"Why do I haveta have such a baby sister?" moaned Mikaela.
Hundreds of miles earlier in our Southwestern US road trip, Katrianna quit defending herself. And simply scrunched further down in her booster seat. Yet her older sister's taunts ticked off with regularity, keeping steady pace with the highway's mile markers before finally crossing the [CO state] line.
"You're just scared because you're so young!"
Not really, I interceded, I'm frightened, too. Good thing Katrianna's backing out since otherwise I'd definitely be taking the fall for it....
"Oh, c'mon, it's only 50 feet!"
Actually, that was another of Mikaela's tall tales. The Balcony House ladder was a mere 32 feet high, though the hike to reach it also included a 12-foot tunnel crawl & a 60-foot open rock face ascent.
"And the travel guide said it's the very best one. On their 'Not To Miss' list! But now we're gonna skip it -- all because of scaredy Kat ~rianna!"
As we passed through the entry gate into Mesa Verde National Park, Chris 'helped' by suggesting we might turn around & go right back to Houston if Mikaela didn't stop. Huh. Nothing quite as effective as an idle parental threat, is there? True, this strategy maybe works if one's traveled 5 miles away from home... possibly 15... but, hmm, exactly how credible is this: So, Cathy, whaddya think about driving us a thousand miles & then we'll pull a U-ie?
"Besides, there's nothing hard about it! I could easily climb that ladder wearing all 4 of our backpacks, a water bottle in one hand & Skittles in the other! This is so unfair!"
It so was! Mikaela was determined to show that she was officially a Tween now. And, perhaps even more importantly, that her sister was officially not. Accordingly, she sulked.
Well, I reasoned, unfortunately we'd arrived too late to reserve tour spots anyway...
However, we had timed it perfectly to take solitary, dusky strolls among deserted (even by modern tourists) Mesa Top farming villages, choose to casually overlook Cliff Palace all by our lonesomes, view a gloaming sunset from Park Point's 8572-foot advantage, and finally eat & sleep by starlight in Morefield Campground amid the soothing sounds of chirping crickets, crackling campfires and purringsputtering choking carburetors in sundry RV generators.
The next morning, while other guests queued outside the Far View Visitor Center for guided tour tickets to Long House, Cliff Palace or the acrophobic-exclusive Balcony House, we busily got ourselves all spruced up instead. Yup, in order to get on down to the Spruce Tree House at the break of dawn. It was misty-cal, all right, as we made our way along the dewy path with glimpses of the overhanging cliff site beckoning. Even more so when we realized we were the only ones there. Well, except for two Ancestral Puebloans who greeted us in that peculiar, primitive headgear of theirs, ie the "funny hats" worn by all natives of the National Park Service.
Hospitably, they offered to show us around the place & began with a rote set of queries intended to engage, pique interest & inform. However, in preparation for our visit, M&K had studied the NPS website, making those rhetorical questions not quite so rhetorical after all:
The ranger ~ M&K ~
Does anyone know what 'Mesa Verde' means? Green Table! And who lived here? The Anasazi! How long ago? 1400 to 700 years ago! Why did they leave? Don't know! That's right! Truthfully, no one knows...
OK, so what did they eat? They farmed on the mesa! What type of structure did they live in? Pit houses! And later? Under the cliffs! What are their bricks made out of? Sandstone! Why are these ceilings black? Umm... not sure?
Pshew, that made everybody feel better. Happily, the ranger led them to correctly guess "Oh, yeah, it's cause of the smoke from their fires!"
The rangers exchanged a knowing nod. "You're homeschoolers, aren't you?" they stated in agreement, as though plainly this was another rhetorical device. Wow, I humbly noted, how effortlessly we make our lil' contribution to reinforce the image of homeschoolers everywhere....
Next, they invited the kids to partake in the usual daily grind, skillfully demonstrating how to keep one's nose to the ol' grindstone (at least until M&K got the grist of it). Sure, it's corny, but it seemed the girls thought it was grate & could go on like that all day. In fact, everybody was having such a good time, it was hardly noticeable when M&K kept inching away from the edge of pit where the second ranger stood expectantly.
Clearly with well ingrained excitement, she segued to the climatic moment, "Of course, I bet ya'll already know what a kiva is!" No answer.
"Yes, good. And that small circular hole in the bottom is called a 'sipapu.' Step up here a little closer so you can see it!" No movement.
"OK then," she declared, "the awesome part is that you get to go down into it now!"
Evidently overcome with repentance for yesterday's teasing, Mikaela benevolently offered the first turn to her little sister. "No, that's okay," declined Katrianna, "you can go first."
But Mikaela-the-Elder insisted. She helpfully pushed Katrianna forward, ever closer to the rim. "No, I don't really wanna..." Katrianna admitted. "Cuz I think... I might be scared."
