::: wouldn't you give your hand to a friend? :::

If you know my boy, Monet, send him a note or give him a call today to encourage him. He has had a hard time transitioning from home education to private school. His class is a small one, and a close-knit one, from what I understand, and considering that he's not very outgoing or talkative, I think he's having a hard time breaking in to the circle. He's having a rough time of math class, though he's certainly making improvements, and he claims to hate English and History. Soccer is hard for him, too, but he's sticking with that, too, and making improvements.

I get frustrated with school kids sometimes. Tonight at the soccer game, I was a little disappointed by the way some of the kids were making fun of and laughing at other kids, and the hyper-focus on the boyfriend/girlfriend thing, and the borderline foul language and sexist comments (in a socially conscious Christian school). I was also frustrated by how much value was assigned to success in sports over success in other areas of life. Monet is an excellent artist, but there's no art class for the freshmen this year. None of the administration seems bothered by this, but I wonder how they would react if I told them that there was no soccer/tennis/baseball/basketball for their child's year.

I want Monet to succeed, and I want him to make friends, and I want him to be healthy, but moreover, I want him to be happy and to serve God fully and with a pure, humble heart. While I'm hoping he can gain the tools he needs to do that while attending this school, I'm a little worried that he won't, that he'll be pulled under the current of the unhealthy trends of his peers and be swept away from the gifts that God has given to him because there's no value being assigned to it by his peers and mentors.

So, if you think about it, give him a call or drop him a note today.

::: la la la la pennsylvania :::

Tomorrow.
5:00 AM.
A six and a half hour drive.
A day of orientation and commissioning.
And at the end of the day?
After we've been oriented
and he's been commissioned?
We leave.
And he stays.
Thanksgiving
will bring him home again,
but only for a week.
Long enough to pack for Africa.
Long enough to get a few more vaccines
shot into his body.
And then we stay.
And he leaves.
To another country.
To another continent.
To a year away.
He'll leave 18,
and come back 19.
So much,
so very much
can happen
in a year.
It will creep by
in the blink of an eye,
and July will be
here before we
even realize that September has left us.
He'll go away from this cold,
into that heat,
and come back to this heat.
A whole year of summer.
Six and a half hours.
Such a long
long,
long
drive.

::: people, get ready :::

It's been a busy few days for the Thicket Dweller household, and it's only going to get busier.

We're preparing for Houdin to leave for training for his eight-month trip to western Africa. This past week has been spent gathering last-minute stuff and organizing fundraisers. This Saturday, we'll be running a lunch stand at a local real estate auction and all of the proceeds will go to Houdin's trip, which is a good thing because it's costing more than I had thought it would. While many people have been very generous, there are so many expenses that I hadn't anticipated; his oral vaccinations aren't covered by our insurance; the health department charges $35 for a "travel consultation" before they can give him his Yellow Fever vaccine; he needs a winter coat before his training begins; we didn't have a camera suitable for him to travel with; he desperately needed a haircut; and, and, and....

It's hard to believe that he'll be leaving in just two days, and that we won't see him until Thanksgiving. A short visit, then he'll be off to Africa for eight. whole. months.

Am I ready for this?

Sometimes the best thing to do when you're feeling anxious is to focus on someone else, so here's a prayer for all of you who have children who are starting their first year of school, or their last, or their first year of college, or their last, or they're going away on service projects, or missions trips, or into the military. May you be filled with total peace. May all of the fear and anxiety and pressure and stress just melt away, and may you be left with a sense of wonder, gratitude, joy and strength.

And you can do the same for me.

::: at midnight :::

Dogs are barking.
Drums are beating.
Piano is pounding.
Fan is blowing.
Laundry is waiting.
I am stressing.
I am stressing.
I am stressing.

School is frustrating.
Homework is baffling.
Sunday's approaching;
Houdin will be leaving.
Laundry is waiting.
I am stressing.
I am stressing.
I am stressing.

