::: to everything--turn, turn, turn :::

The Baby (age 6): "Can I read some of Junie B. Jones to you?"
Me: "Absolutely. Let me finish what I'm doing and I'll listen."
The Baby: "Promise?"
Me: "Yep."
The Baby: "Good, because I'm really excited. I've been reading it and I'm already on Season Four!"

I guess this is a sign that we might be overdoing it on the Seventh Heaven, Little House on the Prairie and Electric Company series DVDs from Netflix, eh?

::: son, can you play me a memory? :::

As June approached, swinging her green skirts over these hills and valleys, my heart was confused. My eldest son, Houdin, would be turning eighteen. As such, he would no longer be subject to any formal teaching from his parents. How to commemorate? How to mark this occasion? What I wanted was to cut apron strings, yet allow love to remain intact. This boy, who has been the source of so much frustration, self-doubt, with whom interaction has caused me so much regret for my lack of patience and angry nature, has also impressed me with his strength, creative thinking and varied interests.

Remember those games we used to play as children? They're the ones my daughters still play now, like cutie catchers, and M.A.S.H., where a group of giggling girls determine your lifelong fate. On a ripped-out sheet of notebook paper, they ask you to list different boys' names, and types of dwellings (mansion, apartment, shack or house, which is where the game gets its name), and numbers, and states, and then you choose a number, which is written very blackly in the center of the page. And then, the counting begins. One by one, your choices are narrowed, until your lies future scrawled out on the wide-ruled looseleaf before you--you will marry Victor and live in an apartment in Tahiti, tooling around in an AMC Gremlin. And you will have kids, unless you chose a "zero" for one of the numbers. You'll have six kids, or fourteen kids, or two kids. If make the mistake of thinking the number means how much money you're going to make per year, you may end up with 120,000 kids.

I don't remember a lot about my preferences for children when I was a child. I thought more about where I would live, what I would grow, what animals I would have and what kinds of clothes I would wear than if or how many children I would love.

But along came Bo, and I loved him, and, more importantly at the time and to the plot of this essay, I was attracted to him, and children were part of that equation. And I knew just a few things about these arriving beings. Here's what I knew:

• They would love and follow God and emulate Christ;
• They would be stunningly beautiful;
• They would be dressed in trendy clothes from The Gap and Banana Republic and, more importantly, they would love vintage thrift clothes;
• They would want for nothing;
• They would love nature, hiking, swimming, canoeing, and gardening;
  
• They would love the folk music;
• They would be incredible musicians, maybe even virtuosos;
• They would be brilliant, obedient and respectful;
• My daughters would be my closest confidantes;
• My sons would be my fiercest defenders.

I'm not attesting to the rightness or wrongness of any of these things, I'm just reporting the facts that were rattling around in that little curly-topped two-decade-old head. Some of these thoughts were acknowledged plans, with roads to the outcome mapped out neatly in journals and file folders, some were pursued with vigor and they either succeeded or were reluctantly abandoned. Some of these things just happened naturally, with little or no input from me. And, of course, it varied from child to child, from day to day.

One child, however, decided pretty much from day one that he wasn't all that thrilled with my plan. He arrived later than the doctor had estimated, took longer to be born, had a true knot in his umbilical cord, weighed more and measured longer than anyone had imagined.

As he grew, his first words were "shub up!" and "I can doooo it!" and "yeave me a-yone!" He wanted to be fiercely independent, yet didn't quite have the tools to achieve that independence. Lessons at home proved frustrating for everyone involved. Anything that could be taken apart was. Anything that could be broken was. Including, many times, my mother heart.

And while I tried to push my plans on him, he pushed right back. My plan was for a son who was naturally kind and respectful, good-natured and loving, well-dressed and tidy. He wore wrinkled t-shirts and stained jeans to church, was mouthy to me and other family members, wasn't affectionate or kindhearted. And he certainly wasn't my fiercest defender. To engage him in learning, we tried placing him in private school for a year, pulling him back out, moving to the country, giving him animal projects, encouraging his interests, increasing the household structure, loosening the household structure, abandoning the household structure. I spent evenings pouring over parenting books, on my knees in prayer, and beside his bed trying to reason him into doing his lessons or clean his room or help around the house or stick with his current interest, even if it wasn't my current interest.

