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"You's guys needing something, eh?"

The customs agent looked us over with that characteristically Canadian attitude of friendly suspicion.

Or maybe it was guarded alertness. Bordering on vigilant complacency?  Hard to pinpoint precisely.

Anyhow, our behavior was positively suspect. So we'd gotten past the security clearance checkpoint, that proved nothing. No one else was out of their vehicles. No one else felt moved to pause for peace. Or dwell on the overarching commonality of our countries' half-sibling status. Or overtly take a shot at it.

We answered quite matter of factly, "No, thanks, just wanted to snap a photo here."

Well, that certainly raised a red flag! With a red maple leaf emblazoned upon it? Not to mention bumping the international threat level up to high alert.

But was it our fault that the immaculately manicured lawn stretching out so invitingly compelled such reckless abandon?  Unencumbered by rules of diplomatic protocol or any obstacle that dared restrain us (in this case, it was a border of bloomin' petunias), we barely felt the chill of early morning dew drops soaking through our sneakers so intent were we on picking out a path which avoided stepping on muddy, aerating sod plugs laying in wait deceptively on the ground. We must have looked like clods. But if ever there was a grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side moment, this was ours!

We explained to him that every year we take a 1st day of school picture, complete with signature flag waving. Simply to prove that, although we are homeschoolers, we can wave flags & pledge our allegiance right along with the best of 'em. Yet we'd arrived unprepared for this symbolic monument to sibling arch rivalry. So M&K improvised & grabbed the homemade flags we just happened to have on display in our car's rear view window, even though they'd - the flags, I mean - become faded after months of spreading subversive messages & infiltrating the minds of gullible people throughout the west coast. (Irrefutably influencing the outcome of the 2008 presidential election, plus exerting enormous pressure on China's Tibet policy. Golly, and in such callous disregard of how it might hurt China's feelings?)

Dutifully satisfied with his inspection of our dubious intent, the shrewd investigator shook his head at such a pathetically fabricated borderlie & then methodically retraced his steps to the command control center (immigration booth), glancing back occasionally lest we make any sudden moves. Like, say, hopping back and forth across the imaginary borderline dividing our two superpower nations? Well, how else are we globeschoolers gonna claim to have visited Canada over 40 times, huh?

It must have been a slow day there on the border. But, then again, ya can't really blame him for wanting in on a peace of the action, can ya?   

In anticipation of this 2008 venture to British Columbia, Mikaela & I studied Margaret Craven's novel I Heard the Owl Call My Name. But once there, as much as we'd hoped to see Keetah & Mark's hangouts in the remote setting of Vancouver Island, we decided to skip the pricey ferry fare + an expensive three day stay in the touristy capital city of Victoria, where visiting artist Emily Carr's house was the only nerdily worthwhile attraction. Ok, ok, so it's also because we're cheapskates -- but that fits with the winter sports theme, does it not? (Actually, and here I go bragging again, I'm a world-class short track cheapskating champ.)

Instead, we wanted to spend the time exploring the gold rush era "Wild Horse Trail" on the touted International Selkirk Loop, which runs through Washington state & Idaho before winding along Canada's Kootenay Bay. And then camp in the more pristine Pacific Northwest rainforest of British Columbia's interior. (Hey, Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park is a good 40 miles north of the border. That counts!) Indeed, we found the wilds there, but in the form of very large groups of twenty-something campers sharing one tent (& several bottles), blaring American rock music & setting off fireworks over the bay until 4 in the morning.


So the majority of our time was spent skimming skimping the surface in the mainland city of Vancouver. Instead of Victoria's famed Butchart Gardens with its $61.90 entry fee or Vancouver's own VanDusen Botanical Garden's family of four $22.75 deal, we romped through Queen Elizabeth Park, which, after an exhaustive in-quarry, we found to be delightful and absolutely free. (Got that sunken feeling at no charge!) And, instead of Capilano Suspension Bridge's $26.95 per adult & $15.65 per child admission bargain where you get to jostle hundreds of other tourists for the privilege of walking once across "Vancouver's Most Popular Attraction," we took a pass & opted for Lynn Canyon's free bridge in North Vancouver. Not only is it a full 10 meters higher than Capilano, but when the 256 feet of suspension got too intense, there was no pressure. Having it completely to ourselves allowed as much time as needed to chicken out repeatedly before finally closing our eyes & traversing "Clubbuddy Crossing," so dubbed by our hand-clasping gripping wrenching daughters after their 15th successful attempt.
On the other side, a short hike to Twin Falls awaited, though the Canadians' love of chain link fences -- which we discovered well before all those 2010 Olympic cauldron viewers -- obscured much of its scenic appeal. (Ya know, the Olympic torch elected to do the very same thing a couple of years after us & made a pass above troubled budgeting waters by routing through Lynn Canyon, and not Capilano. Miserly flame!)    