Would it help if I went first, I wondered, & jumped onto the ladder.
"Mom, NOOOOOOOOO!" M&K gasped at my Dante-esque descent, certain that the 3-headed Cerberus awaited my demise below. Heeding Mikaela's dire warning -- "Don't step in the hole, Mom. It leads to the Underworld!" -- I dutifully performed a thorough kiva inspection, reported it safe & sound, and invited Katrianna to join me.
Trustingly, she backed up another foot & a half. So Chris clambered partway down and held out his hand. Still Katrianna wouldn't budge. "Sorry, Dad," she whispered as he resurfaced.
"Guess it's all yours, Mikaela!" I called up. "Come on in, it's the pits!"
Suddenly, it was as if the intrepid Tween wouldn't touch that kiva with a ten six-foot ladder. "Mom, can I just jump & you'll catch me?!" Mikaela suggested at a volume [with the tre(m)ble turned up] guaranteed to reverberate through its shadowy depths.
After 10 minutes of urging, waiting, pleading and stalling, I made the arduous ascent solo. To the welcoming, joint embrace of our dear anxious daughters. Once again, the rangers exchanged a knowing nod. Wow, I humbly noted, how effortlessly we make our lil' contribution to reinforce the image of homeschoolers everywhere....
So what's there to say? It's not surprising, really. After all, we're homeschoolers, not social climbers.
Without a word, it was immediately understood -- time for us to take a hike. We headed out on the Petroglyph Point Trail which winds through & often clings to the walls of Spruce Canyon. Here, too, we were the only ones on the single-file track and soon found it challenging, as well as truly delightful. The canyon is coolly invigorating, verdant, with striking views in contrasting oranges, browns & greens. It's filled with narrow passages that require squeezing through rocks and grabbing onto centuries-smoothed hand holds pecked into the canyon walls by Mesa Verde's original inhabitants. There was an overwhelming sense of the past and its people each time we stepped into the foot wells formed by their ancient civilization, stony testaments worn away by daily use, comparable to the age-old depressions made in marble stair steps throughout Europe....
And then the incredible happened! Unbeknownst to the rest of us, Chris started seeing folks on every bend, at every turn, literally hanging out all over the place. Apparently, the cliffs were speaking to him from the omnipresent formations eerily resembling rock faces. (Not that he isn't always on the look out for two-faced impersonators. Or stone-faced posers. Perhaps the Rolling Stones? Plus Rocky I.. II.. III... no, can't malign his reputation like that - implying he watches Sylvester Stallone movies is going too far.)
Eventually he revealed not only their existence, but also his
conjectures as to the obvious meanings of their Anasazi-chiseled
features. Take this one with the particularly menacing expression - would give cowardly aggressors pause, no? Or that one with curlycue
vines overhanging its brow & the silly grin - aha! "killed 'em"
with laughs. What about him, over there, with the quizzical
expression - meant to baffle & discombobulate the wary trespasser
(seemed to be working on Chris, anyhow). So convinced was he that he
filled our camera's photo card with pictures to document the find, in
disbelief that no archeologist before him had dared look this
phenomena in the face...
Although it was well before noon when we climbed out of the canyon, the heat was stifling, the mesa's piñons & junipers woefully short on shade. However, Chris rushed us onwards to the visitor center, eager to share his discovery! Another kind & patient ranger received the news. And diplomatically suggested that Yes, many people see things in the rocks... Uh huh, the lighting creates some strange effects... Interesting indeed, but ever heard about a thing called 'erosion'?...
As we drove out of Mesa Verde National Park and I tried in vain to soothe Chris' disappointment (by searching for my new favorite song - Smiling Faces Sometimes* -on the car radio), his confidence spontaneously rallied. For he did what most sensitive parents do under similar circumstances. And remembered to bring up his child's previous mistake.
"Hey, Miks, don't you have something you should say to your sister?" Silence.
"About being wrong? You know, the Balcony House?" Continued silence.
"And," he goaded, "ladders?"
"Okay, okay, I suppose it's not really all your fault, Katrianna..." mumbled Mikaela. "That you're 3 whole yearsyounger than me!"
Ahh, lesson learned. No sense cliff dwelling on it.
*Beware, it's one of the most irritating songs ever. And that's The Undisputed Truth. And, tho it's the much disputed truth, a "Tween" is generally defined as an 8-12 year old.