Because what I wanted? I wanted him to play an instrument. And what I really wanted was for him to play piano. So as soon as we could find a piano teacher we could afford, I signed all the kids up, and we would make a weekly trek, every Monday, to spend two hours at the piano teacher's house. And every week, he would show great promise. And every week, as soon as we would leave the piano teacher's house, the lesson would be forgotten and little or no practice would ensue, regardless of the reminders, motivators or bribes I handed out.

I don't want to play piano, he would say. That's something you want me to do. It's not something I'm interested in. And we'd have a discussion about how many adults wish they could play, how you never meet an adult who plays piano and says, "Man, I've always regretted sticking with my lessons." But that didn't help. He wanted to play computer games or set up his army men or strap CO2 cartridges to the girls' dolls and set them on fire, delighting in the ensuing explosion.

I don't understand this creature.

But somehow, he still has my heart firmly in his grasp.

This boy, who has been the source of so much frustration, self-doubt, with whom interaction has caused me so much regret for my lack of patience and angry nature, has also impressed me with his strength, creative thinking and varied interests.

Finally, we decided on a graduation party, and he expressed his strong preference for having it here, at our home. He did a lot of work to get ready for it, including building a stone stairway up our front hill.

We had a small ceremony on the hillside that is our little apple orchard, blankets and quilts laid out for people to sit upon. Bo said a few words and opened us with a song, the Doxology, and then our pastor gave a short teaching to Zach--to all of us--about the lack of wisdom in most commencement speeches. Bo shared his thoughts, his memories of Houdin as a newborn baby, long and red, and the weight that came with realizing that he was the father of a son. Before he had finished his first sentence, I knew that there was nothing I could say; I was too emotional to speak. And then, Houdin spoke. He hadn't shared with me what he was going to say, hadn't written it down.

What he shared was an answer to my many years of prayer. He gave a short history of his life, how he arrived at the point where he is today. He talked about our other house, our tiny cape cod on a busy street with a little postage-stamp-sized yard, and how, there, he was given the freedom to learn, how he could choose any subject, and we would delve fully into it, exhausting all possibilities for further information before moving on to the next subject.

And he talked about the move to where we are now, this house in the country. He talked about the learning opportunities he was given, how he was allowed to be a part of the building process of this new home, climbing on the roof, pulling wiring, installing hurricane clips in the attic, nailing down shingles, carrying cement blocks. He talked about the things we let him do, and the things we made him do, and he said that he was grateful for us. He was grateful, he said, that his mother gave him the freedom to learn, and his father gave him the discipline.

I wish I could convey the feelings I had at that moment, and how glad I was that we'd decided to have that ceremony, even though there were times when I was so overwhelmed and discouraged that we came close to calling it all off.

We closed by singing a family favorite, Rich Mullins' Step by Step, a song I taught the older kids when they were just toddlers, when they would stand on step stools beside me in our old house, washing and drying dishes, and singing and singing and singing. Now here we were, surrounded by wonderful friends and family, cutting the apron strings that were tied to this boy who has done a fairly good job of driving me mad.

A few days ago, when I had some errands to run, Houdin asked me if he could stay at the church while I did my running around. See, there's a piano there, and over the past few months, he has taken to looking up the chords to his favorite songs and banging them out daily.

And there I was, watching it all, smitten by this young man who has so many times frustrated my spirit.

In just two weeks, we will load up a car full of stuff and kids, and we will attend another ceremony, this one a commissioning to send Houdin to Africa for a ten-month venture into voluntary service.

Day by day, as the time to send him comes closer, I become more aware of what this means, of how far away he'll be and how much can happen over the course of ten months. My mother heart needs prayer, comfort and healing before I can offer the same to my boy. While I know that this trip is a good thing, that it's has been orchestrated by God and that much good will come of it, my nature is to hold on, to change my mind, so panic, to worry about all of the terrible things that could possibly happen. Ten months away. Ten months. On the other side of the world.

A short time ago, we welcomed a young man named Rejoice into our lives. Six months before, his mother had stood in Africa and said goodbye to him as he ventured to the other side of the world for a year. We did our best to give him a home here, to welcome him as one of us, to make him a part of our family. I pray that Houdin, too, will find a family on African soil who will look after him while he's away from us.