Book is inspiring.
God is amazing.
Life is so challenging.
Morning is coming.
Bus will be waiting.
I am stretching.
I am stretching.
I am stretching.

::: thicket dweller and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad morning :::

It's 6:33 a.m.

How can the day suck already?

I'll tell you how--when you're the mother of children who feel that they're failing.

Late last night, before bed, after Monet was sound asleep, I signed on to Edline, the school's academic tracking system. It's a system that has great potential, except that I keep believing that the teachers are actually using it, so if I sign on and find that there's no homework or class notes for Monet, I believe there's actually no homework or class notes. It doesn't occur to me that a school system would set up, maintain, and point parents to a system that some of the teachers use and some of them don't.

Apparently, however, when it's time to put up weekly progress reports, they do.

And Monet is failing History.

HISTORY!

How can a person FAIL History? Math, I can understand. English? Not in this house, buddy. But HISTORY?

One of my biggest pet peeves in life is that someone would make history boring, would give a kid a list of names and dates and measure their success in the class by whether or not they can memorize them. That is totally not what history is about. History is US! It's the story of where we came from, what mistakes have been made, what successes have been celebrated. It's about human beings, and triumph, and tragedy, and passion, and drive, and LIFE. How can a person hate History? How can a person fail History?

Well, I'll tell you one way a person can hate it. If, like I did, they have a History teacher who was only there because he was the boys' basketball coach and you couldn't be a basketball coach unless you taught a class, so he taught History, and he didn't care about it, and he leered at the high school girls, and he was totally and completely boring. Completely.

Now, here's my son, and I'm thinking, "Heck, it's twenty-five years later. Surely they've made some advancements in the training of History teachers," but then I log on to this sometimes used, sometimes not Edline and I see that he's not just failing, but he's REALLY failing. So, while he's dead asleep, I pull out his five-subject binder and flip to the History tab. Page after page after page of photocopied worksheets with fact upon fact and obscure name upon obscure name that they're supposed to define and identify.

He's only been in class for THREE WEEKS! Each of these people listed lived an ENTIRE LIFE! How in the world can you cover one whole sheet of names, one whole sheet of lives in THREE WEEKS? How can you absorb that, let alone CARE about them?

I guess this is the Charlotte Mason in me coming out. I don't understand the need to cram a bunch of facts into a kid that he won't remember, won't care about, when you can spend some good quality time on a few key things and really give them a passion for them.

It doesn't help that, when we were trying to make the decision to send Monet to this small private school, people assured us that he'd do fine. People have been assuring us all along the way that he'll get plenty of help, that he'll succeed, that the staff won't let him fail. And in spite of my worries and concerns and careful questions and requests for extra help and extra patience, he's struggling in Math, he doesn't like English (be still my HEART!), and he's failing in History.

Sigh.

Then here's me, carefully composing two e-mails--one to the Math teacher and one to the History teacher--asking what we can do to help Monet succeed, and when I press "send," I find that Edline has "logged me out" because my account had been "inactive" for a period of time. Writing, I think, is an activity. It's pretty active. No logout warning, no autosave. Two carefully composed e-mails...gone.

So I'm feeling pretty upset about this, right, when I read a note on facebook from my college-aged daughter, who apparently bombed at an improv and didn't make it into her school's production of Into the Woods, which she really, really, really wanted, and who's feeling like a failure in her Media Production class, and I find that she's really struggling right now, that she's really feeling down and rejected and pretty much like a failure, and, as I read the things she's upset about, I wonder how much of it I planted in that head of hers--her need to be funny, her need to hide her emotions, her need for perfection.

Then I start beating myself up, and I wonder, "Why didn't I plant confidence? Why didn't I plant resilience? And God! Why didn't I plant the need for God?!?"

And so here it is, 6:49 a.m., and it's a sucky day already.

So I'm going back to bed, and I hope when I wake up, the new day won't be as sucky.

But then I remember that I have an appointment today to have an ultrasound done on my apparently failing gall bladder. Today.

9/9/09 at 9:00 a.m.

I could use a lift, God, okay?

