So I can stand on mountains
The CBB -> Ste Therese's House
#1: So I can stand on mountains Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 12:05 am

I hope this works: it may very well be a load of rubbish! I've been writing Christmas cards today, some of which are for people whom I only hear from once a year, so I'm not feeling quite my usual cynical self ... I know that there's stuff in the Chalet School books that seems kind of silly, especially when you come back to the books as an adult, but seeing as I was in a soppy Christmassy mood I started thinking about the ideals of the Chalet School and how they're mostly pretty good ones really Smile Embarassed . (& I am hopeless at giving things titles!)

December 2005

“Are you all right, Grossmutter? Not tired?”

Frieda von Ahlen shook her head. For a few moments then her mind had wandered and she’d been a girl again, with her own beloved Grossmutter beside her. Maybe it had been as a result of being here, in Innsbruck. The capital city of the Tyrol had changed so much over the years. Many of the people who came here now were tourists, skiers in the winter, mountaineers in the summer, and in December many people came specifically to visit the two Christmas markets which were such an important part of the city’s calendar now. Frieda loved this time of year. They had visited both the Christmas markets, the one in front of the famous Goldenes Dachl and the one on the Landhausplatz; and now they were listening to the singing of traditional Tyrolean songs, which took place every evening here beneath the big Christmas tree in the old town in the weeks leading up to Christmas Day.

Frieda still thought of Innsbruck as home, even after all these happy years in Basel. She was an old lady now, almost the same age as Grossmutter had been during that long-ago Christmas when Joey and Madge and Robin had come to stay at the Mensches’ loving, welcoming home, and she rarely left Basel now; but her adored granddaughter Natalie had brought her here, to her home city, for a visit at this special time of year, knowing that it was the best present that she could give her grandmother. Natalie, so like her mother Gretchen, the daughter whom Frieda had once feared would never live to adulthood but who had grown into a happy, healthy and now middle-aged woman, was particularly close to her grandmother, as close as Frieda and her sister Bernhilda had been to Grossmutter, caring and considerate and never too tied up in her own busy life to find time for the elderly members of the family.

“I’m not tired at all,” she said, smiling at her granddaughter, knowing that Natalie would have sacrificed hearing the rest of the band’s performance to take her back to the hotel immediately had she said otherwise. Respect for the older generation and the importance of family ties were values that Frieda had learned early, and ones of which she particularly understood the importance now that she was old herself. She smiled as she remembered how Joey, Joey who had lost her own parents so tragically young but had always known the love of a caring sister and brother, had curtseyed to Grossmutter. Dear Joey. How many people could say that they had known a true friendship that had lasted seventy-five years, transcending all bounds of distance and nationality and religion? Frieda had known three. Joey and Marie and Simone were as dear to her now as they had been back in the days when she had spent every day with them, at the Chalet School where she believed that she had learnt the meaning of true friendship. There had always been someone to turn to at the Chalet School. Sometimes people could feel lonely even in a crowd, but they had always tried so hard to ensure that no-one felt alone in the world, that no-one was excluded.

A man pushed past her, too intent on wherever he was going even to apologise for jostling her, and she frowned momentarily. It might be a cliché, but good manners cost nothing. People might sometimes laugh when she told them that her school had always put “every farthing of twopence,” that strange old English expression, on good manners, but she had always tried to follow that training and to encourage her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to do the same. So much unhappiness, from little niggles to greater hurts, could be avoided by people showing courtesy towards their fellow human beings.

Why was the man in such a rush, anyway? So many people led such busy lives, always rushing to go somewhere and do something. She certainly didn’t believe in wasting time, but nor did she believe that time should always be given up to work. Sometimes she worried that her grandchildren spent so much time working that they forgot the need to balance work and play, the need to take care of themselves, the need to pursue hobbies, the need to find time for rest and relaxation. She smiled, remembering the Chalet School Hobbies Club. It had been Grizel Cochrane’s idea, she remembered, and how much pleasure it had given them all and how many useful skills they had learnt from it. She remembered too the sales, the time they had given up to raise money for a worthy cause, to help those less fortunate than themselves. They had led privileged lives, it was true, but they had tried to do what they could to help the San where the doctors had fought so hard to save the lives of those who had been brought there for treatment, and to help those in need in Innsbruck.