And I pray that there's a piano there for him to play.

::: i get a kick out of you :::

Monet has had some pretty big life adjustments these past couple of weeks. Just a short time ago, he, Bo and I made the decision to send him to a local private school for his freshman year. After fourteen years of being at home full-time, this is quite a new experience for him.

Part of the experience has been participating on the Junior Varsity soccer team at his school, his first experience with playing on a sports team since his venture into little league baseball years ago, which left him feeling as if he'd never want to play team sports again. The coaches were in it for the win, and didn't really seem to have time to teach a new player the rules, encourage him, get him on track with something that could boost his confidence. The players were nasty, snobbish and insulting, cliquish and cruel. In a nation where obesity is a major physical and emotional health problem, sports situations such as that don't do much for encouraging physical activity.
It's been a big challenge, but his coaches and teammates have been very encouraging and patient. It's been a good experience so far.

Yesterday evening, he played his second game, and, while he's not the strongest player, he played to the best of his ability, even with some allergies and wheezing wailing on his body.

We've worked hard to encourage him to continue through the season. Friends and family have helped encourage him, too. We're hoping that, by the end of the soccer season, he'll have a great sense of accomplishment for struggling through something, and he'll be a better person for having completed it.

And I probably will be, too.

::: abraham lincoln's world :::

One of the books we're using for Sweetheart's Ambleside lessons this year is Abraham Lincoln's World by Genevieve Foster. I hadn't been familiar with it, and, let me tell you, so far I *love* this book. I love how the author puts so much humanity into the historical figures, and how she weaves their lives together so that we have a context of who was doing what during which time in history. And the illustrations, also created by Genevieve Foster, are alive with personality. The author's passion for all things historical is apparent, and can be attested by her philosophy of learning history:

History is drama, with men and nations as the actors. Why not present it with all the players who belong together on the stage at once, rather than only one character on the stage at a time?

Her philosophy works for this book. I look forward to delving further in and, along with my daughter, watching history come alive.

::: pros and cons of homeschooling :::

For those who have questions regarding the pros and cons of homeschooling, and don't we all, I would like to point you to a post by one of my favorite bloggers, Ann Voskamp of Holy Experience. In this post, Ann speaks so much of what I would say here were I as eloquent and articulate as she. My favorite part of the post, the one to which I say, "Amen!", is this:

Ultimately, for us, a quality education focuses on commitment, of both the learner and the teacher. A commitment by both parties to authenticity, joy, curiosity, and consistency. These elements of an education then translate into necessary, future life-skills.

For us that means living:

Authentically.
Live your life. Invite your children to join you! Read together. Pray together. Sing together. Work, bake, garden, chore, clean, sew, fix, build together. Don't fabricate artificial demarcation lines between schooling and living. Live a one-piece life. Live holistically.

Joyfully.
Explore! Be awed by His World! Restore Wonder! Be a creative, thinking, exuberant person who spills with the joy of learning. Your zest for learning and life will be contagious--the children will catch it!

Curiously.
Read, read, read. Fill the house with library books. Play classical music. Post the art of the masters about the house. Go for walks in the woods. Learn a new language, a new culture, a new poem. Everyday set out to discover again, and again, and again. The whole earth is full of His glory! Go seek His face...

Consistently.
Consistently pray. Consistently read. Consistently keep the routine. Consistently live an everyday liturgy.

Children thrive in routine. So do households. Have hardstops: times that you fully stop to pray, to read, to write. Regardless of what isn't done, what isn't finished. Make a full stop, do the needful thing, then return to meals, laundry, household management.
Consistently be consistent.

That's all. The curriculum doesn't really matter, so much. Use what works for you, how He leads you.

Just make it part of your real life, make it a joy, make it a discovery, and prayerfully make it consistent.

~Ann Voskamp

There are many more great words there on Ann's site, as well as some delicious photographs.

