friends in Caux or with family in Norway. I would come to Caux with a strong Liverpuddlian accent and leave with an American twang after spending time with Sue Thornhill, Glenn Close and other American friends.
Changing my accent was one thing but I also swung between the extremes of the MRA existence and that of Penrhos College. On the one hand I lived in an environment that had a focus on the needs of the world. Even as a child I was taught to care for what was happening in other people and other countries. It was basically a sin to think of my own wants and desires.
But this was the age of the Twist, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Twiggy and Mary Quant. Teenagers were no longer small adults but evolved in the early sixties to become an entity with an identity of their own, with their own music and style of clothes. It was an exciting time to become a teen and our school was enticingly close to the Cave, the ‘home’ of the Beatles in Liverpool. As a budding artist and seamtress I soaked it all up and identified fully.
I was also my mother’s daughter and a bit of a rebel at heart! I succeeded in forcing changes to the school curriculum; getting two teachers to leave because of my pranks in class; winning the competition for flipping butter pats up onto the dining room ceiling 5 meters up; missing fire drills because I slept through the alarms; missing classes and dancing the night away whenever possible. Nothing serious and yet far from the life I led on my vacations!
Once when I was travelling on a train in Britain there was a man who asked me where I came from. He said he specialized in languages and had been listening to me chatting with my friends and wondered where I came from! In my usual style I delayed the reply – trying to figure out what this was all about. He went on to say that he could hear that I came from 12 different countries. I asked him which they were and of the 12 countries he listed I had lived in 11 eleven of them!
Sewing and art were my favourite subjects at school but you wouldn’t have known it when I started boarding school. We started out sewing skirts and could choose from beautiful colourful fabrics. At first I chose a black, grey and white motley/striped fabric. I thought that was what would be accepted when I went back to Caux next holiday! It took a while before my true creativity started to blossom into colourful nighties and even designed and made a broderie anglaise bra with pink ribbons!
Most of my vacations were spent with other MRA kids or with my cousins. Then one year my parents were invited to move in with a teacher who lived near Croydon where my father had grown up. She had a big house and nice garden and enough bedrooms so that we could all have ample room. It was spring 1963 and this my first vacation without any of my “siblings” or cousins. I felt very alone. I saw there was a boy who lived on the opposite side of the street who was a little older than me and tried my best to catch his attention before I left to go back to school. I succeeded and he asked me over. He told about his job, I chatted about school, we listened to music and had all kinds of normal teenage chat. I was leaving for school next day but he said he was coming up to Wales and would come and visit if he could.
Next day my father drove me to Euston station to catch the school train. I was now in a senior class with more license to do as I chose. I wore my red sweater under my school blazer and as we drove I chatted about looking forward to school. I told him that I had been chatting to the guy across the street and that he may be coming to visit. At this point my father exploded and stopped the car, telling me to get that red sweater off and dress appropriately. Once we were back in the car, he said that he would be talking to that boy and telling him that he couldn’t visit me at school.
I was tongue-tied. I didn’t tell him how much I had missed my friends. How I longed to get to know kids my age. That if I was going to be spending my holidays in this suburban dump, the least I could hope for was to get to know some other kids in the area. Surely he wanted me to have friends? Didn’t he trust me? We continued our silent trip to the station and from that day and for about 25 years I found it impossible to understand my father.
Some people might call an organization with high ideals like these a sect but that has negative connotations like: ingrown, controlling and although I felt that was what my father was at the time, I don’t connect this to the lifestyle of the people I grew up with.
But I hated when those 4 standards of honesty, purity, love and unselfishness became electric fences that were used to keep someone in order. I got the feeling that he was more concerned about what his colleagues would think of him if I had gone and got pregnant. He didn’t see my needs as his daughter. He never spoke about it again. But 6 years later he invited this boy to our house for a Christmas party I had for my friends. I should have told him then how false I felt he was.
Meanwhile back at school my academic focus was on art and sewing. I won the Art Cup, the Art prize, and my teachers thought I was headed for Art College. But I had wanted to be a nurse all my life from the time I made little bottles of “medicines” of water with food dyes and operated on my cat and dolls and so I applied to the Westminster Hospital to become a nurse. By the end of that school year I had 12 O-levels and was embarking on an Art O-level the coming year. I was 15 years old and had been called on to be House Captain for Ashcroft, ‘my’ house at school, and a prefect. One of the highest signs of respect and trust that anyone could get at our school. My headmistress obviously saw me differently than my father.