::: all by myself :::

How quiet it is, save the sound of Houdin banging out "Do You Realize" on the piano. The weekend wedding and travel to Indiana/Illinois is over, the girls are staying with their Illinois relatives for three weeks, Bard is back to college, and Monet is at high school. Houdin is an only child for a week, and then he's off to training to spend 8 months in Africa as part of a service and missions project. There's plenty to do here--three wedding videos to finish editing, church stuff to organize, Houdin's packing and preparation to do, funds to raise, books to read and review, pickles and sauerkraut to make, laundry to wash, maybe even a bedroom or two to paint--but for now, I'm just gathering my thoughts, absorbing this strange phenomenon. Never have I been alone in my house for more than a half-hour. Wow. Isn't that hard to believe? That I could have an entire day, uninterrupted, to write, edit, clean, watch a movie, nap? I'm excited, yet I'm also unsure how I feel about it. After years and years of wondering what it would be like to be alone in a house, to clean something and have it stay clean, to complete a sentence or a thought, I'll have a taste of it for two whole weeks, and it makes me wonder what life without children at home will be like.

For those who have children leave home, what was the transition like for you? I'm especially interested in hearing from women who were home with their children, and if you were homelearners, all the better. Was the process difficult? What surprised you? Did you find yourself with more time of your own, or did it get quickly filled? Did you go to work? Start volunteering full-time?

After this three weeks, my two little girls will be home again, and we'll back into our Ambleside schedule.

But, for now, I'll enjoy my venture into daytime solitude.

::: now my feet won't touch the ground :::

The weekend was a beautiful one; visits with loved ones, hugs from nieces and nephews, lots of music and dancing and laughing, and a beautiful bride and a handsome groom.

My little sister, who is actually Bo's little sister, who often comments on this blog as Lil Sis, married her sweetheart, Bishop, on Saturday. The outdoor wedding was blessed with a beautiful day, a group of loving people in attendance, Bo and his brother playing Coldplay's "Now My Feet Won't Touch the Ground" on lap dulcimer and guitar, and a whole host of laughing (and, occasionally, crying) children. At one point, the sing-songy serenade of the ice cream truck floated through the park, children and adults flocking to get a cool, sweet treat.

It was such an honor to be a part of Lil Sis's wedding, to do one of the things that I love best, which is to snap photos here and there and take a bit of video. Every time I would point my camera at Lil Sis, that funny little five-year-old girl peeked through her veil, reminding me just how quickly life skitters by.

Lil Sis's groom is so patient and enduring, with a great sense of humor and a no-nonsense approach to relationships. He tells it like it is without being demeaning or angry, and I appreciate that so much about him, about that man who doesn't let the wool be pulled over his eyes and continues to state what he believes. "You have ideals," his new father-in-law said, and it seems that it's true.

The two of them are iron sharpening iron, and they, along with Lil Sis's little girl RJ, are going to do amazing things as a family.

::: if i get there before you do, i'll cut a hole and pull you through :::

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown—
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

~Robert Louis Stevenson

This is one of the girls' favorite poems, and when we read daily from The Child's Garden of Verses, this one is almost always read. The older children sang a version of it for choir.

Isn't swinging one of those simple, lovely things that makes childhood grand? One of my favorite memories is of my dad pushing me on my little metal swingset in the back yard, me soaring, he loudly singing, "Swing lo, sweet cherry-ought. Comin' for to carry me home." I can remember how I would rush to the swingset at the school next to my aunt's house, even into my teens, when my friend and I would pump our feet to the rhythm of our own voices singing The Steve Miller Band's Fly Like an Eagle.

It's great fun as a child. But somewhere along the line, we decide, or someone tells us, that we're too old for it, and then, when we want to return to it, our bottoms are too big for the seats, or our feet drag on the ground. But if we can get past those parts, it's still a simple, lovely thing to do.

And swinging in sync with a friend? Ah. Magical, isn't it?