::: the incredible sweet corn massacre :::

Yes, there were some tears. Yes, my back and feet are aching. But now we have twenty-two quarts of corn and five quarts of basil in the freezer. There's still a ton (Okay, maybe not a ton. Maybe a few gallons.) more basil to harvest, but some will be pesto and some will go into sauce and bruschetta. Most of it, though, will be put into more freezer bags and pulled out in the middle of winter when heating up the oven to make pizza is more fun than it is during this hot, humid August.

::: sleep! sleep! beauty bright :::

Sleep! sleep! beauty bright,
Dreaming o'er the joys of night;
Sleep! sleep! in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.

Sweet Babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.

As thy softest limbs I feel,
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast
Where thy little heart does rest.

O! the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep.
When thy little heart does wake
Then the dreadful lightnings break,

From thy cheek and from thy eye,
O'er the youthful harvests nigh.
Infant wiles and infant smiles
Heaven and Earth of peace beguiles.

~William Blake

::: beautiful books :::

I spent a good portion of my time yesterday preparing for the upcoming school year for Sweetheart (10) and The Baby (6). Since I now have one adult child in college, one adult child leaving for voluntary service next month, and one teenage son attending a brick-and-mortar high school for the first time, I have only two daughters to do homelearning with. We'll be using Ambleside Online again, a free online curriculum that uses the philosophies of Charlotte Mason, an early 20th century educator who taught that education is an atmosphere, a discipline and a life, not just a means to getting a job or getting into college, but the formation of character. She produced a series of lectures to help parents understand how children best learn. Ambleside Online uses Mason's philosophies to guide the selection of materials.

Here's what I like about using Ambleside:

• The use of living history books as opposed to textbooks;
• The use of quality pieces of literature;
• The large amount of support and resources available;
• The focus on short lessons;
• The focus on nature study;
• The focus on art and music;
• The fact that the curriculum is free-of-charge, created by mothers who believe in the philosophies of Charlotte Mason;
• The gentle, flexible nature of Mason's approach;
  
• The belief that children are capable of understanding quality literature and beautiful language, that books don't have to be dumbed-down for children to be able to enjoy and learn from them;
• The focus on formation of character;
• The physical beauty of the books themselves.

Over the last few years since we started using Ambleside, I've been on a treasure hunt to find the books suggested in their curriculum, and I've been blessed to find so many of the books we needed for our learning journey. Fortunately for me, a book addict and lover of things vintage, many of the books in the Ambleside curriculum are physically beautiful. I've acquired them by scouring thrift stores, used-book stores, PaperBackSwap, and online booksellers. Many of them I've found for very reasonable prices, while others still elude me because of their limited availability or prohibitive prices.

This year will be the first year that we will have all of the physical books we need for the whole year. In the past, I used what I had found, borrowed some from the library, or used some of the many online books available. Because I've been collecting these books since Sweetheart was in Year One (she's in Year Five this year), and because my friend Kathy, who first introduced me to Ambleside and has always been a source of inspiration to me regarding both parenting specifically and life in general, sent me some essentials a few years ago (hers was the first package I received when we moved from the city to the thicket), and because my friend Marcella gave me the entire Charlotte Mason set, I'm fortunate to own the majority of what I need. Yesterday, I bit the bullet and used my Amazon card to purchase the last few books I didn't have, as well as Teaching Textbooks for Sweetheart. Considering that the registration fee for Monet's school year was more than the cost of all of the books PLUS the math curriculum, I feel pretty good about this year's preparations.

Because we have the majority of the books already, I made our twelve-week schedule (a customized version of one that can be found on one of the many Ambleside Yahoo groups) and we began our readings last night. The girls were attentive and excited. They both love to read, love good literature, and I know they'll be as excited as I'll be to see those books come pouring in through the mail. I'm especially excited for the arrival of Holy Experience blogger Ann Voskamp's A Child's Geography.

And I'll be excited to snuggle up on the bed, reading my old leather-bound copy of Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare and leafing through my olive-green hardbound Botsford's Handbook of Nature Studies, or seeing the girls curled up with the cat and copy of Aesop's Fables or A Child's Garden of Verses.

Here and here are the rest of the books we'll be using.

::: feels like the sun going down on me :::

"It may surprise parents who have not given much attention to the subject to discover also a code of education in the Gospels, expressly laid down by Christ. It is summed up in three commandments...Take heed that ye OFFEND not––DESPISE not––HINDER not––one of these little ones."

