Gaps

Two years ago when I decided to begin the adventure of schooling my children at home I had some worrisome and common concerns.  The biggest of those being that I would miss something important and my children would have large gaps in their education.  Then a very wise and wonderful Sister-in-law, professional educator and home school mom extraordinaire, said to me "Mary, do you want to know the secret?"  "Yes" I said.  "Please, please share with me the secret!"  To which she replied... "Mary, EVERYBODY has gaps!"  After that I felt much better and mustered up the courage to move forward.  Well, it's a little over two years later and as we embark on a new phase of our home school experience I am  discovering how very right my sister-in-law was.

You see, for the last 2 years my children have been attending a public (state funded) charter school.  This charter school just so happens to be an online, virtual academy so all the work is done at home.  Well this year we have decided to graduate to becoming a traditional home school family.  (Except for our high schooler, but that's another post.)  I have been researching curriculum and have put together what I feel is what I want to accomplish with my children.  I am nervous, but the structure of the virtual school gave me confidence.  I think I can do this.

As the new curriculum materials have been arriving I have been so excited! Delving into them like a starving person.  But as I have been reading and preparing to teach my boys I have discovered something rather disturbing.  I not only have gaps in my education, I have GAPS.  Huge, deep, CHASMS in my brain.  The Grand Canyon is but a ditch compared to what I don't know.

Get this, I am 44 years old, reading a grammar text  written in 1889 and discovering why a vowel is a vowel.  When I was in school I learned that the vowels were a, e, i, o,  u, and sometimes y.  I also learned that the consonants were all the other letters.  But I never knew WHY vowels were vowels and consonants were consonants.  Well guess what, the reason vowels and consonants are separated because of the sound that they make when they are spoken!  Who knew!  Nirvana!  Here is what I read:

"If the voice thus produced comes out through the open mouth, a class of sounds is formed which we call vowel sounds.  But, if the voice is held back by your palate, tongue, teeth, or lips, one kind of consonant sounds is made.  If the breath is driven out without voice, and is held back by these same parts of the mouth, the other kind of consonant sounds is formed."  (from Graded Lessons in English by Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg.  1901 edition, page 11)

Knowing this somehow opened my mind to language in a whole new way.  It gave me an understanding of WHY I had been spitting out the rule "the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y" all these years.  Perhaps I am the only one who didn't know this (maybe I was absent that day), but knowing it has set me free.  Knowledge really is power!

I believe that education is something we live, it's what we do, it's who we are, it's why we're here.  Graduation from school is not the end of learning, it is the beginning.  Hopefully at some point we have learned how to read, to think, to reason, and how to learn.  If you know how to think, you will always be learning and discovering new things and always moving forward.  The human brain is not designed to collect and store ALL the knowledge and then access it when it is needed.  We are a work in progress and the potential for that progress is endless.

So instead of grieving about the myriad of gaps in my education I am going to celebrate them!  Just look at all the wonderful and exciting things I have left to learn!  And I have a lifetime to learn them!  Building bridges over those gaps is not the answer.  You have to be like my father-in-law when he hikes a slot canyon, believe you can do it, stick with it, accomplish it, and find so much joy in the journey that you are always coming back for more!

Make it so.

A bit of a new look for our next chapter.  We've decided to homeschool.  I'm nervous, worried and a little bit stressed.  I am also excited and hopeful.  I know this can be the best possible situation for my boys if I make it so.  So here we go......

Proverbs 27:10

...for better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off.....

I've been wondering about this.  Sometimes extended family members get together frequently because they want to.  Sometimes the get together occasionally because they feel obligated to.  Sometimes they have other pursuits and obligations that are more pressing.  Sometimes they must sever the relationship completely.   Mind you, none of the above are either right or wrong.... just different.

As a child I didn't know my cousins that well.  The ones that lived nearby were quite a bit older than me.   The ones that were closer to my age lived all the way across the country (Virginia) and all the way across the world (New Zealand).  I longed for what I felt would be a very desirable situation, lots and lots of family, living nearby, and getting together often.  Getting together because they wanted to, not because they had to.

So when I was young I created a fictional family and happily placed myself in their midst.  Our last name was Dalton (don't ask me why, I have absolutely no idea).  As a Dalton I had several brothers and sisters (I have one wonderful brother and two amazing sisters, but I guess I felt I needed more) and lots and lots of cousins.  All of these cousins lived nearby, close enough to walk to our house.

Our house was wonderful.  It was large and rambling.  Two story, a white frame victorian.  There were rooms for everyone and plenty of extra beds for guests.  The whole place was decorated in a wonderful country/shabby chic.  Homemade quilts on every bed, lace curtains billowing at the windows, and a large upright piano in the parlor.

Then there was the kitchen.  The kitchen was the most wonderful part of the home.  Large and well equipped.  Always smelling of something freshly baked.  With a large wooden table in the center that would seat at least a dozen people.  But the best part about the kitchen was the back door.  It was one of those wonderful old fashioned doors that had window panes at the top and lovely frilly cafe curtains.  The reason the door was so wonderful is because in it's window was where each loved ones face would appear.  They would jauntily wave, utter a hearty hello, and come in.  And they were always welcome.

Each visitor brought with them a special gift with just their presence.  It was a place of warmth, love, and true friendship.  There were no feelings of duty.  No petty arguments about unmet and unreasonable expectations, no selfish ulterior motives.  Just love.  Lots and lots of love.