Stanley Park was also fun, with hiking trails throughout its 1,000 acres of firs, cedars & spruces, plus great cityscape views from the Pacific seawall path. We watched float planes taking off & landing at Canada Place and proudly boasted that Houston's "Little India" trumps Vancouver's, at least in terms of that all-important veggie samosa test. (Though the vegan cooks at Richmond's Buddhist Temple all-you-can-eat lunch buffet might silently disagree.)


However, at the edge of UBC, our college campus touring streak was sadly broken. Due to the girls' fears of inadvertently spying a streaker, fresh off the university's own nude beach, flashing past. And Chinatown wasn't exactly the enriching experience we'd hoped for either, although the kiddos did get to gawk out the car windows and get quite a good look at an authentic Chinese apothecary shop as we circled the block 3 times. It was more like drive-by cultural immersion. We wanted to stop, but - despite some exposure to Seattle and downtown Portland's homeless problems - Gastown's overflowing & vocal presence filled all available parking spaces caddy corner to Chinatown and caused that proverbial putting of pedal to the metal.

Which led to our favorite trip in all of British Columbia -- a drive along the Sea to Sky Highway. As Katrianna noted in her travel log, there were "Lovely views of the Coast range meeting the sea. It has waterfalls, lakes & hills meeting the ocean all together in one." Due to the ongoing road construction in preparation for Olympian traffic jams, stopping at the overlooks wasn't allowed but its views of Howe Sound's fjord were as pretty as the travel reviewers promised.
 
So we arrived at our final Sea to Sky destination whistlering a happy tune. Whistler, site of the 2010 Olympic skiing events, was at that time a sleepy little village. Really sleepy. Apparently it was nap time for all the frustrated snowboarding teenagers who lounged on bus stop benches or atop decorative flagstone walls while anxiously awaiting the season's first snowfall. Occasionally, they'd rouse themselves to perform skateboarding tricks across stairway railings & attempt death-defying jumps over strategically placed Adirondack chairs borrowed from hotel cafes. All before settling back down under a tastefully trimmed hedgerow to catch some z's. Well, truthfully, that's when demonstrations of their even more elaborate smokin' skills began. And, dude, before we realized it, it was 4:20 - imagine that - and certainly high time for us to cut out.

As soon as we walked into Whistler's 2010 Olympic visitor center, we could tell that their welcome committee, in the form of a solitary greeter, was indeed prepped in the spirit of the winter games. Normally it's sorta part of the job-volunteer description that these folks are extra friendly. But this fellow was, appropriately, the polar opposite: he was an arctic blast of icy cold Freezie. We could have wisely let it go. But it was either find my entertainment with him or go back out to the snowboarders, so he got another try. Giving him the benefit of the doubt that he'd simply mistaken us for naïve skiing novices (when the truth of it is that we're actually freestyling know-nothing moguls), I faked it. I mentioned some pertinent Whistler Mountain trivia that I'd read just the night before and then merely alluged to the fact that we might like to visit the nearby Sliding Centre venue to see the progress they were making on the sledding track. Ha, lured him in alright! And then spent the next 25 minutes nodding, concurring and listening intently to the intricacies of bobsled strategy & track construction. It was all downhill after that. But at least I showed him not to judge American tourists quite so hastily, didn't I? 

Not that we globeschoolers weren't glad for these experiences. Whenever a Whistler-related news story appeared afterwards, we got to reflect and think 'Skookum, and we were there!" But, luckily, not on the very day that gondola tower fell smack-dab in the middle of the Village. Thank goodness, nothing was smashed. Well, except maybe for some potted plants...

But I blame the US. And the American invasion of British Columbia during the Vietnam War. When all of their tiny towns' populations swelled with our very own homegrown conscientious objectors. Of course, that was a long time ago, during the throes of the peace movement and amidst a recognized moral quagmire, so we really can't judge them for their (in)actions then... But is it really okay that they're still there conscientiously objecting to this day? For, in this, the new millennium, it seems their primary objection is to moving beyond 1968. And that goes for their cars, too.
Or at least conscientiously removing their rusted out automobile frames from the driveways. Or front yards. Or streets. Or green public open spaces. It's kinda like Woodstock meets Carhenge, only with ancient school buses, VW campers & a stray Pontiac Bonneville or two.

