pudding proof

how on earth was I bold enough to venture so far off the beaten path, and also hot damn I fucking did that and it totally fucking worked

I was interviewed over the weekend by a friend of mine about homeschooling and I can’t stop thinking about it. It stirred up a world of feelings for me: fondness, nostalgia, gratitude. I knew, as soon as she asked, that it was going to be a big conversation, but I wasn’t anticipating just how deep it would take me into decades’ worth of reflection on how I got here and all of the little roads and routes that became such influential parts of the path. In many ways, homeschooling is the very centerpiece of who we have become as a family, and most certainly who I am as a person.

I gotta give my friend a ton of credit for putting together a very thought-provoking list of questions to travel through together. I haven’t spent much time considering some of those moments in such depth for a very long time. Especially the crossroads moments. We dug into some of the pivotal junction points where a change and a choice needed to be made, and it was so powerful to me to be invited to give voice to both the pain and the sometimes triumph that stood on either side of those definitive moments. Honestly, there are a few where, as I sit here looking back, I am at once like how on earth was I bold enough to venture so far off the beaten path, and also hot damn I fucking did that and it totally fucking worked.

In the days following our conversation, I have been working through all sorts of memories and emotions. So much that I haven't considered in years, and yet, many remain so near the surface when I tune in to who I am as a mom and who we are as a family. This is my first year back to home education after a three year sebatical of sorts and I have to say I hardly even think of it as back. Freddy is with his school group two days a week and despite him being with me all the rest of the time, I still often find myself thinking, but do we even homeschool? I am seeing now that an element of this evolution in my thought has to do simply with what I have to come to conceive of as my role as their mother. Like, aren’t some of the things we do that I could probably write down in a home ed portfolio just me being my version of a good mom? The reading and math practice, the copious amounts of read-alouds, the craft projects and the unending stream of enrichment activities. Is that home-ed? Or is it just me wanting to give my kids a meaningful childhood and spend as much time as possible with them while it is happening?

I am not so sure anymore.

But what I can say for certain is that most of the turns that we took, often away from what felt like the more well-worn paths of the mainstream or normative trajectories, always centered around prioritizing the family culture. We placed ourselves at the center and wagered that the willingness to nurture and develop our own internal structures and systems would have meaningful and lasting implications on everything else we set out to do. As a unit but also as individuals. And that is the proof that I am still seeing in all this pudding every single moment that I remember to. A strong sense of self, coupled with a steady desire to be good people in the world.

With all of my nostalgia well and truly stirred up, I reached out to the two women that I was lucky enough to collaborate with during the lion's share of my homeschooling years with Maple and Eider. It was all chance. And hot damn did we ever get lucky. I don’t think I have ever shared much about this aspect of my life in particular and the more distance I get from it, the more I can see what a completely miraculous moment it was in our lives. I befriended two mothers, each with three kids of their own, all of similar ages to my two at the time, who loved to knit as much as me! I mean, just that alone… what a gift! But it wasn’t just that. It was the value placed on so many things. Food, nature, time. The importance of an inclusive secular perspective. Creativity. Childhood. It was earnest and honest, and it also required hard work and difficult communication and holy hell was it ever worth all of it and more.

I reached out to them both for the first time in years, the evening after the interview:

me: Hi friends. I just did an interview for a younger homeschool mom this afternoon, and it was so incredible to reflect on the whole journey. Not a day goes by that I don’t look back with fondness and gratitude at the chapter of life we all spent together. I hope you are both well. Sending love from VT.

b: Truly, I adored that time so much! I miss it very often. Thank you for the reminder and validation of that special time and care we shared.

k: Pure magic. I’m sorry we only get one time through- I’d go back in a heartbeat.

me: Love you both. You are dear to me.

I am struck, once again, by how fleeting everything is. Even the seasons that seem so established and embedded that whole lifetimes are lived inside of them. I am not sure I will ever get over any of this. What I do know now, or at least, believe myself to be learning, is that there is a cumulative nature to living and loving. Seasons come and seasons go and the work I do today matters a lot, even as I keep world-building in ever-evolving circumstances. It matters a lot. There is risk and there is reward and I guess I am just really feeling all of that now. I’m so grateful for the younger meg that stood up to a system that wasn’t working for her and ventured out into the unknown with no real guide other than faith in childhood and a gut sense that there had to be a better way. I was scared but I was also brave and I did the thing even though it meant navigating a shit ton of doubt and skepticism.

As we were wrapping it up, she asked me one final question. It was something along the lines of: I believe I know the answer to this for you, but what is it that you do to take care of yourself? What are the things just for you, that you keep returning to, that keep you grounded and whole? Something like that.

My response, writing and yoga.

Hers, yes.

Then she made a point to make clear the distinction between a practice, of yoga or writing or whatever, that claims time and space away from the fray of daily living (with children) and as such is something we return from, refreshed and renewed and ready to begin again. But your practice is not that, she said. Yours is something that happens in the very middle of everything; dogs and children and clutter and the unending household stack of to-dos.

Why yes, that is true. For the most part. It is great to get away but it is by no means neccessary for me. Practice exists within the context of daily living. That is how it suits me, and I believe serves my family and my life, best. This seems standard to me. Regular and basic. But her calling attention to it was fascinating. It will be interesting to eventually listen to the interview again, whatever she ends up doing with it, and take some time to reflect on all of it. But at this moment, that is the bit that I am most interested to spend some time with.

She suggested that by placing my practice, the time I claim for myself, in the middle of everything that is always happening, calls BS to the idea that there needs to be any real separation between how we care for ourselves and how we care for our family. That not only can they co-exist, but they are even so intertwined, so essential one to the other, that any space we percieve between the two is a construction born of story and not reality.

I don’t know. But I was served in that observation. Called back into myself and a trust in what is true for me. It’s not for everyone. None of this is. But there is a reality that I have worked to build that really does have function and efficacy and meaning for me. I guess that whole conversation served to walk me back through the paces of my process. The ways in which chance and intention co-mingled to form something imperfect and still magnificent. I many ways, it is my life’s work. And I am so gratful to continue doing it.

Maybe that is where I can leave this for today. With the growing awareness that even though seasons come and seasons go and every single thing is bound to change, the work of parenting, of raising people up, alongside ourselves, has no terminus. The opportunity of it goes on and on and on. All the way to the end. And even then, I imagine that there may very well be learning that is passed on to those who have lived inside of our care, long after our departure date. I feel glad to think of it this way. Grateful for the repeated chances for trying again and learning from what was.