Some of my thoughts on Timberhill

Eric reading your post made me consider how brave you are to really speak your mind about the good the bad and everything else that happened at Timberhill. It was a mixed bag for many of us yet still an experience I am glad I was part of.

I was not there the year that the school fell apart which probably was fortunate for me because before coming to Timberhill I had to deal with a father whose middle name was infidelity and did not treat my mother very well. I also had a stranger who was older than I was prey on me when I was 14 & traveling with my family in Italy right after my mother died.

Healthy boundaries between adults and children or teens are of course extremely important. Unfortunately we live in an imperfect world where adults that should be there to love & protect us are not always there for us and are sometimes bring us emotional pain.

There was some adult student boundary crossing going on even in the second year at Timberhill when I attended. It did not include to either Joan or Barry and should never have happened but it did.

Many of us badly needed a safe place to go to after coming from dysfunctional homes. I know I did but I guess what I am trying to say is the world is an imperfect place. I am not trying to diminish anyone feelings about what happened just observing that the world is that way at times. Nor do I think we need to look at our experiences at Timberhill in only a positive light because the glass does not have to be looked at as half full when it was not for all of us all the time.

I was lonely & lost shy when I first came to Timberhill. I probably was lonely and lost at times even after I had been there awhile. I never felt accepted by the girls my age and always felt like the new person that did not belong because I was not there the first year. I might not have seemed like it but I was very shy and dealing with a lot of emotional pain at the time.

I had to leave home because my mother had passed away and my father was verbally abusive and sometimes hit me. Living at Timberhill was not always easy for me. I was a picky eater use to drinking soda (ugh) with lunch and dinner and use to eating already sliced bread out of a package. Homemade bread I am sure is healthier for you but to me it just did not look normal. I was use to the junk food I grew up on. Showering not often due to a lack of water was difficult for me and living in a little wooden hovel was never comfortable for me either. No offensive to anyone that built the duplex I lived it but it was super tiny & cold unless one made a fire and just not comfortable at all. On the plus side I learned to make a blazing fire and chop wood.

Anyway Timberhill did have lots of pluses for me. I did find some friends I could relate to. My friends at Timberhill changed with the seasons. Timberhill kept me safe from my father though I went home often sometimes even hitch hiking all the way back up to school after lying to my father and pretending I had a ride back to school. Getting stuck on the road to school was scary.

I always had an appreciation for nature but Timberhill gave me an even deeper appreciation for nature. No wonder I prefer to live in rural areas.

I also did not know what to expect before the reunion and was wondering if there would be people there I could relate to or if I would end up sitting alone the whole time while watching everyone else relate. I was pleasantly surprised that most people seemed very friendly and open with each other. It was truly wonderful & also healing for me to see everyone again. I felt closer to some people than I ever had at school now that we had grown up and others I felt further away from.

I just finished a short story by an East Indian writer. Basically it was about an Indian woman who was raised in India to be the perfect submissive traditional wife coming to grips with a failed marriage while dealing with life in the Bay Area. The book is called Arranged Marriage.

She mentioned in the last short story in the book how one famous potter use to make a small snag on the lip of his pots for his signature believing that by leaving a flaw in his pots it made them more human and more precious.

Anyway I just wanted to say it was great connecting with all of you again. I do think we are all part of a special tribe. Yes an imperfect tribe for sure and some of us had some imperfect experiences at Timberhill meaning good and bad but still some incredible experiences and life is never perfect and Leave It To Beaver like unfortunately. Thank God I was not stuck in public school for 4 years because I was dying there and just getting high every day. You are all precious to me and it was a gift to reconnect with many of you.   

Marjorie