Yet this gross generalization is perhaps unfair. And overlooks many of their second & third generation blond-dreadlocked progeny boldly practicing civil disobedient defiance at the local Walmart. No, these youngsters, as they roam barefooted down the aisles munching on Cheezies & looking to replenish their tie-dye supplies, are not protesting against a corporation's renowned socially unconscious stance. It strikes much further than that, to the very core of liberty & freedom of individual expression: they rage against The Man's "No Shirts, No Shoes, No Service" dictate. Yep, the fight the power vibe in Squamish is not for the squeamish.

Lastly, to provide a completely unbiased view of our journey, we prepared a little audiovisual montage. What follows is an exacting duplication, a verifiably authentic recreation of the sounds & sights one encounters when traveling into the depths of British Columbia. So please imagine, if you will, that you've just crossed the US-Canadian border. And there you are, at first hearing the familiar crackle of radio static & then desperately rotating that dial to discover:

OK, to be fair, that video is not really representative of Canadian radio.* Cuz not once did we hear their native singers Paul Anka, Neil Young or kd lang... in fact, there was one dire point when Bryan Adams might even have been welcome. Instead, suffice it to say that something downright magical happens as soon as you reach within 100 yards of the Canuck border -- all AM/FM frequencies disappear. And you're left with 3 options: Depression period folk fiddling, counting down the top 40 evangelical sermons of 1957 with Casey 'Billy Graham' Kasem, or Hindi music.

Of course, the choice is obvious. An unexpected opportunity to practice my jammin' Bollywood dance moves with side-shaking head bobs & open-palmed quarter turns?! That's right, a highly recommended way to pass the time while waiting in endless border customs queues, we had our own lil' Holi right there in the car. Frankly, I don't think anyone would've blamed them if they had waved us straight on through, but they didn't. (Bet they felt sari afterwards, eh?) Eventually, it got to the point we looked forward to forays into Canada solely for its superb stereophonic selection of big Indian musical numbers.

*Yeah, yeah, it's not nice to insult our Canadian neighbors' music. Or totally ignore that Los Angeles' 1984 Closing Ceremonies headlined Lionel Richie singing All Night Long in a sequin & polyester pant ensemble. Which then led to his infamous Dancing on the Ceiling debacle in '86 -- where he disregarded the gravity of a consequent fall from R&B soulful grace. Now, as far as I'm concerned, The Commodores & their horn section could do no wrong, but what was Lionel thinking going solow like that? Sure, Peter Ueberroth, you were the first commissioner in modern times to turn a profit on the Olympic Games, but, honestly, at what cost?  

I was born to teach. I mean, I was born to a teacher. Wait, better make that, I've borne with teachers all my life. Hmmm, that didn't come out quite right either...

As far back as I know, there have been teachers in every generation of my family, often several per generation. Born into the upper classes (8th grade-level equivalency or higher), teaching is our "family business" - we're pre-school apprenticed, fated by an ancient caste-them-into-the-educational-dungeon system, forever destined to a life of demagoguery... oops, sorry, typo there - should've said pedagoguery, of course. So easy to confuse those two, isn't it? But the latter originally comes from the Latin word paedagogus, which means "slave who escorted children to school and generally supervised them." Yep, that's the one I meant.  

Coming from this long line of teachers (and figuring out how, after getting all the wiggles out, to stand still on it with tippy toes tucked together), I see the world through sophist-colored spectacles. Clearly, it has influenced my perspective, encouraged a yearnin' for learnin' and modeled the value -- dare I say the nobility? -- of academic professions. But, I would probably have to conclude that the most invaluable lesson of my upbringing was learning how to live happily on a teacher's salary.

Generally, people don't claim that aspiring to make a teacher salary is setting the bar too high. In fact, they might even go so far as to question the worthiness of one's ambition, if not intellect, for choosing teaching as a vocation. Others opt to express their dismissive disdain by simply quoting that educator-beloved proverb, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." But, as one accustomed to living on a teacher's wages from the perspective of a child, a grandchild, a teenager and an adult, I am also familiar with the possibilities that exist despite the relatively 'prohibitively low salary' - not only the validation that a scholarly life is one worth living, but one that affords huge payback in terms of time off and travel options. (Yes, there's time travel, too, but that's another entry...)

