Glimpses of what is possible

photo: a relaxed moment at this year’s Interschool Leadership Institute for Educators of Color. At the center of the chaos is Dr. Howard C. Stevenson, an author and researcher who has been a mentor to me, and who worked with Gordon parents, faculty and staff during the 2020-2021 school year.
 

Dear Gordon Families, Faculty and Staff:

Writing my welcome back letter to the Gordon community is always an interesting endeavor. Because of the timing of Gordon’s August mailing, I am usually writing to you a good three weeks before students return to campus. I’m essentially reflecting on a season that is still in process. I mean, I haven’t even seen Barbie yet! But I have learned over the past five years that the beginning of August–living in summer while turning my mind to the fall–is the perfect time to reconnect with the Gordon community.

This has been a summer of reconnection–to myself and to others–that has been restorative for me in ways I could not have predicted when we all said farewell to one another in June. My brother Jamal and I celebrated our fiftieth and fifty-first birthdays, respectively, with family and friends in New York City and danced to the best 70s/80s playlist until 4:00am. I took a weekend trip to Miami with the woman who has been my best friend since second grade to celebrate almost forty-five years of friendship. I braved an introvert’s nightmare, a beach house for thirty, filled mostly with people I don’t know, to attend the López family reunion, and I left grateful for the beautiful way my family has expanded through my relationship with my husband. I danced the hustle in North Kingstown and salsa in Los Angeles.

On the professional front, I was able to return to facilitating the Interschool Leadership Institute for Educators of Color, which I had to miss last summer for the first time in nine years due to my knee injury. I had forgotten how much supporting school leaders who are working to discover their purpose fills me up and makes me hopeful for the future of our schools. I also enjoyed fellowship with women leading independent schools across the country through the Excelle Collective, led by former Board Chair Amanda Riegel, connecting and reconnecting with extraordinary women and embracing our vulnerability as a superpower.

The thing that all of these experiences had in common is that they were spaces of affinity. Some of these spaces were based on identity, but what made them even more powerful and fulfilling for me was that in each moment, I was in the midst of people who made a choice to come together and grant witness. In his beautiful book Consolations, poet David Whyte defines witness as “the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”

One could argue that it’s a pretty big jump to characterize a birthday party on the Lower East Side in this way, but I bet that the Beys and Swifties who were lucky enough to be able to attend the concerts of the summer might agree with me. Yes, fans came together to see two music icons, but from what I heard from folks who were there, the audience members were the ones who really defined these events–a diverse group of strangers of every race, age and gender who’d come together and decided to create a space of joy, connection, magic and belonging.

As we prepare for a new school year, I look forward to deepening our affinity to one another and our commitment to cultivating Gordon as an affinity space for all of the members of our community. Since February, I have been inspired by the words author Carla Shalaby shared with us, “I’m less interested in preparing our children for the world that is. I’m more interested in preparing them for the world we want.” That is the power of the spaces I experienced this summer, and I hope you had the opportunity to experience some of that power as well. These are glimpses of what’s possible. And each year at Gordon, we embark upon a journey of creating possibility and hope that would be impossible to accomplish alone. I can’t wait to get started.

One of other ways that I get to experience possibility is through the delightful discoveries that only the pace of summer allows. When we are all back together, I’m looking forward to hearing about the ones you have made this summer. Perhaps you found something unexpected in a new restaurant, or book, or maybe you just discovered something new about yourself. Each August, I look forward to sharing some of mine with the annual caveat that my discoveries are revelations to me, even if some of you have known about them for a while! I remain grateful to the universe for bringing these gifts to me at just the right time:
 

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Anyone who has attended a winter assembly at Gordon knows that I am a big fan of Charles Dickens, and while I know of Barbara Kingsolver, I have actually never read any of her work. So, it was a thrill to have my introduction to this Pulitzer Prize winner be an epic story transposing Dickens’ David Copperfield to Kingsolver’s modern-day Appalachia.