I loved watching Sweetheart, The Baby, and their friend Lydia fly through the air, giggling, trying to slow down and speed up to match each other's flight. And even the competition that took place was interesting to watch. The synchronized swinging almost became an obsession with some, and a non-issue with others, and for those some who took it seriously, the fact that no one would sync with her was a great insult to her psyche.

Life is like that. There are things I take way to seriously, and someone might be able to say to me that it's no big deal, that I should just shrug it off, that it doesn't really matter anyway. But that doesn't erase my human emotions, my desire for relationship, my confusion when someone I love, or someone I try to love, rejects me, deals with me callously, or misunderstands my intentions. Why does it matter? Why does it bother me so? Why, when people who love me, people who really know me, people I respect and admire, tell me to forget about it, shrug it off, can't I do so?

I must not be the only one. I was listening to a repeat show on This American Life, an NPR radio program that I download as a podcast each week. This week's theme was The Kindness of Strangers. In it, Brett Leveridge tells the story of his experience of standing on a subway platform. A stranger, which, of course, means someone Brett doesn't even know, probably someone that no one waiting on the subway knows, meanders along the platform, and chooses people as if choosing players for a kickball game: "You're in. You're out. You can stay. You have to leave." But it wasn't like the people who were told they had to go left. They just ignored this strange person. Not Brett, though. For some reason, as the guy approached Brett, all he could think about was how he hoped the guy would approve of him. A guy he didn't even know. A total stranger.

So if, as humans, it matters to us that a total stranger approves of us, how much more important must it be that someone we know, someone who at least in modicum knows us, rejects us?

This is why, I believe, the person of Christ is so compelling. He was, and is, what we long to be. Perfect. Without sin. Blameless. And we long so much for that perfection and blamelessness, for that relationship and acceptance, that it's almost unbearable when someone rejects us for reasons we can't fully understand, even if it's a person we don't particularly like. Even if it's a person we can't really stand at all.

But here was Jesus, and, yeah, like I said. Perfect. Without sin. Blameless. And still, He had enemies. He was despised and rejected. Those He loved denied Him, betrayed Him, doubted Him. What must that have felt like for Him, who didn't just feel He hadn't done anything wrong. He really hadn't done anything wrong!

And so I know that, with all of my flaws and failures, I can't expect to be unconditionally loved by anyone but God, but this feeling of swinging so high, of laughing and and feeling that weightlessness, and laughing, and then falling and scooping so low, and reaching out my hand to sync with someone who chooses to keep theirs death-gripped tightly on the chains, pumping their feet so that they can rise higher and higher and higher than I, is always a bit of a shock to me. Hey, I think, wasn't this supposed to be fun?

And on the worst of days, I just want to jump off of the swing altogether.

My son told me recently that it takes seven positive comments to counteract one negative one. Seven. For every. single. negative. So if you get totally chewed out by someone, told in every way how you've failed, what a loser and terrible person you are, just imagine how much encouraging and building up your loved ones have to do to cancel out what that one uncaring, selfish, unthinking person did.

Wow.

No wonder it's so hard to love. It takes persistence, doesn't it? We have to keep undoing all that's been done, not just by us, but by others, too.

I guess that's why I want to be the one who swings next to you, who, when you reach out your hand for someone to sync with, grabs that hand and sticks right next to you, keeping time with your rhythm, no matter how high or low you go.

Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down
Coming for to carry me home
But still my soul feels heavenly bound
Coming for to carry me home

The brightest day that I can say
Coming for to carry me home
When Jesus washed my sins away,
Coming for to carry me home.

::: little things mean a lot :::

Blow me a kiss from across the room
Say I look nice when I'm not
Touch my hair as you pass my chair
Little things mean a lot.