Don't get me wrong.  My childhood was ideal.  I was very happy, just a little lonely.  My brother is several years older  and my sisters several years younger,  I was often by myself.  So I created the Daltons.  A place where I could be surrounded by people.  People who cared as much for me as I did for them.

 You see, I love people.  I always have.  It's hard though, loving people.  People don't always love you back.  Sometimes they are much more willing to take than they are to give.  Sometimes they are pleasant enough, but very superficial.  And sometimes they want nothing to do with you.

There are, however,  those with whom you really connect.  Those who reciprocate.  The whole ying/yang of it all.  Sometimes it's your turn to give and sometimes it's theirs.  In the end there's a balance.  It's called being there for each other, it's called really caring about their needs more than your own, it's called being blind to their little idiosyncrasies, it's called friendship.

So I wonder.  Is it better to have a neighbor that is near than a brother far off?  And I think the answer is yes.  At least it should be anyway.  We could all start by turning off our phones in the grocery store and have conversations with real people.   It's just a thought.

I want to be the neighbor that is near.

Getting Old Sucks

WARNING:  Depressing content.  Not suitable for people who don't have any chocolate readily available.

It's just not fair.  Men can get old and nobody cares.  Cary Grant was a sex symbol in his 80's (and yes, he was HOT!)  Paul McCartney is selling out concerts in his 60's (and he is HOT, HOT!).  And the Rolling Stones, don't even get me started...they are almost 100 arent they?  (but definitely NOT hot.)

But women on the other hand....women can't get old.  If we do we have let ourselves go.  We are no longer desirable and we can no longer think for ourselves.  Women have to dye, snip, starve, tuck, inject and implant in order to remain viable human beings.  (But there is so little left that is actually human!)

I can no longer see (Erma Bombeck, my hero, called it "loss of menu"), my skin is starting to sag, and little lines are beginning to appear on my face.  Every thing else is sagging as well and as Erma said..."I can't look at my neck without being reminded that I haven't made chicken soup in a while".   I leak, I snore and I waddle.  And there are little gray wires that relentlessly poke through the quaff.  A former co-worker when asked if he was over the hill would reply "I'm on top", well it's all down hill from here.

An announcer on a television commercial states that age is nothing to be ashamed of then the actress boldly announces that she is 43.  Then they proceed to try and sell me a cream that will miraculously make me look years, if not decades younger.  As if that's my only hope.  SHEESH, 43!  How in the world can 43 be an age of which you might possibly be ashamed and that you would most definitely need magic face cream?   Well I'm 44.  You do the math, It may be too late for me.

You may say at this point,  but you have wisdom that comes with experience.  Well I'll tell ya, the only place that wisdom of the elderly (and I use that term loosely) is truly appreciated and revered is possibly in Asia.  Certainly not in the United States.  Sure you can do TV commercials for adult diapers, denture cream, and stuff that will make your bones less brittle. But you still are not Gidget anymore.  We sequester our elders in active adult communities.  They sit around and play tennis and drink cocktails while the rest of us flounder around and learn life's lessons, all over again, all by ourselves, with out the benefit of anyone wiser leading the way.

Well, I hope I have not thoroughly depressed everyone.  Honesty can sometimes be a real downer.  The good news is that not all people have this narrow viewpoint (the ones that do are mostly people who sell diet plans, exercise equipment and magic face cream).  There are some people in this world (namely my husband, the HOT, HOT, HOTTEST man on the planet!) who can look beyond the package and see and appreciate what is really there.  The stuff that you can take with you. I'm talking about stuff like kindness, integrity, faith, spiritual strength, intelligence, compassion and wisdom.  The stuff that really makes you beautiful.

All About Bones.

I've been thinking a lot lately about bones.  The instances are rather unrelated and disjointed, but perhaps there is some sort of connection.  Perhaps not.

First I have discovered the TV show Bones.  It's about the adventures of a forensic anthropologist who goes around solving murders with the FBI.  I am surprised, even shocked that I like this show.  It's graphic, viewer discretion advised, somewhat disturbing..but at the same time delightful.  I am fascinated by the science, the ability to identify, classify and learn from tiny details.  To reconstruct someones life just from studying their bones.  It's like our body is a journal.  The bones remain to tell the story.

Second I read the book "The Lovely Bones"  by Alice Sebold.  This is a book about life, death, and continuing.  (It is also quite disturbing and I can't believe I enjoyed it as much as I did.  I guess I am either becoming hardened, jaded, or just maturing perhaps).  It is the story of a family and the life that they build around the reality of their daughters murder.  Not to let the event define them, but to let go, and although its a part of them, move on.  The story is told by the dead daughter.  As she watches her family come together in happier times she says "These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence:  the connections--sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent--that happened after I was gone."

Third, I homeschool two of  my sons and my third grader has been learning about the skeletal system in his science class.  Two things fascinated me during the studying of this unit.  First, bones are alive...they grow, regenerate, and can become diseased.  Second, bones are useless without muscles.

So now I am trying to draw some conclusion, make some sort of connection but nothing is staring me in the face as obvious.  So take from these ramblings what you will and *make no bones about it. :)

*This term means to have no objection to or state in a way that allows no doubt. It actually dates back to 15th century England and is a reference to the unwelcome discovery of bones in soup - bones = bad, no bones = good. If you found 'no bones' in your meal you were able to swallow it without any difficulty or objection.  (http://www.phrases.org.uk/)