~Charlotte Mason

Are you out there? Because if you are, I'd love to hear your input on this one. What would it mean to "offend not, despise not, and hinder not one of these little ones?"

I am a mother frustrated by her teenage son's lack of self-motivation and self-governance. Tonight I am overwhelmingly disappointed with his ability to seek out injustices done to him, his proficiency in finding fault in others, but his habit of avoiding the responsibilities he has been given.

Simple things, really. Mom and Dad will be gone at small group for three hours. In that three-hour time frame, you will take a shower, put on your pajamas, finish your homework, pack your school bag, pack your gym bag, and set out your clean clothes for tomorrow. While we were gone, I accidentally left my cell phone in the car. Upon returning to the car, there were eight, yes EIGHT, phone calls from this boy, with messages indicating that older brother was being a jerk, that older brother was not letting him watch the DVD he wanted to watch, that older brother was still being a jerk EIGHT calls. FOUR messages. ONE frustrated mama, because when I returned home, the message-leaver hadn't done ANY of the things he'd been instructed to do, As a result, he lost the privilege of breakfast out with mom before catching the school bus.

Upon being reprimanded for his behavior, his response? "This is the kind of thing that would make me quit school," which resulted in an even stronger talking-to.

What breaks this cycle? And how does a parent interrupt such self-loathing, vindictive patterns of behavior without offending, despising or hindering the child?

My response tonight was outrage, anger and indignation.

Ephesians 4:26 says, "In your anger do not sin; Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry."

I'm not sure if I sinned in my anger tonight. I raised my voice. I expressed my deep disappointment with this boy's failure to do very clearly given, fair instructions without coercion or supervision. I became angry with the innocent in the situation.

So, yes, I suppose I did sin. And, yes, the sun is down (it was already down when I'd developed this anger), and I'm still angry.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll make it through this thing, this parenting of teenage boys, alive.

Heaven help me.

And you, dear reader, can help me, too.

I'd love to hear your feedback.

::: i hope you don't mind that i put down in words :::

When Bard was just a youngster, about six years old, she went to visit a friend of hers who shared with her a book called The Seven-Year-Old Wonder Book. She came home and told me about it. The book, written by Isabel Wyatt in 1958, inscribed "for anyone who has ever been seven years old, or is, or soon will be," follows the sixth year of young Sylvia who lives in a white cottage at the edge of a dark woods. Each entry talks about something that Sylvia experienced that day, and is followed by a story told to her at bedtime which relates to her experiences. These stories celebrate the seasons and holidays of the passing year. Each night, Sylvia pulls her Wonder-Book from under her pillow and turns it to a new page, setting it out for the Rhyme-Elves to write poetry in big, beautiful letters and painting beautiful pictures to go along with the poetry.

Since Bard was living her sixth year, and since I love journaling, she and I decided to create a Wonder-Book for her, though it would be known that I was the elf, and it would contain not only rhymes and pictures, but stories (both real and fictional) and questions and anything else I could stuff into it. Bard, too, would participate, answering the questions and drawing pictures in response to my entries. The cover was decorated with a collage of things that Bard loved and coated with Mod Podge.

The Wonder-Book sometimes went for months without any attention. As Bard got older and we both created blogs, the Wonder-Book was neglected for years. When she packed up most of her things and moved into her first college dorm, I sought out the Wonder-Book in my melancholy nostalgia, watching those years fly by with each turn of the page.

Sweetheart found me there, wandering through that sea of memories, and I realized that I'd not created a Wonder-Book for her nor The Baby. That was soon remedied, and now all of the kids have Wonder-Books of their own.

The Wonder-Book isn't a scrapbook or a photo album (there are no photographs at all, actually), but an ongoing conversation about life, happenings, seasons, emotions, dreams, disagreements, encouragments and poetry, both ours and those we admire. It's a book for a child to set on her bedside or yours, and to awake to, kind of like a coin from the tooth fairy. It's a place where a mom can share her thoughts and appreciations and apologies and a child can vent her frustration and admiration. Sometimes it's just a simple letter written in ball-point pen, sometimes a smattering of ideas dotted with stickers, and sometimes it's a full-blown art project, complete with scrapbooking markers and creative drawings.