There was my great grandfather, a world-renowned physicist, who traded in the rights to his many inventions for university tenure & a nicely painted portrait that hangs for perpetuity in a dank & dusty lab hallway somewhere. That seemed patently fair...



There was my grandmother who, like a Willa Cather heroine, left Nebraska at 17 to attend college in the east and then crisscrossed the country by train for graduate school in California, presiding over a one room schoolhouse back home and teaching Latin at a prestigious boys' prep school in New England. She seemed to have lived everywhere, but always in very small quarters, tiny houses which appeared to have been plucked from miniature Christmas village scenes. Or, there were the photographs of her smiling from the deck of a 15' boat with its sleeping bag-sized cabin, her stay-afloat-home for a two year, now-you-sea-me, now-you-don't, tour of the Atlantic.


There was her sister who also became an educator, first in the US and then abroad in Germany and Japan. She taught 3rd graders on American military bases and saw the world on holiday. When she finally reunited with her sisters in Nebraska, well after they had all retired, each returning from whence they came, her shelves were filled with European trinkets, Japanese folk art, textiles and fantastical carvings. When I was little, each December had delightfully arrived with Christmas advent calendars she sent from Germany. Decades later, to her great grandnieces, she delivered in person the materials used long ago in her classrooms: books filled with legends of that just peachy Little One-Inch, LPs of traditional Japanese folk music & classical compositions like Peter and the Wolf, sets of world geography flashcards that served as the girls' first introduction to Cold War-era political borders, and a collection of black & white & yellowing How and Why Wonder-full science books. And, she was the one who always had the same answer any time I expressed doubts as to what we should do for & with our kids: "TRAVEL!"


Of course, not all of the influential teachers relative to me were required to be my relatives. There was Mr Martin's syrupy sweet, yet unflappable, Jack support of a teaching-traveling lifestyle, one he insisted came full stacked with fringe benefits which over easily offset the occasional, if pressing, prioritizing dilemma created by limited income: Would you like 2 sausages - or - 2 slices of bacon with that?

There was also another of my high school teachers whose roving nature proved instructive. Initially, she checked her restless spirit by taking library science courses on the side. Understandably burnt out on American literature after marking up one-too-many The GraDes of Wrath essays, she was no doubt desirous of making that lucrative, lateral, librarian career path leap (a sure sign she was a Libris?). But, eventually, bibliotheca thrills could no longer satisfy, as her untamable soul wandered among rows of travel guides and shelved discontentment. Sure, for a while she'd been appeased by a rebellious resistance to systematic Dewey Decimal classification, but that couldn't last forever -- things were stacked against her from the start. So, she took early retirement, bought a little RV & began solo trips, making larger and larger concentric circles until she'd finally escaped Texas' gravitational pull and experienced wait-less-ness.  

Later, there was a fellow English department faculty member, thirty years my senior, who every summer took her mother and rented the same quaint cottage in England. Thanks to a standing agreement with an elderly lady there, they'd upheld the tradition for nearly twenty years. It was easy to imagine my colleague & her mum sipping tea, nibbling scones and chatting with their landlady-turned-bonne amie about the noontime's light drizzle or teasing shows of sunshine... How very proper for one assigned by fate (and the scheduling committee) as a purveyor of British literature! An arrangement so thoroughly pleasing in its safety and simplicity, she returned each fall refreshed and at peace. Then, on spring breaks, she pursued her other fancy free pastime -- massive archaeology site digs. In her school marm sensible shoes, ankle-length heavy skirts and hair-pinned bun, she was the best disguised Indiana Jones I ever met. Would have given Harrison Ford a run for that crystal skull, too, I bet, if she wasn't so busy writing college recs.

And, like my grand aunt, there were a few college friends who also went the Japan route, most as English language tutors. One couple married just before embarking & thereby received the ultimate parting gift: a combination first job with international experience + a guaranteed, all-expenses-paid, year-long honeymoon an ocean away from the in-laws. Another guy, a journalism majoring single, kept renewing his annual contract because he'd become an overnight karaoke club sensation, playing sax & apparently looking just enough like Sting (requisite stringy blond hairdo) to get steady gigs. At last, vindication for marching band nerds can be found just one continent over!  [Thanks to opportunities available in the wide world of teaching. Actual results may vary.]

