A Time to Speak

A personal essay by Elizabeth Niamh Keeney

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

-Ecclesiastes 3  

Even though she is my oldest friend, Bronwyn has never made a lot of effort to keep in contact with me. Even with our friendship of eighteen years, it took a worldwide pandemic for her to initiate communication. I know that people grow apart, people change, and that friends come and go, but I never thought it would be that way with her.

Our friendship has survived a lot. In college, she once stopped talking to me because of a difference in opinion, she apologized and we moved on like normal. During my year-and-a-half in Taiwan, she maybe emailed me once, but we still hung out after I returned home. So, after months of sporadic replies to my messages, she contacts me at her most bored, when she is confined to her living space.

Maybe it’s because we have nothing to talk about anymore because we view our shared past in such different ways.

When I was in third grade, arriving on the Waldorf campus earlier than everyone else always seemed a mystical experience to me. If it was the right time of year, there would be grey skies and a bit of mist haloing the tops of the deodar trees. It did not have the same emptiness as a rest stop in the breaking hours of morning or an unoccupied airport terminal, it still seemed like there was a presence there, a friendly one, just unseen. 

It was wonderful to be in the third-grade classroom because it had no other classrooms connected to it, just a lone bungalow with a porch and walls painted pastel yellow. Mrs. Tudor said that there was a gnome that lived under the porch who would sometimes make noises, and my class would even hear them sometimes! It was the year that we read our first chapter book, Charlotte’s Web, and the year we had both a gardening and a cooking class. It was the year we started orchestra, and the year of crazy winds that knocked a huge branch out of the sycamore tree right in front of our classroom. Bronwyn was being bullied too, and I could never understand why.

All the classes would make some kind of project for the silent auction in our schools’ annual ‘Elves Faire’. It sounds like a crappy idea, having the first through eighth grade do art for their parents to buy, but most of it ended up looking beautiful. It was an art school after all. Since we were studying the Bible that year, my teacher decided that as a class we would write out verses from Ecclesiastes in our best cursive, and frame it. Each person in our class got a line and I was given ‘a time to speak’. 

My mom always said my teacher gave me that line because I was quiet and observant, and wouldn’t say much. It’s stupid, but I was pegged as the peaceful, silent child for a long time. I wasn’t quiet, it’s just that no one would listen to my thoughts because I was eight. From what I can remember, I’ve had the same brain all my life, I’ve thought the same thoughts hundreds of times over. The only difference between my third-grade brain, and my brain now is the added knowledge and hormones. People don’t trust third-graders with knowledge they consider ‘too mature’ but I could have learned everything I know now back then. 

I always thought that my teacher gave me that line because she knew I could speak up for others, and because I was already trying to do that for Bronwyn, who wasn’t standing up for herself. Maybe Mrs. Tudor just gave me that line arbitrarily, I don’t know.  All I knew was that Bronwyn was being bullied and I didn’t like it.

“A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.”

No one would touch Bronwyn’s chair. I came in one time, luckily before she did, and took down her chair which was sticking in the air like an unfelled tree. I guess it had ‘cooties’ or whatever other bullcrap third-graders come up with. Apparently being the most intellectually advanced person in class, or the tallest, or the loudest singer makes them a target for the flack of adolescent minds. Although definitely the most interesting person I had met in my short life, I knew she was awkward. I thought she was cool. Often, I either didn’t realize it was happening, or didn’t notice, but I would get bullied too. 

Cindy was a main source of discord in the fibers of our class. She would just start things, and she was especially cruel to Bronwyn. But that was OK because I wouldn’t listen to what Cindy said, and I was always going stand up for Bronwyn. I don’t remember being too upset when I was being bullied, I remember being more upset when others were getting bullied.   

There was a time at this school I had many more friends than just Rowan, but as soon as I embraced that friendship, everyone else seemed to reject my friendship. I would try to get to school early, to see the mists, and to catch any faeries that may have not hid from the students yet, but also to get into the classroom before Bronwyn. Although I didn’t always get there that early, I would at least try to be in the classroom before Bronwyn. If we got to the classroom before other people, we were supposed to help them take down their chairs because we would put them up on the desk at the end of the day so that the custodian could vacuum.

“A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.”

I never had a problem with talking to teachers, or speaking up for others when I needed to. Learning the right situation in which to do so was a different set of skills. I realized that me speaking out against anyone in the class was not always the best option because I had no authority. It kept happening, people would take down everyone else’s chairs, but never touch Bronwyn’s, and everyone avoided her on the playground or said mean things to her while we were waiting in line. No one would touch her. 

I stayed inside after everyone else rushed out to recess and walked up to Mrs. Tudor’s desk.

“Um, Mrs. Tudor?”

“Yes honey?” She replied.

“No one is taking down Bronwyn’s chair in the morning.”

“What do you mean?”

“People are saying mean things to her, and they aren’t taking her chair down in the morning. I try to take it down before she gets here but I think she’s noticed it.”

She nodded, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Bronwyn fought back once because Jonny kept on cutting her in line which resulted in her getting sent home. I can’t remember if she pushed him, or just yelled at him, but I remember standing there talking at them both.

“Jonny, quit it. She was here first.”

“Bronwyn, stop, you’re going to get in trouble.”

Her mom was actually proud of her. It was a lot harder for Jonny because he was prone to getting in trouble. From what I knew, his dad also wasn’t that nice of a man.

Mrs. Tudor was never there when Bronwyn was getting made fun of. However, she was our teacher, and must have seen something other than what I told her, because that was the year she yelled at us.