Do you ever find yourself so tickled by some simple thing that you stop to look at it, to admire it, to see if it's just as gorgeous as you remembered it was, over and over again? Sometimes it's the perfect pumpkin pie you crafted with your own hands, complete with little cutout crust pumpkins and leaves dotting its deliciously orange-brown surface. Sometimes it's a small oak writing desk that you didn't think you could afford but you bought (and still use today) when your mother-in-law gave you money from the bonus check she hadn't been expecting. Sometimes it's a stack of vintage school books--Halliburton and Herriot and Hillyer--that came in the mail and you placed just so on your little white nightstand. Sometimes it's your children sleeping while the eastern sun streams through their windows, which is no simple thing, but still, it can make you stop and take a second peek. And a third.

Give me your arm as we cross the street
Call me at six on the dot
A line a day when you're far away
Little things mean a lot

And sometimes it's that gorgeous yellow glass lamp with the faux oil-rubbed brass feet that you saw at Your Favorite Thrift Store last week but were too strapped for cash to pay the six dollars that was stamped on the sticky yellow price tag. But, oh happy day, when you went back on half-price day, the half-price tag just happened to be yellow, and the lamp with the yellow tag just happened to still be there!

Don't have to buy me diamonds or pearls
Champagne, sables, and such
I never cared much for diamonds and pearls
'cause honestly, honey, they just cost money

But even for three dollars, you stood and deliberated, "Do I really *need* another lamp?" and "Where will I put it?" even though you knew that it matched the colors of your piano room so well. So, with some encouragement from your young daughter, you bought it, and you found just the right lampshade for it, and you took it home. And you immediately saw where it should live out the rest of its bright lampy days. Oh, yes. On the dry-brushed green thrift store stand right by the front door. And when you plug it in, OH JOY! you find that it has a little bulb in the yellow glass base, too, and it makes the perfect hall nightlight when the base is lit all alone, which you can do, which is another special little surprise.

Give me a hand when I've lost the way
Give me your shoulder to cry on
Whether the day is bright or gray
Give me your heart to rely on

And you find yourself returning to it, just to admire it again, and asking family members how they like it. And they tell you. Again. That they still like it. And you even find yourself taking photos of it. And posting them on your blog. And writing about it. You actually sit at your little oak writing desk at 12:36 AM and write about your yellow glass lamp.

Send me the warmth of a secret smile

To show me you haven't forgot
For now and forever, that's always and ever
Honey, little things mean a lot

It's those little things, though, isn't it? Those little things, doggone it, are the things that help us through the big things, like financial worry and boys in high school and family problems and sons going to Africa and health concerns and that big, scary thing called The Future. If it weren't for those little things, life would get pretty darn hard to handle sometimes.

Thank you, God for that lamp, and for all things, both big and little.

But, today, especially for the little things.

Honey, little things mean a lot.

::: line 'em up, line 'em all up :::

I'm working on a way to be more organized with the girls' daily lessons, and, in an effort to do that, I came up with this form. As you can see, there's no times listed, because I can be a clock watcher if I'm not careful, so instead of being a slave to that, we just go through our lessons and complete what needs doing, regardless of how long or short it takes.


This page was created in Pages. If you'd like a copy, e-mail me at todayslessons AT gmail DOT com and I'll send you the file.

::: neighbors :::

by Rudyard Kipling

The man that is open of heart to his neighbour,
And stops to consider his likes and dislikes,
His blood shall be wholesome whatever his labour,
His luck shall be with him whatever he strikes.
The Splendour of Morning shall duly possess him,
That he may not be sad at the falling of eve.
And, when he has done with mere living--God bless him!--
A many shall sigh, and one Woman shall grieve!

But he that is costive of soul toward his fellow,
Through the ways, and the works, and the woes of this life,
Him food shall not fatten, him drink shall not mellow;
And his innards shall brew him perpetual strife.
His eye shall be blind to God's Glory above him;
His ear shall be deaf to Earth's Laughter around;
His Friends and his Club and his Dog shall not love him;
And his Widow shall skip when he goes underground!

Kipling is our poet for this term of Ambleside. While I love his work, whether it's prose or poetry, some of it is a little too wordy and laden with obscure historical and cultural references for my fifth and first year girls. This was one piece that we could all enjoy, and the message is quite clear, also.

::: 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.