Although I'm no longer a paid teacher (not that I haven't tried to unionize, but it's so laborious and strikes me as futile somehow), I still set our family's budget parameters by teacher salary standards. With that comes a practical and well-known comfort level, passes down my inherited values system to our daughters, and is a relatively easy way to ensure that we can continue to homeschool & travel for as long as we'd like. We're far from financially savvy - it just doesn't take much finesse to work out a budget when you adopt a going light, less-is-more philosophy.       

"So, how do ya'll do it?" (This is the question we often hear, though the rhetorical subtlety of 'Well, la-di-da!' sometimes suffices.)  Actually, it started when we were settling down & had no travel plans. We married and bought a very modest house, one we could afford based solely on Chris' single income (which just barely exceeded first year teacher earnings at the time) and my graduate school contribution-leeching-liability status, as assessed by the bank's loan officer. Most significantly, the monthly payments were so low that we could still cover them if - irony forewarning here - Chris ever got fired from his job for refusing to travel for work, an often contentious point with a succession of bosses who always threatened to, but never actually did, let him go. Instead of focusing on moving up (in the corporate hierarchy or to a "better" neighborhood), we put time spent together, and then time spent with our kids, ahead of getting ahead. [Plus, it turned out that we loved our little, unpretentious neighborhood, one that included a friendly mix of people and interests, a preponderance of teachers & an active contingent of watchful retirees. It's the closest one could come to living in small town, Nebraska, in a city containing 5 million people: a forgotten, six-street, "No Outlet" corner of a sprawling, post-WWII tract housing subdivision. On summer evenings, husbands met on sidewalks for rousing games of washers, wives exchanged cuttings from flower gardens, and kids ran about displaying their most impressive collections of crawdads & Texas toads, extricated from blue jeans' pockets mercifully still alive and not croaking.]  

We didn't invest a lot in social standing and, likewise, we've always chosen a fairly low-key lifestyle in other ways: We drive one 10 year old car, never had cable tv, belong to only one country club (the whole country's club - we're proud, card-carrying National Parks' Pass members), don't own a boat or ATVs or jet skis, do not indulge in drinking, smoking or other egregious & costly personal habits (golfing), own few appliances & tech gadgets, don't pay private school tuition fees or purchase pre-packaged curriculum kits & courses, stopped buying furniture when our house was furnished, and don't have season tickets to sporting events, the theater, the ballet or the WWF. When we had kids, and again when the kids convinced us to become vegetarians, we also cut back on eating out and began cooking most meals at home. And, once we went to Europe and realized we could get by with carry-on-bag-sized wardrobes, we reevaluated there, too, simplifying our - and the washing machine's - clothing loads thereafter. Through it all, we discovered that remarkable inverse relationship: the more "stuff" you have, the less you can do. Fewer things = less maintenance, less cleaning, less dusting, less washing, less insurance and way less worry.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating asceticism or living too far below one's means for effect (or 'for affect'), but what we value often does not correlate to $$ spent. We're not Zen, we're just not extravagant. Plus, it frees up a lot of energy and resources that can be put toward what we do desire: globeschooling.
 
We are lucky that Chris' business allows him, to a large extent, to set his own schedule and have flexibility in where he works. We're also lucky we can homeschool. However, both of these were decisions we made with consequences to risk if it didn't go well and pressures that are still there even when it does. It also took us more than a decade to find a successful way to work & be together, including one year when Chris got fed up with the corporate world and joined me as a high school geometry teacher, and another, Mikaela's first, when I worked and he stayed home with our baby and his entrepreneurial dreams (voluntarily reducing us to a one-teacher-income household again). Amazingly enough, he couldn't get his start-up business going between diaper changes, two-hour-long power lunches of mashed bananas and our infant's insistence on pulling all nighters every nighter. So, we switched. Chris returned to the corporate life, waiting to try again another 4 years later. 

The "jump" into globeschooling was equally daunting. Especially when it seemed that anyone doing something similar recommended a $150,000 per year minimum budget and/or had just purchased a 43' yacht - with more rooms & amenities than our house - to sail around the world in precisely 365 days. But, the idea that travel is only for the rich or privileged few is an antiquated notion (ok, maybe it was true in Antiquity, but Saint Augustine - who said "The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page" - and Harley Davidson - who spoke in slightly less mufflered tones - changed all that). Yet, it's still a myth perpetuated by some in the travel industry & most of the rest of us, too: it's elusive, not for regular folks, esoteric, ethereal. Or, it's dicey, scary, dangerous, you'll definitely get lost. Certainly, you'll need a lot of help. And a chaperone. A translator. A valet. And an all-you-can-eat buffet. If you really think about it hard enough, surely you can find at least one valid reason NOT to go....