Preposterous as it sounds, M&K began to assert themselves & discover personal connections to the world through means other than sports. Naw, really, no foolin.' Alongside the Sports Illustrated for Women'sMia Hamm poster, thoughtfully handpicked & affixed to her bedroom wall by Dad, Mikaela scotch taped a glossy spread of her actual hero, Jane Goodall, taken at the Gombe Reserve in Tanzania. (Indeed, Chris' is a common mistake - this parental urge to Hamm it up - often referred to as a Mia culpa.) Then, during her little sister's soccer matches, if not passing the time by conducting sideline interviews for the Texas Gazette, she'd pull out her supplemental reading, Peacemakers: Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Once the game finished, we'd go further afield to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which just so happened to have a temporary exhibit on Nobel Prize recipients. (Though their display was rather small, the kids still thought it was dynamite.)
Whoa! no way, how could we ever have let it come to this? Now see where being lax about little league legacies leads? Well yeah, straight to the Nobel Prize! Via the Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, Bill of Rights & Civil Rights movement. With the United Nations + Africa in hot pursuit...
It started out innocently enough, merely when Mikaela decided she'd grow up to be President of the United States. Naturally, that necessitated a quick homeschooling unit dedicated to a perusal of the US Constitution, in order to acquaint herself with its tenets & thereby allow ample time to strategize ways to circumvent them. (Never too early to start the process, after all... just ask Dick Cheney, that trailblazer.) This coincided with The Declaration of Independence's American tour, which we heard was putting on quite the live show, so we caught a performance at the LBJ presidential library on the University of Texas campus. (This original copy of the Declaration, one of just 3 privately owned, was bought at auction by Norman Lear, who might've just kept it All in the Family but instead sponsored a cross-country 'road trip' to bring democracy's most esteemed document into fair & equal-opportunity viewing for all the people. Subversive Hollywood liberal. Gee whiz, could he learn a thing or two about patriotism... from an Archie conservative, am I right?)
Wrapped it up with a visit to the Houston Print Museum, so M&K could roll out some d-i-y D-o-I broadsides (now that's impressive), intently watched democracy in action on C-SPANSchoolhouse Rock, drafted new & improved versions of the Constitution & Bill of Rights (eg, voting rights extended to 4 year olds & optional horse ownership guaranteed), read a few books like Fritz's Shh! We're Writing the Constitution before getting popped (quizzed) by a testy Miss Mikaela, skimmed some nuts 'n bolts explanations of how government works, and completed several pages from the US History & Presidents workbooks picked up on clearance. And, just like that, simple as sayin' uncle Sam, we were done -- Finito with Freedom!!!
But no, wouldn't get off that easy. Couldn't seem to shake those pesky discussions about the meaning of "justice for all" with its nitpicky nuances, ie does "all" = sum or some? (Alas, proving that smart as they were, even the founding fathers had difficulty with equations.) So it was on to Seneca Falls for a consultation with Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony about women's suffrage. Soon followed by study of segregation and the Civil Rights movement. Although M&K already knew quite a bit about Martin Luther King, Jr, it seemed a different civil rights leader might best resonate with our young daughters. In particular, a courageous giant of the movement who marched at the very forefront of integration, but was of slightly lesser stature. Primarily because she was 6 years old & around 3 ½ feet tall. We read Ruby Bridges' own account, Through My Eyes, as well as Robert Coles' analytical insights, plus watched & talked at length about events depicted in the movie. It was also the kids' introduction to Norman Rockwell, his poignant portrayal of Ruby taking on even greater meaning after an afternoon first spent viewing his many endearingly lighthearted depictions of the American lifestyle & human interactions worth celebrating.
OK, after describing listening to a perturbed Rosa Parks recount her experiences in person* & then convincing Mikaela to check out Jackie Robinson's story (ha! snuck in sports), it seemed we had the faltering progress of equality covered. Not quite. From there, our focus expanded to the concept of universal human rights, the efforts of the United Nations, and finally Nobel Peace Prize winners. We read more about its 1964 recipient MLK, adding his sister's remembrance My Brother Martin to reading the Heroes of America chapter book + DK biography, but also learned about Ralph Bunche, Mother Teresa, Clara Barton's Red Cross, the Dalai Lama, Amnesty International, Jimmy Carter and, because even altruism recognition is political, Mahatma Gandhi's notable omission.
Here was another link in the natural progression of our studies. Gandhi was not only the leader of the Indian Independence movement against British rule & one of MLK's models for civil disobedience (in 1959, King visited Gandhi's birthplace to gain insight & inspiration), but the young attorney initially solidified his commitment to satyagraha (firmness in truth) and ahimsa (total nonviolence) strategies to resist the discrimination he faced while living for twenty years in South Africa. A noble, prize-worthy philosophy carried on by Desmond Tutu, '84 recipient, and dual '93 awardees Nelson Mandela and - for his willingness to acquire power in order to cede it - FW de Klerk, winner of the Golden Boot (out Botha).