She nibbled on a piece of the gingerbread that she had bought from one of the stalls earlier. A little treat now and then was good for you! There was so much in the newspapers and on the television about what was good for you and what wasn’t, and about people not getting enough exercise. Not to mention all the pressure on young girls now to be thin. At the Chalet School they’d eaten plain, healthy food but they’d always had plenty of treats too, and they’d taken plenty of exercise. Sometimes it had annoyed them that the School had been so obsessive about health, packing people off to bed for a day if they had a cold, but the intentions had been good. She always urged her family to do everything they could to protect their health.

The band was playing Christmas carols now. This one was an English carol: presumably it was for the benefit of the British and American tourists in the city, but it reminded her of the Chalet School Christmas plays. There had always been a strong emphasis on faith at the school, not only in a religious sense but in a general sense too, a sense applicable to those of all recognised religious denominations or none. It had been her faith that had sustained her through the most difficult days of her life, the days when she had feared that Bruno had perished in a concentration camp and, later, after they had married, the fear that he would lose his life fighting in the war, and the overwhelming, terrible, fear that the Allies might be defeated and her country and so many others doomed to remain under Nazi rule. Women of Natalie’s generation had so many more choices, were so much more independent, but she prayed that Natalie would never know the need to be as strong as the women of her own generation had had to be through those terrible days of the war. She smiled. What was that silly expression that Gretchen used sometimes? Don’t be a spineless jellyfish. The term always made Frieda smile, but the principle was one that she couldn’t argue with.

She’d left school by the time that Madge Russell had made her “Be upright; be honest; be brave” speech to the girls, but she had learned about it afterwards. There were so many words of wisdom to be found in the annals of the Chalet School. When her father had died, and again when her mother had died, both Joey and Grizel had written to her with Madge Russell’s words that death was “falling asleep to wake with God.” Joey herself had told Nina Rutherford that she should learn to consider other people’s side of things, and Rosamund Lilley that what mattered was a person’s own character and not their social background. So many important lessons had been learnt by girls at the Chalet School, so much of serious matters, but they’d all also learnt the importance of having a sense of fun: she laughed aloud at the memory of some of the mad pranks that she and her friends had played in their time. They’d always owned up, of course, even to those that had backfired: they wouldn’t have dreamt of doing otherwise.

“What’s so funny?” Natalie asked.

“Just remembering some of the pranks we played at school,” Frieda said. She didn’t need to describe them. Natalie knew all her stories: she’d listened to them all so many times. Just as Frieda had listened to her own grandmother’s stories. Grossmutter had been born into a world in which horses and carriages had been the main form of transport and letters the main form of communication, in which the Habsburgs had ruled a vast multi-ethnic land empire and in which the peasants had still owed labour dues to their feudal lords. As a little girl she’d seen the Austrian court flee from Vienna to Innsbruck amid the chaos of the 1848 revolution, and she’d lived to see the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapse after defeat in the First World War, Tyrol divided between Austria and Italy, and the birth of the Austrian republic. She’d seen industrialisation, the coming of the railways, the birth of the age of mass communication and travel, and had died in a world almost unrecognisable from that in which she’d been born. Frieda had been in her teens then, when Grossmutter had passed away on the day of Bernhilda and Kurt’s wedding, and in those days she had confidently expected that she would live out her own life in the Tyrol; but the events of the years that had followed had brought evil almost beyond belief to Austria, had forced her and her family abroad and had turned the world upside down.

How much more had the world changed since then? It seemed to change day by day, unrecognisable now even from the world of Natalie’s own schooldays in the 1980s. Mobile telephones, IPODs, DVDs, the internet, satellite television … what on earth would they have made of any of it back in those fondly-remembered days when she had been a Chalet School girl?

She smiled again. She was still a Chalet School girl. Joey always said that she would still be a Chalet School girl when she was a great-grandmother. Frieda had reminded her of that when the first Maynard great-grandchild had arrived, and had added that it was true. Her own words came floating back to her, down the years. “We are proud – proud –PROUD of belonging to such a School.” True, many of the ideas of the Chalet School in its early days seemed hopelessly outdated now, but that was only to be expected: times changed and would continue to change. The basic values of the School, though, friendship, unity, courtesy, faith, honesty, accepting your mistakes and learning from them, taking care of others and of yourself, were as important and as relevant now as they had been all those years ago.