But, with Do-It-Yourself itinerary planning, you can not only get there more cheaply, you're almost guaranteed an infinitely richer experience because you thought about it, researched it, looked forward to it and invested the time - not necessarily the money or tour package "incidental costs" - to appreciate what you're gazing upon. Eventually, we figured out, there are hundreds of ways to Go West, Young Globeschoolers!  And east, north and south, too. We just had to begin by finding one that didn't make us too uncomfortable or stressed out & start there. After that, it got much easier.

Surprisingly, it was at William Randolph Hearst's 'La Cuesta Encantada' that we found the culmination & confirmation of our family's guiding philosophy 'Tis better to be independently minded than independently wealthy. The in-house movie "Building the Dream" detailed the passion & impetus for Hearst's constructing a 'Castle on the Hill.' And why? Because his mom took lil' William sightseeing in Europe when he was ten years old. So taken was he with the experience that, when he inherited his father's magnate status, he told architect Julia Morgan, "Miss Morgan, we are tired of camping out in the open at the ranch in San Simeon and I would like to build a little something..." That meant the Enchanted Hill: 165 rooms & 127 acres of manicured gardens, terraces, pools and walkways. Plus thousands of imported artifacts, tapestries, furnishings, fireplaces and even a complete, reassembled 15th century ceiling harvested from a Spanish  convent to grace the billiards room. All in order to fulfill his fantasy of replicating medieval feudal society right there in 1920s San Simeon, California... or Palatine Bust? Now, our own kids weren't moved to do the same when they got back home from their European vacation (although we did offer them two tubs full of Legos if they wanted to give it a try), but it did make us realize that...

Just like Hearst, we tripped around Europe, if not in the same grand style (in our case, it was great grandma's style), it was nearly the same in substance. No, we did not enjoy the voyage o'er the pond like William -- from first class cabins on a luxury cruise ship that sped to the Old World in three weeks. Instead, we found a discounted flight in coach which got us there in nine & a half hours (mere seconds behind those in business class, btw). No, we didn't leave good ol' dad behind to tend the store (and gold, silver, lead & quartz mines, as well as fret over the hopelessly unprofitable San Francisco Examiner money pit), but went all together to ensure that Chris got as little work done as possible. And, no, we weren't able to devote a year and a half to our journey, but we still saw 90% of what Hearst saw during our time there. Only without staying in a swanky villa the night before, hobnobbing with our entourage, heeding propriety's sake, arriving in a timely manner appropriate to our station & getting mention in the society pages (inexplicable, really, since I diligently sent out press releases) and without a chauffeur (well, 3 of us had a chauffeur. Went by the name of "Mom." And drove the pumpkin-converted-minivan 30,000 km in 3+ months.) Yet, sights are the same no matter who's looking at them. In fact, sometimes because we had a short kid with us, we actually were allowed to move up 'to the front row' for the primo view. And, if you get up early enough, you can feel just like a débutante & enjoy having even the most famous places all to yourselves. (Ok, that's not true - débutantes sleep in.)
  

We don't want to build our own castles in the air. Just visit them on occasion. [Well, in the interest of full disclosure, Mikaela did suffer a temporary bout of mansion-envy, cured only by seeing the gargantuan things up close. They lacked the warmth and charm with which her active imagination had lavishly furnished them, visions instantly dispelled by grand foyers filled with hunting trophies: glass-beady eyes peering down from decapitated heads onto a less than receptive Mikaela. Now her make-me-green wish is not livin' large, but livin' off the grid, the goal being cozy & extremely efficient square footage.] M&K do appreciate the magnificence of what they see, but it is tempered with the reality of what they know, such as: Marie Antoinette, the girl who grew up in Schönbrunn Palace, eventually lost her head in Versailles; Catherine de' Médici & Diane de Poitiers, who fought viciously over the questionable figure Henry II cut in his knobby-kneed tights, were left with only Château de Chenonceau's beautiful gardens to haggle over for their troubles; painter Vincent Van Gogh took as his subjects those lovely irises & olive groves primarily because they were located just outside the doorway of his sanatorium; and, Jack London's dream home mysteriously burned down upon its completion, leaving him to write & pass his two remaining years in the small shack's sleeping porch where he first started out at 'Beauty Ranch' ...