“SHE IS A HUMAN BEING!”, She gesticulated emphatically in Bronwyn’s direction.

Bronwyn had her head down, sitting at her desk, while the rest of the class watched with wide eyes.

I guess it was her time to speak. I don’t know what I was hoping for, but I don’t think that it helped anything. I can’t remember everything she said, but we probably ended up having circle time. That was where we all sat in a circle, lit a candle, and talked about our feelings. It sounds weird, but I think all classes should do that. Only the person who was holding the crystal could talk, but when it came to talk about bullying, many were silent. Despite the yelling, no one wanted to admit to being a bully.

“A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together”

I hate the phrase ‘let it go’ when it comes to people doing wrong to you. You shouldn’t condone those actions, but there is definitely a healthy way to forgive people and overcome hard feelings. I know because I have done that with those bullies. Bronwyn holds onto those difficult memories like a buoy. She’s holding on to those stones, and sometimes I fear she’s going to sink under them. Whenever I bring up Waldorf, she gets this disapproving look on her face and either complains or changes the subject. I wonder if she remembers anything good. Maybe that’s why she’s becoming more distant in recent years, she’s letting all of the bad memories taint the good ones, and because our friendship is so closely tied with that school, she doesn’t want to remember me.

Maybe something happened I don’t know about that made her memories sourer, one big thing I wasn’t there for, but I highly doubt it. I was with her all the time. Even on weekends and after school we would spend time together. In the later years, when Rosa joined our class, we would hang out with her too. The ‘Three Musketeers’ is what our parents would call us. We even went to a book club together every Thursday where we would eat those terrible sugar cookies from the grocery store that are so sweet they are bitter. 

When we started algebra and geometry with the notorious Mrs. Coleridge, we would call each other when we were finished with our homework, and check all the answers together. I still remember her landline. I would call it every day. Why doesn’t she remember those things? Couldn’t we talk about those things?

“A time to weep, and a time to laugh.”

In my experience there are two ways you can respond to bulling: laughing or crying. Does she remember how much I got bullied too? How Joshua, Tyler and Jonny would taunt both of us and I would laugh at them? How confused people got when I would tell them to ‘take the pinecone out’ and they would respond ‘out of where?’ Or does she remember Kevin punching me in the back, or knocking my pencils off the table and then stepping on my fingers? Or how Kelly tormented me for two years while she and Rosa did their own thing? I remember those things, but I never blamed Mrs. Tudor for them, and when I look back, that is not the first thing I think about. I’ve talked to those bullies since then. I don’t think I’ll ever be best friends with them, but I’ve talked with them and I realize that people change. And speaking with those people helped me to realize how I have changed.

 

“A time to keep, and a time to cast away”

Make new friends, and keep the old, but don’t go wishing that the past will somehow change. There should be a certain time in your life where you realize that some people are just not worth the effort

and thought you may put into them. As I warily scroll through Bronwyn’s old blog my heart sinks at the post she made called ‘Waldorf Memories Part 1’. I remember the day she posted it because she sent me an email, it was also sent out to everyone else who had been in our class, a bold move on her part. It was one of the most passive aggressive things I had ever seen, she called out our whole class. 

It was about a year and a half after we graduated from the eighth grade, so our sophomore year of high school, and our teacher had just sent the memory books. In her post, Bronwyn reminisced on the good times, but dwelled on the negative. Without naming them, she called out a specific group of girls, although it was obviously Cindy’s group since they had been especially cruel to her. 

I remember the first time reading that post, how little it made me feel when she pointed out she ‘only’ had two good friends in our grade, and how she felt much better in high school now that she had a larger group of friends. Honestly, I don’t know what she was hoping for in a grade/class size of 21 people. The concept of ‘popular’ is null in a class that size, and yet Bronwyn seemed to think it was the ‘popular’ kids that were bullying her. You were lucky to even have two good friends in that class. Were Rosa and I not enough?

“A time to love, and a time to hate.”

We had different upbringings. My parents always told me to ‘cowgirl up’ or confuse the people who were making fun of me, whereas I think Bronwyn’s parents expected the teachers to stop the bullying. I ended up saying a lot of weird things that probably just made the bullies think I was weirder than I was, but I wasn’t affected by them in the long run. Of course, I would get sad, but I’m not anymore. Bronwyn’s parents were more sympathetic, which may have not been the best thing in the long run. Has nothing more traumatic than childhood bullies happened to her? Is that why she is holding onto it? I think she still might hate them.

For me, even those memories have become beautiful in time, especially in comparison to some of my other life experiences. Even though we are biologically hardwired to remember negative experiences, it is my quest to remember all the beautiful things. Lunchtime, and all the reusable lunchboxes that would come out, and singing grace for the food. 

As soon as the last note was sung, Bronwyn’s oak-brown hair would be immediately obscured by a different book from yesterdays’ and she would chew on her cucumber as I realize that bits of straw had been stuck in my shoelaces from our Asgardian adventure of the day. Daughters of the War god Thor, she was Thorgill, and I was Siffa, sisters of a different kind. Her home knit sweaters, always covered in three different cat’s hair transformed to armor, or a gown as we spun yarns worthy of the Norns. A ring of hay bales behind the fourth grade would become our castle, or fort, or stage. Though she scowls at the laughter that follows her, I laugh at the laughter and walk with her. These are the things I continue to speak of.

“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.”

Image Credit: 'Girl Sending Letter', 'The Big House', 'Rocks', and 'Leaves' by Elizabeth Keeney. 'Racetrack' by Franklin Keeney