Several of us who had grown up in the MRA environment were privileged in 1963 to be invited to take part and travel with a show called Space is so Startling that had previously played at the Westminster Theatre in the West End of London. We met up with American teenagers our age in Boston where we took part in the show, travelled to Washinton DC and New York in Grayhound, where we visited the UN. We were also invited to spend a week in Woods Hole on Cape Cod followed by a large youth gathering on Mackinac Island. I also saw Mike and his parents there! He was working on the barge to and from Mackinac to the mainland.
It was exciting to meet thousands of young people who were flocking to Mackinac inspired by Peter Howard’s tour of the US colleges speaking about a “Design for Dedication”. They had come to learn how to live their lives to bring about change. This was also a time of commitment for me and when I left the US that summer to finish my last year of school at Penrhos it was with a decision to live out my commitment, not only in school but in the coming years.There was one thing that jarred my understanding of all that we were part of that summer. All the young people I met were verbally dedicated to bring change to their school, state and country. I didn’t understand why at the time but I was tongue-tied even here. I had a hard time stringing two words together that expressed what I felt. I knew what I wanted in my heart but my childhood multi-culture strategy was first to grasp how ‘things were done’ and it took a long time before I figured out that I have just as much right to express my ideas.
That summer when I left to go back to Britain and my last year at school I longed to be part of all the exciting things that were happening with MRA in the US once I had finished school. I had also applied and been accepted to the Westminster Hospital to train as a nurse the following year.
Penrhos College was divided into 5 houses: Ashcroft, Hovey, Mack, York and Adams. The houses competed monthly and yearly in games, scholastics and behaviour and Ash was always at the bottom of the list in all fields. Once a month the house captain had to speak to Ash members and give a pep-talk. That year, as house captain of Ash, I discovered I was good a motivater! Month by month our points improved in games and behavious and by the end of the year we were best in swimming and behaviour. It was exciting to see the change.
During the following year the Colwell Brothers who I had known since I was a kid, came to Britain to learn the new sound. They bought electric guitars and lived on Charles Street getting into the groove! Although I had always enjoyed their singing they started writing songs now that really appealed to me and my generation. This was the beginning of Sing Out which later became Up with People in America.
In the summer of 1964 I was on a plane with other Brits en route to Mackinac again. But this time when all the participants split up and moved to different areas in the country, I stayed and moved to Florida.
Sayres
Up with People US/Germany/CapeCod
MRA split
Back to Britain
It’s our Country Jack
India Arise and India
Westminster Theatre
Alnäs – A-K o svensk politik
In my twenties I continued to observe as I was afraid to miss out on something. I was afraid to commit to starting an education as I was afraid to miss out. I felt the constraints of the lifestyle I had been born into. I didn’t think I could marry anyone from a different background as it would simply be too much to explain – too many bridges to cross.
Meeting new people is always a challenge. A group of people, even more so. Looking back I know now that I expected not to fit in. My approach to new situations is to be careful, almost apprehensive. I habitually expect not to be liked or to fit in. As a teenager for instance, I doubted that I would find a husband because I didn’t think anyone could love or even like me. Although I am outwardly open, friendly and chatty I am quick to sense a feeling of query, question, disbelief or dislike. The experience from school has been on my backburner throughout life and when I am challenged in conversation, I often go quiet or back down, as for a multi-culture-kid it takes time to re-evaluate before you even know what you think, let alone what to say.
One evening in Oslo when I was 25, on my way home to visit my grandfather, aunt and uncle in Övre Ullern. I had taken the local tram or ‘trikk’ from town to Bekkestua and there was a very steep slope up from the train to walk up to the area where my grandfather lived. As I left the station I noticed a man lurking in the trees. I was apprehensive but there was no alternative so I headed up the path. I started to hear his tread on the path and heavy breathing as he gained on me halfway up. I waited as long as I dared before I thought he would grab me, then I took a tight hold of my big red shoulder bag and whirled on him yelling loudly. He stopped in his tracks and I kept screaming as I turned and ran the rest of the way up to the road, shocking him enough to give me time to make it up to the road shouting at the top of my lungs. He had stopped following me and people gave me strange looks as I continued up to my grandfather’s house. Had they heard me screaming? But apart from stares from the few people there nothing happened and I hurried home to my grandfather. I felt strangely ashamed. I became very afraid of the dark.
Nord Norge
Caux
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