When I was growing up, we didn't travel much and I never watched Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. If you didn't want to be rich or famous, what was the point? But, maybe there was one, one that fits in with our belief system, after all. What Hearst's example revealed is that you can see & learn as much as "the elite," but perhaps more because their own lives also serve as examples to illustrate greatness' foibles, follies & flaws. In a moment much too clichéd to invent, we were talking with an elderly woman at the gas station in nearby Cambria after our tour. Her auburn hair faded to gray, she was wistfully reminiscing about pony rides she & the other servants' children had been allowed to take when she was a little girl. She told us about his exotic zoo animals & all the fine folks who came to visit... However, as we were saying goodbye, she felt compelled to add, "But we all hated Mr. Hearst. No one around here could stand the old man!" Too often, the most transparently obvious lesson is that money and material things are transitory and do not make people content anyway. Ironically, being witness to this simply reinforces an idealism of resisting the allure & false promise inherent in equating materialism with happiness. Overall, it was an excellent way to satisfactorily answer any lingering questions the girls might have had on our Home(school) Economics Final Exam.

Which finally leads me back to an alternative take on that teaching career postulate:   

Those who can, do teach. Those who can't teach, whatever do they do?

The summer before my senior year of college, Mr. Wayne C. Martin, a former high school teacher turned mentor-father figure, invited me to brunch. We met at a funky, retro diner where he treated me to a ridiculously large breakfast, all the while extolling the virtues of its low price, Texas-size portions and value for the buck. Since I usually made do with cereal or some synthetic vending machine donuts before my early classes, I actually thought him quite extravagant and politely requested more syrup as I listened.

It seemed the real crux of our conversation would have to do with my career choice dilemma.(I suspect my mom might have put him up to the whole thing, but this cannot be verified in the usual way as she remained inconspicuous and I never once caught sight of her head popping over a booth to snap our photo as a record of this monumental, life altering exchange.)
 

Ultimately, there are two options for an English major for whom gainful employment is merely a novel idea: teaching or law school. Ironically, it was the college profs, who themselves had just mastered the fine art of university politics and finally received tenure after 15 years of one to two semester stints shuffling around the country, who had taken me aside to recommend law school with visions of dollar bills dancing in their heads.  But, it was Mr. Martin's shrewd scheme to bring me over to the dark side - educating young minds and feeding my hungry soul with virtue.
 
Actually, the teacher point was moot, already decided. If I became a lawyer, I knew I'd want to specialize in constitutional law instead of criminal defense, so I readily foresaw that I would end up working for some corporate law firm & feel guilty for not doing enough pro bono work - after all, what good can a theoretical, constitutional lawyer ever do for the world? (Unless you count becoming a community organizer, returning to law school to position yourself to help those most in need, lecturing as a Constitutional law professor, rising to US senator, and then becoming America's president & the leader of the free world as doing 'good'? Thankfully, I stuck to my high moral standards & taught in a private school that catered to the overprivileged upper classes instead.)

So, what approach would a world history teacher take to entice someone to spend her days locked in a classroom with 150 kids? Travel. He wanted to assure me that I could make a teacher's salary and still travel the world. Frankly, this took me by surprise as I thought, based on consistently poor quiz grades from his nitpicky classes years before, that it would have occurred to him that I had learned very little about the world and lacked all essential curiosity. If so, he discreetly kept it to himself that day.  I also failed to mention then, mostly because I was preoccupied with the rapidly cooling hash browns, that all my world travels in the past ("world" referring here to 30 miles or so away from home plus a couple of out of state ventures) had taught me that places didn't matter because people had a unique ability to make themselves absolutely miserable regardless of their surroundings or proximity to desirable amenities.

Still, this was his own, personal rasion d'etre and he was going to make it mine. He explained that if I was frugal about money in other areas, I could save enough to go to Europe or anywhere else on those three month summer vacations that only teachers, not lawyers, enjoyed.  He had done just that for the last thirty years, plus built himself a house with the help of only one contractor, and had an extensive collection of classical music records of which, no matter how many hundreds of times he replayed their selections with amplifying frustration, I never once successfully identified the entry notes of the cello and always mistook them for those of a viola...  Really, I was a lost cause and he probably should have just let me slip through the cracks as hopelessly ineducable.

