Peggy Wears Blues and Greens
by Katie Troung
Many people know Peggy Schauffler simply as the Lower School Art Teacher who is soft spoken, who enjoys being out in nature with her students and finding the best creative outlets for them, and who almost exclusively wears stunning blues and greens.
For me, she has been all of those things and also my long time friend. When we were assigned this project of finding someone to interview, she was the first person that came to mind and I chose to interview her because in the extensive time that I’ve known her, it became abundantly clear that we are very different people. She is much more relaxed than I am when it comes to making plans for the day and has a greater appreciation of the outdoor, whereas I have a firm belief that we, as humans, built houses for a reason. Her education was open and experiential with connections to nature, while mine remained suqsentered in classrooms and the nature I experienced was in the pages of books. She patiently explained to me the process in which she made decisions about her life and showed me that not every decision had to be completely thought out. She taught me how to balance my hyperactive meticulousness with the flow and ebb of life. She would always tell me stories about her life in college and the numerous outdoor trips that she took and how those experiences and the people she met, shaped her life. She was never shy about telling me about her experiences if she thought I could learn from them and it didn’t matter whether they were happy, sad, nostalgic, or simply a funny anecdote. Peggy is a giver and I consider myself very fortunate to have been in the position to receive. Below are some excerpts from my interview with Peggy on what home means to her.
Daughters are Home:
“I know exactly what it [home] means to me now, but I didn't use to. It means when I'm with my family, my daughters, I feel like I'm at home.”
“Then they went away and I felt very much like my home had been ripped away from me and I knew it was totally normal. It's something that parents have go through, when their kids go away. It’s hard if you have a good relationship with your children, it's hard. [Laughs]. But when I sold the house and I realized that the kids were gone, I just didn't feel like I was home anywhere until they came back to visit and then it was like, oh yeah, this feels like home. Now I feel fine about it. But, definitely my daughters...home”
As a daughter my mom has always been home. I worry a lot about how my absence will affect her. She and I have always been close and I know she understands that college is just the natural progression on my life, but it will still make the house quieter and I won’t be home to make her coffee after dinner.
Nature and St. Helens:
“My dad used to bring us camping, my brother and I, and so being out in nature with just this wonderful time with my dad. So that definitely felt like home and I'm sure that's why I love to be out...in nature and go on hikes when my knees aren't hurting [laughs]. And also I worked in a place called Harmony False Lodge at the base of Mount Saint Helens when I was 16 and 18 and I lived with a group of people. I made such amazing friends there that really felt like home, just there in the wilderness. You had to take a boat to get to this place. It was really quite devastating when it blew up. But what I realized was it was the people, none of the people blew up. They were still all there. And so that really helped me through that.”
Nature has also found a way to find root into my home and family. Our garden is surrounded by plants of all shapes and colors. The orderly and evenly spaced plants were planted carefully with a ruler by my stepdad and the sporadic clumps were lovingly planted by my mom. The holes that the plants went into were begrudgingly dug by me.
Didn’t Feel at Home At College:
“I went to Bennington College in Vermont and I did not fit in at all. Part of it was because I transferred and every new incoming student has to live in the dorms for a year no matter what age you are. So I was with mostly freshmen and they were extremely wealthy and some of them were extremely really messed up with drugs and it was just really difficult to live around them. Someone drove up in a Rolls Royce once.”
“And one year I was getting a ride up from New York City with some people who I thought were fine. And mid drive they said, “oh, hope we don't get stopped by the police.” And I said, “why?” They said, “because we have all these drugs in the back.” And they were very serious drugs. And I just, I just thought this is horrible. They should have never said I could drive with them, but they didn't think about that. It just was a very bad match. The actual school part of it was really exciting, but the people were not that at all. So it really comes down to people.”
Peggy’s story at Bennington College is exactly what I fear. Home for me is a very sacred space for me and I’m worried that will be unable to replicate those feelings in college. Maybe I won’t find the right crowd of people and be a drifter for all of my years of college or maybe my bedsheets will smell different there no matter how many times I wash it with our detergent or maybe I’ll never be able to make eggs the way my mom makes them. Part of me knows that these fears, albeit irrational, are normal, but they are still very real fears. School has never been a place I feared, but at least at the end of the day, I could always just come home and leave those problems behind. But when I end off to college, home will be hours away. Too far to come to anytime I want, but too close to not feel childish for missing it.
Peggy and I may be very different people, but we have how we define home in common. For the both of us, it will always be the people and as long as we both have the people we love and cherish, we will always be home.