This summer at Excelle, participants were asked to reflect on the following prompts: What is the story of you within your family? How has that story informed your behaviors and relationships? If you could be the sole author of that story, what would you write? Demon Copperhead is an almost six-hundred-page response to those questions from the perspective of a young boy growing up in rural Virginia. Unsurprisingly, the novel provides powerful insight on the impact of institutional and generational poverty on children, but it is ultimately an inspiring illustration of the power of storytelling and how standing in the messy, beautiful truth of our stories makes us more human and allows us to more clearly see the humanity in others.

Wham! and George Michael: Freedom Uncut

You can probably tell by my morning playlist picks that I am an 80s kid through and through, and Wham! is one of my favorite bands of the era–pure pop perfection. And I believe that George Michael was one of the finest singers, songwriters and producers of his time. (You’re welcome to try and change my mind. Good luck.) Following Michael’s death in 2016, a documentary was released about his life, primarily focused on his post-Wham! years, and this year a director’s cut was released with twenty-five more minutes of footage. This summer, another documentary came out entitled Wham!, which focuses on the four magical years of the iconic duo from their first album Fantastic to their smash Make It Big. I loved both movies.

I recommend not watching them in chronological order. I watched Freedom on a plane, and as a George Michael fan, I found it to be a both compelling and tragic story. Michael was a singular talent, struggling to balance his fierce ambition against the understanding that he could never reach the heights he dreamed of if he was to come out as a gay man. Watching the Wham! documentary, which is a light piece of pop confection in and of itself, was a fun, nostalgic trip to a more joyful time, but given the darker clouds to come for George Michael, it made me happy to end my journey down memory lane remembering the impact of Wham! in their heyday and knowing that Michael had such a good friend in his bandmate and “best mate” Andrew Ridgeley.

Good eats in Maine

I am a Northern New England newbie. I have never been to Vermont, and my time in New Hampshire has been limited to an annual Head of School retreat in Portsmouth. For reasons I will share below, Rodney and I had the opportunity to travel to Portland and then Canaan, Maine this month. We had about sixteen hours in the state, and we made the most of it with dinner at Duckfat and a stop at Holy Donuts the next morning.

Wow. I know we are firmly late to this game, but I feel the need to spread the gospel of these two eateries to those like Rodney and me who were unaware of the non-lobster culinary delights to be found in the Pine Tree State. I don’t know that I will be able to enjoy french fries again after tasting Duckfat’s famous fries, a glorious combination of crispy outsides and fluffy innards, and the out-of-this-world salted caramel milkshake (with cookie crumbles on top) was well worth the four Lactaid pre-dessert prep.

Based on a recommendation from a local in line with Rodney at Starbucks, we swung by Holy Donuts in the morning to make a second breakfast stop before we hit the road to Canaan, and it was worth it. Potato donuts! We went with vanilla, fresh lemon, and blueberry holy cannoli, and regretted not grabbing more. I actually need to stop writing about this because I am getting upset as I type that I don’t have access to these rings of deliciousness every day.

Being puppy parents

When Rodney and I moved to Rhode Island five years ago, we sadly had to leave behind our dog because of Rodney’s allergies. Luckily, Billie was re-homed with a close family friend, but there has been a puppy-sized hole in my heart ever since. Over the years, I have engaged in a stealth campaign to get a canine furball back in the López household, and I am thrilled to share that Rodney and I have returned from Canaan, Maine with our new addition Ridgeley Lennox López, Goldendoodle extraordinaire!

“Ridgeley” is an homage to George Michael’s fun, mischievous, and loyal best mate from Wham!, and “Lennox” is a tribute to the Eurythmics frontwoman and iconic redhead Annie Lennox. We are smitten with her. Our cat Olive has questions. I hope that many of you will get to meet our new addition this fall.

While the opening of the new school is on the horizon, there are a few more precious weeks of summer left to enjoy. I truly hope that you are able to make the most of them.

I look forward to seeing you very soon.

With excitement for the year ahead,