Here are a few sample pages from the different Wonder-Books through the years.

::: oh, won't you show me the way, everyday :::

Father in heaven,
here's what I'm tired of:
measuring my days by
the next paycheck,
the next financial output,
and whether the upcoming financial infusion
will cover it.

I'm tired of my waking thoughts,
and my sleeping ones, too,
being overwhelmed by the debts I haven't paid,
and the debts that are racing toward me,
unstoppable obligations.

I need a reprieve.
I need to know that I'm settled with everyone,
and everyone is settled with me.
I need a jubilee.

I don't want welfare.
I don't want charity.
I just want a break
from the worrying
and the figuring
and the guilt
and the comparisons
and the resentment
and the fear.

So, God, how about if you
do something about this black heart of mine?
Help me to find a balance
between the want
and the need?
Fill me with the energy that I need
to do things the right way?
Point me to the tilapia,
that holds in its body the drachma
that will pay both of our debts?

Please,
give me my daily bread,
so that I can rest easy,
love easy,
laugh easy,
and share with those who
are tired, too.

::: if i leave here tomorrow, will you still remember me? :::

Around this time last year, I was waking with a terrible realization and a pain in my gut like that of someone who has experienced loss. I was weepy, unmotivated and grief-stricken. My husband was understanding. My daughters were empathetic to the point of their own grief and tears. I wasn't sure I would survive. People around me seemed puzzled.

In Bard's Wonder Book, an interactive paper journal I started for her when she was seven, I wrote the following:

Under any other circumstance, a woman whose daughter has gone after eighteen years of living at home would likely be heaped with support. If you had died, say, or gotten married, or run away, or been abducted. Actually, had I lost anyone after eighteen years, or even eighteen months--a break up or divorce or other loss--people would call me, I'd be in some kind of a support group, women from church would bring me casseroles and jello salads. But in this circumstance--"Well, gee. She's just at college!" Never mind that the house is void of her music, her laughter, her guitar, her conversation. "What's the big deal? Get over it!"

I hadn't started out grief-stricken. As a matter of fact, I was kind of blasé about the whole thing, having indulged myself in the process of getting Bard into college by making transcripts, visiting colleges, sending paperwork, talking to financial advisors, and then celebrating not only her acceptance letters, but the steady stream of scholarship awards, which was sweet vindication for this mom who had been told that home learning would ruin my child's education.

While I was gloating, I hadn't really thought about the fact that the end result of this process would be that my daughter would be leaving home.

And even had I thought that she would be leaving, once she chose a school that was only an hour away, I hadn't thought about the fact that she wouldn't be living in our house. She'd be taking her loyalty, dependability, devious sense of humor, midnight music making, and, most of all, her delightful companionship along with her.

It wasn't until a church friend asked me, just the week before we would be moving Bard to school, how I was doing.

"I'm fine!" I answered chipperly. "It's great! I think we're ready!"

To which she offhandedly replied, "When we took Jonathan to Goshen the first day of his freshman year, that was the last time he lived at home. He went on service trips for Christmas and summers, and then he got married and moved to Virginia."

Wait...what?

You mean, I thought, next week could be the last time my child lives at home? EVER?!?

And that's when the waterworks started.

At one point, it got so bad that when she simply walked into my room, I was reduced to a blubbery mass of tears.

"Mom," she chided playfully, "I feel like I'm dead! I feel like you're planning my funeral!"

Houdin, who had just ventured down the hall, strolled in, passed Bard without acknowledging her presence, embraced me with mock seriousness and hushed, "When are the calling hours?"

After taking her to her dorm that first day, going through the orientation process, and saying my goodbyes, I climbed into the car with my two younger daughters. Since Bard had packed so much stuff, and all of the family wanted to see her off, we'd driven two vehicles. But my vision was so obscured by tears, I had to pull over in the closest parking lot and let myself bawl. The girls draped their little bodies around me and joined my mourning, and we all wailed together, albeit quietly since we were in a public place not two thousand feet from Bard's dorm.