Upon exiting the esteemed eatery into Houston's stifling 10 am heat, Mr Martin directed my attention to a two story building across the street which declared itself to be "Blue Bird Circle." He said he had one more thing to show to me and, lured by visions of Mr Martin as fairy godmother and me as Cinderella encircled by singing, highly skilled seamstress bluebirds, I followed in meek but expectant certainty of the eternal happiness that was surely in store. Twenty years before it was cool in Paris Hilton's eyes, this trailblazing, trendsetter teacher had brought me to fully air-conditioned, 35,000+ square feet thrift store nirvana. Here, he revealed, is where he'd found many of the antique treasures I'd no doubt admired in his home. Sounding eerily like Bob Barker, he began pointing excitedly in all directions and asking "Can you guess the price of this item? What about the complete set of mismatched dishes here? An almost unbroken vase there?" 

At that time, I was making my way through college with scholarships and minimum wage jobs and living with four bohemian-type roommates, with whom I had little in common except a predilection to share $100 rent, in an ancient house that mysteriously kept losing its monthly condemnation notices. What did I need with used furniture? I'd salvaged cinder blocks & plywood planks as bookshelves and they worked just fine. What other furnishings did a person really require anyhow?

Still, I absorbed all his carefully imparted knowledge, examined scratches and dents with expertise and left with a parting gift: an Egyptian statuette of Bastet, the goddess of war & solar energy for only $2.25!

I appreciated his efforts, truly, but I'm proud to say that I was sensitive enough not to share my ultimate impression: World travel? That's not why I chose teaching. This morning would never, ever have any relevance to my life.

I left a bit befuddled but mostly in a hurry, eager to get over to my boyfriend Chris' house where we could spend our afternoon doing significant, meaningful things like watching soccer matches that ended in a 0-0 tie.

Eighteen years later...

We did not originally plan to homeschool our kids, but we found ourselves doing just that in lieu of enrolling Mikaela, only days after her 5th birthday, in a class of second and third graders so she might fit in academically. By the time Katrianna was a 3 year old, reading by herself and also deemed "too far ahead," we were fully immersed and enjoying the benefits of learning at home and all over Texas.

Then, in 2004, Chris started his consulting company which allowed him to work from home, as well. That soon resulted in a "great awakening," ironically presenting us with the ultimate paradox: Now that we schooled at home and my husband worked at home, why in the world were we staying home?

"Globeschooling" became our reality.  Now in our fifth year of homeschooling while traveling, we've visited 18 states, 17 national parks & 11 countries. It's like mini semesters abroad for all four of us to share and experience together, only without the college credit or student loans. In what sometimes feels like a global game of tag, our "home base" is Texas, where we catch our breath, recover, get some work done & plot strategy for the next adventure.   

Often our destinations are determined by Chris' work, but sometimes they are simply driven by our curiosity (and, if more than a couple of miles are required, we're usually also driven by our car...  named Hermes. Wait, who would be so pretentious as to name their car after a Greek god, messenger to Olympus? OK, so that was just a joke. To actually believe it, you'd have to think we were capable of christening our dog 'Picasso.' And that would be ridiculous.)

    
Now, you ask (and you're not alone), is this globeschooling really a mid-life crisis in disguise? Well, we prefer to humbly refer to it as "our little intellectual and spiritual epiphany," but because methinks protesting too much is in vain-ity, I admit that perhaps it could be some manifestation of a mid-life crisis. But, it is one that skips the sports car, divorce and/or plastic surgery and instead opts for taking one's spouse and kids along for the ride. So, along with you, they too can discover the truths in themselves, their family and the meaning of life. Sure, all of that is trivial and superficial, but you can supplement with math workbooks & science experiments to prove you're providing them a worthwhile education.  


We did have many concerns and reservations when we started. Yet, though it appears counterintuitive, so far our odyssey has built cohesion, continuity and a deep sense of stability that belies the uncertain, itinerary-shifting surface appearance. We have been welcomed in homeschool groups at home and throughout the country, the girls have made friends around the world, they experience history up close, they see the homes and hike the countryside described in the novels of their favorite writers... They find identification within their town and their state, but also see beyond themselves, as Americans among the many states and regions that have gained resonance after our visits, and as proud, appreciative Americans who are simultaneously "citizens of the world." Above all, I hope that the kids are gleaning from what we're doing that the world is an adventure to be explored and that it instills in them confidence, enthusiasm, and a sense of possibility with unlimited horizons, both physical and philosophical. 

But, as good as this sounds, it still does not quell or satisfactorily answer the eternal and reverberating question of those back home: "Now, why [insert invocation of God here, either for blessing purposes or in conjunction with a colorful string of twangy expletives] would you ever want to step foot outside of Texas?"  As far as they're concerned, we'll just never learn.