She looked fondly at her granddaughter, one of the third generation of her family to have gone to the Chalet School, and knew that Natalie would be passing on these values to her own children and grandchildren, whatever the world might be like by the time that they arrived. “Merry Christmas, Natalie,” she said.

 

#2:  Author: Identity Hunt, Location: UK PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 7:51 am

Alison, this is *truly* lovely !
I enjoyed it so very much. Very Happy

 

#3:  Author: MaryR, Location: Sale Cheshire PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 8:55 am

Oh Alison, Frieda's thoughts made me have a little weep here, especially the part about friendship.

Thank you so much - it is beautiful.

 

#4:  Author: Cath V-P, Location: Newcastle NSW PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 10:22 am

Oh, yes that was truly lovely. Thank you Alison.

 

#5:  Author: Amanda M, Location: Wakefield PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 10:30 am

That was beautiful. Thank you Alison.

 

#6:  Author: Ally, Location: Jack Maynard's Dressing Room!! PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 11:31 am

That was lovely Alison thank you, and interesting how Frieda is the link between almost different worlds, that of her grossmutter and that of her granddaughter. So much has changed. Very Happy

 

#7:  Author: BethC, Location: Worcester, UK PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 12:44 pm

Thank you, Alison - Frieda is just the right person to show the Chalet School ideals in the light of more modern attitudes, without being either cynical or overly sentimental. Lovely.

 

#8:  Author: Fatima, Location: Sunny Qatar PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 1:05 pm

That was really lovely, Alison. Thank you.

 

#9:  Author: Chair, Location: Rochester, Kent, England PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 1:37 pm

Thanks, Alison. That was really beautiful and I really enjoyed it.

 

#10:  Author: dackel, Location: Wolfenbuettel, Germany/Cambridge, England PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:22 pm

That was lovely - thanks, Alison. The overview of the years was really fascinating.

 

#11:  Author: Róisín, Location: Vancouver for now PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:39 pm

Alison that was so wonderful. Thanks for writing it. I'm going to print it out and keep it. Frieda is one of my favourite characters.

 

#12:  Author: Vikki, Location: Sitting on an iceberg, freezing to death!!! PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 5:32 pm

Alison, that was amazing. Thank you for sharing it with us!

 

#13:  Author: Chalet_school_lover, Location: Gloucester PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 6:50 pm

That was simply beautiful! I loved the look back over the years! It really was lovely! Thank you so much for writing/posting this! I really enjoyed reading it! Very Happy

 

#14:  Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 8:37 pm

Thanks Alison - sublime.

 

#15:  Author: Michelle, Location: Near London PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 9:09 pm

Really beautiful, Alison. I'm glad Frieda is so happy.

Michelle

 

#16:  Author: Sugarplum, Location: second star to the right! PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 12:33 am

Superb
Love the way that Frieda is the link between Natalie and Die Grossmutter.

 

#17:  Author: Carolyn P, Location: Lancaster, England PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:02 pm

That was a beautiful story, thank you.

 

#18:  Author: Mia, Location: London PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:48 pm

This is gorgeous, thanks Alison

 

#19:  Author: LizB, Location: Oxon, England PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 1:51 pm

The old and the new - that was beautiful, thanks Alison

Liz

 

#20:  Author: JustJen, Location: Dorval, Quebec PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 4:31 pm

What a wonderful story. Thank you for posting

 

#21:  Author: francesn, Location: away with the faeries PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 5:13 pm

Thank you Alison, that was a beautiful reflection, and all the more poignant that we saw it through Frieda's eyes.

 

#22:  Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2005 9:31 pm

Thank you so much - I really, really loved this.

 

#23:  Author: Elisabeth,  PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2005 8:40 am

That was so touching. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy and Christmassy. Thank you Alison.

 

#24:  Author: JoW, Location: Lincolnshire PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:26 pm

That was lovely. I feel like I have just had happy Christmas news from an old friend I haven't heard from for a while. Smile

 

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