Now, before you come down too hard on me, you have to realize a couple of things:

• I never put my child on the kindergarten bus;
• I never watched her drive away after getting her license (she still isn't a driver, at 19);
• I never saw her whisked away on her first date by some strange boy.

It's not that she was sheltered or prohibited from leaving home, unsocialized or awkward. It's just that the choices we made together, the choices she made alone, never necessitated those little bits of leaving. Sure, she boarded a plane to Italy, China, and Germany, in addition to her domestic travels. But this thing? This leaving-for-college thing? That was different.

Because unlike women I've overheard sighing disdainfully in the early August school-supplies line while their children finger every impulse item on the shelf, I have never uttered the words, "I can't wait until they're back in school."

And this is because you have to realize something else, too.

I like my kids. I like my daughter. She's my friend. And I miss her when she's gone.

I'm glad she's at school, having fun, making new friends and keeping the old. It's cool that she's a course assistant this year and that she'll be starting into some of the classes for her majors. It's nifty that she used her summer-job-at-the-greenhouse money to buy a new cherry sunburst Fender Strat and a Line 6 amp and hopes to play in a band with a group of friends.

It's great that moving day went extremely well, that Houdin and the girls helped extra much and Bard's friend Grape tagged along to lend a hand, since Monet was at school and husband Bo was at work (though we did stop by for a brief hug).

It's fabulous that we got to spend moving day shopping for a new pair of Chuck Taylors (can you believe she's been wearing the same pair since her freshman year in high school?!?), eating at ChicFila, and arranging her new dorm room, a suite she'll share with five other girls.

And it's cool that I'll put the finishing touches on cleaning her room today, and it will stay clean in between visits.

But it'll be awfully quiet around here without her midnight music, her insane sense of humor, and her great companionship.

When you like your own child enough to miss them when they're gone, I do believe that's a good thing.

::: made the bus in seconds flat :::

I was pretty much a dead woman until I realized that the annoying "blat, blat, blat" crashing through the wall of my dreams was the persistent nagging of the alarm clock. I forced my eyes open, tried in vain to see the blue numbers, then flopped back down.

"What time is it?" I asked my husband Bo, who sleeps closest to the clock and had just succeeded in shutting it up.
"Muttermuttermutter," he muttered.
"What?"
"Muttermuttermutter!" he remuttered.
"I'm sorry," I tried to say this very gently, "but I didn't understand you," though I kind of thought I did understand him, in some strange way, and I didn't like what I thought he said.
"mmmmmMMMMMGHrzZZ! I said, 'It's SiiiiiiX. Twentyyyyyyyy. TwooooooooooooOOOOOoooo!'"
"What?!?" Now, in case you think me an idiot, I heard him that time. The final "what" was a rhetorical question, because it wasn't what I was expecting to hear. It wasn't at all what I wanted to hear.

I jumped out of bed, ran down the stairs (which is pretty hard to do, considering that it's usually necessary to have access to one's ability to see in order to run down stairs with any measure of success), hollering (or at least muttering incoherently in a slightly loud voice), and shook Monet awake.

All of this because the alarm had been changed.

Because, see, Bo's morning hours change depending on what his job duties are that day. And even though we have two alarms on our clock, we seem to only use one. And while I had set the alarm to wake up at 5:45 to get Monet up, allow him time to get dressed, eat breakfast, gather his soccer things, and drive to the bus stop, Bo had re-set the alarm for 6:20 in order to give himself enough time to get clothes on and leave for work.

In other words, we were going to be late.

For Monet's second day of school. Second. Day. What kind of mother lets her son be late for the bus on his second day of school?

Who's late for their second day of anything?

Monet was a good sport. When I shook his sleeping body and screamed into his sleeping ears, he awoke, jumped into his clothes, and let me shove a bagel and some grapes into his mouth. His school and gym had been packed the night before. I threw him into the car--no dragging a comb across his head or a brush across his teeth--and sped like a demon to the bus stop, approaching the parking lot three minutes before the scheduled pick-up time.

Where the bus was waiting.

I pushed Monet out of the speeding car, propelling him toward the exiting bus where he grabbed the front crossing arm and held on for dear life.

Okay, he leaped out of the moving car directly onto the bus stairs.

