I had always wanted to have a family but it was not to be. So after two years we eventually had the joy of being able to have two small Scottish brothers, Callum and Dale as our long-term foster family! Up until now, I had always missed my lovely “school family” during holiday time, but now we had our own family to love and nurture as well. I can truthfully say that those years were the happiest years of my life. Callum and Dale started in the kindergarten of the Moray Steiner School in the Spring 1988 when they were 5 and 4 respectively. It couldn’t have been better for traumatised children of state school age, where normally they would have had to learn to read and write and sit relatively still (it’s probably changed now, I hope) whereas they were now hearing the teacher singing by heart songs they could follow with their child’s imagination, hearing stories and ‘learning by doing’, to make the bread they would share at break time. They could use their fingers or brushes to do free painting and drawing and go out for walks in the forest for ‘gardening’. From having dull blond hair and tense hard faces, always ready to fight…they became vibrant and happy, began to trust and to know of imaginations they had never known before. Their hair now shone with health and their sleep was deep and healing. I think it good to mention here, something that could catch the attention of would be psychologists! It was something Dale initiated in his little class of twelve.

SWADDLING

Our Steiner colleague Marian, Dale’s Kindergarten teacher, related this story to me.

It was Christmas time and Marian, as usual recounted the same story every day, which of course, this time was a Christmas nativity story. Then I believe would follow free play, but apparently Dale asked shyly if she could swaddle him. “You want to be swaddled!??”.. Amazed, she checked herself, unable to believe her ears. “Aye” he countered! So, gathering up some lengths of silk and wool, she wrapped him up like a Russian doll and laid him on the carpeted floor. Marian related to me, that seeing him lying silently there “his eyes just full of a sort of bliss” she left him until later, when she had to unroll him to join the rest of the children. The following day he asked again, and a third day he asked yet again; but this time so did eleven other children asked to be swaddled because they all wanted to experience this strange way of playing! The other children were soon impatient to get playing, but Dale just lay there until he was unrolled! I wonder how long he would have liked this to happen if it had been possible to continue?

Dale and Callum remained in kindergarten until they were nearly seven. Thereafter Dale went into Auriol’s class of mostly boys and Callum to Lester’s class which were mostly girls, with one other boy I think, who all seemed happy to mother him.

It was when Callum was ten and Dale nine, that their mother wanted them back.

This school was a big saviour for these children (who are now in their late thirties). They say that they were the best years of their lives.

A DOWN-TURN of EVENTS

I had been so sure and so happy that both Callum and Dale would be with us forever..or at least if and when they wanted to leave when fostering age ended. But their mother had finally rejected the man who, together with her, had caused them to be placed in council care. She decided she wanted her boys back and thereafter, from 1993 began a period which changed both Callum and Dale’s, Francis and my lives. After they had left, I no longer had the emotional stability to teach and eventually, in 1996 did four years of an Anthroposophical Art Therapy training. I had kept in touch with Callum and Dale through their mother, but was fraught with worry about their obviously increasingly unhappy circumstances. Following the advice of another friend, I found relief in taking part in one and then several 10-day Vipassana silent retreats. That was also life-enhancing and I remain indebted to the teachings of Buddha about suffering. He really brought a necessary knowledge to mankind.

This whole chapter of my life has changed me; I feel I had to go through this experience in order to learn how to become a more understanding and empathic person than previously.