Grey matters

I remember the sound of David Bowie’s voice 

   on the way to school

that first year …..

       ground control to major Tom….

I’d watch the road as the old tour bus moved through the cold wet cement streets 

 I remember the winter when we first moved away to Holland. That was the soundtrack on the radio ….between Eric Carmen’s All By Myself which was based off of some famous opus ….but it’s tone seeped into the narrow of my first true winter with snow 

The school in those days was rough. It was an international school; a Montessori principal ran it which ….is so much why I am who I am; she formed my moral compass 

The place the students of many world nations gathered in the Dutch city of Osdorp. Always wet pulling up. Our school was in vacated old Army Barracks. So, off the tour bus, with bright orange upholstery on a wet and very gray day. I recall. We filed off. Eric Carmen crying all by himself. And ….. the wet road to the army barracks. 

So once you find the maze where all the barracks line up…. Main office to right ….. I knew I was meant to go somewhere left….

The ground…. square bricks ….slick…. chilled to the bone…. eleven years old; never saw snow; from Florida ….in a thin brown coat shivering as I searched for my sixth grade home room first class 

It was down the left alley. Second barrack. Then the step inside and the left to my class room …. And my first male sexual predator boy bully I encountered was sat waiting as I stepped through the door.Sargent was his name who waited like the Cheshire Cat 

Oh that cold February …. 

    when only hours into that first gray morning day, our Montessori principal stepped into say,

“Class dismissed—everyone is to go ice skating on the canal all the rest of the day!”

And that was moments right before ….. I met my English love— when he threw me down onto the ice