Okay, I brought the car to a complete, albeit abrupt, stop, and he quickly opened the door and ran to the stationary bus, receiving a polite "hello" from the smiling bus driver.

Fortunately for us, the bus route was changed, and Monet's is now the first stop on the route. The driver was waiting for some other students, so someone else was making him wait. Not us.

Today, I bought the boy a travel toothbrush, hairbrush and some Clif Bars and shoved them in his backpack, just in case.

And I set the second alarm.

::: first day :::

He couldn't sleep last night.
His allergies were bothering him this morning.
But he was ready nonetheless.
His button-down shirt and khakis were laid out,
And his soccer gear was packed,
And he got a good breakfast
of scrambled sour-cream eggs,
whole wheat toast
and cold watermelon.
So what if he had to go find another pair of socks
because he couldn't find the pair he'd found
last night?
So what if he forgot to brush his teeth
because he was busy making sure that
his hair wasn't sticking up?
We arrived at the stop on time,
a big, empty parking lot,
and we had a bit of conversation,
and he was nervous, unlike last night.
We watched the minutes tick by.
6:40.
6:41.
6:42.
"There it is."
"Is that it for sure?"
"Yep."
"Uh oh. He's stopping over there. Run!"
A quick goodbye shout,
a mental hug and kiss,
and his foot lands on that first
black treaded step.
He's on the bus now.

::: it's a school night :::

A load of laundry is tumbling in the dryer. The alarm clocks are set for 5:45 a.m. A shower will be taken, bedtime snack consumed, lunch packed. Then, there will be teeth brushed, tucking in and prayers, and maybe, if we're lucky, some sleep.

Life is about to change.

This hot mid-August brings with it new experiences for the Thicket Dweller household, and I'm not all that sure that I'm ready for them.

But ready or not, here they come.

Tomorrow morning, fourteen-year-old Monet will, for the first time, board a school bus and bump along into a brand new chapter of his life--high school. After fourteen years of learning at home and all around, he will be adding a new set of teachers, a new schedule, new bedtime and morning routines. He's excited. I'm excited.

And a little bit scared.

Will he be ready? Will he pay attention? Will he be organized and responsible? Will other students be kind to him? Will the lunches be okay?

His first experience with this new school has been two weeks of practice with the junior varsity soccer team which, for Monet, has done it's share of socking him. His body, a little soft from too much computer time and not enough running around, has had a really hard time adjusting to the new rigors that a team sport requires, and he has come home from two-a-day practices dog-tired and more than a little discouraged.

But he has stuck with it, in spite of threats to the contrary, and his coaches have been patient and encouraging as he lopes slowly around the track during laps, sometimes even loping along with him.

And the day after he spends his first day in school, nineteen-year-old Bard will return to college to begin her sophomore year as a course assistant for the college experience class, helping the incoming students get acclimated to college life. She's excited, and I'm excited for her, but I'm not all that thrilled that the summer has flown by so fast. There was so much more I wanted to do with her during break! Tonight, she and Bo are out shopping for a new electric guitar for her year at school, purchased with the money she made working at the greenhouse this summer. This in lieu of a car. Wise move, in my opinion. Guitars get better mileage, the insurance is cheaper, and there's very little maintenance.

As if that's not enough, in September, eighteen-year-old Houdin will begin training for a ten-month term of voluntary service in northwestern Africa. It was too painful for me to write about my grief when Bard started college. The period between July and September 2008 is conspicuously empty. And she was only going to be an hour away! Though I know that this leaving is a good thing, that he will grow and learn so much, that, if he stayed, we would be at each other daily, I'll miss him terribly and will undoubtedly bawl upon his departure.

And while I'll have two delightful young girls at home, going through Ambleside's years one and five with me, and my husband will be by my side, and our home will be full of laughter and learning, I'm wary knowing that bits of my heart will be scattered all over the world.

So, while, as a homelearner, I never thought I'd hear myself say this, I have to enforce some bedtime rules, because tonight's a school night. It makes me a little sad that this bohemian household will be tamed a bit by outside forces.

But maybe it's just what we need.

::: an august midnight :::

by Thomas Hardy

I

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined -
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

II

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
- My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.
"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I. 

::: scenes from a graduation party :::