Head of School’s Notebook: The Return of the Familiar

October 29, 2021

Family Weekend on the Mesa was always something we could rely on. Everything was better, the kids would say, even the food. And then, all of the sudden, there were no Family Weekends.  Spring of 2020 was cancelled due to COVID-19 … then Fall of 2020 and Spring of 2021. There were a lot of losses over that stretch of time that took us away, temporarily, from the experience of community that has always distinguished this school.

The first reprieve came in June of 2021 when our seniors enjoyed four days on campus with their families and the faculty and were able to celebrate not simply Commencement but their Prom, the Senior Faculty Dinner, the Sunset Ceremony, Baccalaureate, etc. We packed a year and a half’s worth of celebrating into those four days. And they were magical.

The familiar returned again last Thursday, when families from all over the world gathered on the Mesa to celebrate this fall trimester at Cate. It was a long wait, and in that time of anticipating the return of the familiar, we found ourselves savoring the little things as much as the big ones: Mesa House lawn filled with parents and faculty, the amazing tacos we were all savoring, laughter, friendship, dogs aplenty. Our families, it seems, brought every member of their clans, even the four-legged ones, to enjoy the moment.

We went to classes, watched the play, held conferences, and listened to music. Sounds of one sort or another were everywhere, and bustle, the busy, energetic, eager kind – the kind that says we want to see as many people as we can, linger in good conversation and companionship, meet those we haven’t met, drink it all in.

On Saturday, too, we all had a special treat. One of our seniors, Francesca Castellarin ’22, gave her Servons Speech. I have often told families seeking to understand Cate to go to our Vimeo Page and listen to the Senior Servons Speeches. There are few better indicators of who Cate is.  And Francesca did not disappoint. Like so many of her classmates and alumni before her, she told a story only she could tell about her journey through Cate. And we were reminded again why we are here and why we were there, in that moment.

It is remarkable when we seek the familiar and find within it the extraordinary, the transcendent, the meaning. Zora Neale Hurston’s great character Janie, at the end of Their Eyes Were Watching God, looks back on the storm she endures and is transfixed by the memory of it all.  Not the darkness, but the light. “She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net … so much of life in its meshes. She called in her soul to come and see.”

The soul of this community has always been our people. Last weekend they came to see, and it was wondrous.