Meanwhile, amid all this, life was constantly stepping in to distract us. Consequently, we'd investigated aspects of Africa quite inadvertently, by pursuing interests that had evolved independently of any "academics," eg origins of early man & civilizations, archaeology, geography, and everything animals, including wild games of every description; hundreds of "Safari" identification cards, sorted & classed off by their Latin surnames (found that one particularly taxaing); voluminous tomes of Vertebrates so massive that simply picking one up risked spine-snapping invertebrate transformation; and weekly zoo visits timed to attend keeper-led talks or, even better, synched to the newest baby giraffe's or infant elephant's bottle feedings. Thanks to the Kratt Brothers & PBS' Zoboomafoo, Katrianna also became enthralled with lemurs -- oops, excuse me, "Coq-uer-el's Si-fak-a," she'd insistently enunciate. Her mad about Madagascar two year phase was all-encompassing & threatened consultation with travel agents until finally, and not coincidentally, it subsided with the premiere of DreamWorks' Madagascar animated movies, which no billboards, toys in cereal boxes or Saturday morning cartoons could persuade M&K to care for one bit. Topping it off was that zany Tanzanian troupe-r Jane Goodall, Rwanda's own famous band member Dian Fossey, as well as the continuing adventures of Chris' client & our family friend who leads charitable projects throughout Africa, aka Bob, The Solar Power Superhero! Granted, these were wholly elective activities, quite enthusiastically thought up & guided by the children, thus quite reasonably cannot be considered valid "schoolwork."
So began our formal study of Africa. As usual, we started with books. Still in recovery from of a bygone era when encyclopedias & nonfiction titles were dense, dry deserts of text relieved only with an isolated, illusively blurry b&w photo mirage, I'm continually amazed that we get to choose from today's inviting, well-written & color-filled kids' books that are as good as or even better than National Geographic. What results is a mix of light & heavy reading, from 2-page per country summations of essential geo-political info to dozens of in-depth library books dedicated to individual countries like Nigeria or Kenya, specific cultures like the San & Maasai, and ancient history. Add in some super websites, such as Phillip Martin's, and sharing the world becomes instantly exciting.
For straight up geography, memorizing the country of Africa can be daunting even for the experts. (O, sure, it's fun to act superior to Sarah... yet, honestly, who hasn't suffered with occasional in continents problems?) Therefore, in order to meet our goal of correctly identifying Africa's many nations, it became a contest, the challenge to find 2-3 phenomenal facts unique to each. Eventually, however, we discovered that the most mundane or oddly irrelevant statistics proved surprisingly entertaining, too, as outdoing one another in mind-boring minutiae has its own irresistible appeal.
Nevertheless quite a few countries remained, demanding we employ a slightly different memory trick technique:
Where do folks go to settle a dispute? The Rift Valley What's Ethiopia's all-time favorite show? I Love Lucy Who was trippin' over Dr Livingstone, I presume? Queen Victoria Falls Where is Zoboomafoo not just a passing fady? Madagascar Who's the biggest band in Nigeria? Indigo Girls (they're to dye for) Where's Al Gore's least favorite place for hanging out? Chad What river runs between Zimbabwe & Zambia? Aw, that's too Zambezi!
Or these, just 'cuz they're fun to say:
She sells seashells in Seychelles. I'll be Dogon. Siriusly? (Well, it's got a good Mali-dy.) I'll match that & raise ya a Timbuktu. An elephant, a rhino & a cheetah walk sail into a Zanzibar... No lion. C'mere, my sweet baobab-y.
Suddenly, recalling locations was easy, familiar & most effective. (Uh huh, never underestimate the motivation to make Mom's 'helpful hints' stop.) We drilled each other in all sorts of spontaneous games using wall, book & homemade political and physical maps. Plus, M&K really enjoyed "demonstrating mastery" (showing off) by surfing for numerous online timed quizzes to identify countries by outline shape, natural features, famous landmarks or customs.
Pretty soon, this morphed into an engrossing unit study ~~
Writing: preparing & presenting reports on endangered animals, native insects & plants Reading: folktales - summarize, illustrate, plus practice oral storytelling with & without props Art: craft traditional masks based on virtual tour of masks representing 100 ethnic groups; loom weaving; experiment with dyeing fabrics naturally; bead bracelets based on traditional patterns; charcoal, pastel & color pencil drawings of animals Home ec: Mikaela researches vegetarian dishes & cooks Math: play strategy games such as mancala, butterfly (Mozambique), Senet (Egypt) & others found online or in Games From Around the World; create Kente cloth geometric designs; write & exchange facts 'n figures-based word problems; interpret animal stats charts & graphs Science: review classification system & make pop-up charts for variety of animals; sketch representative biomes on posters & then place 3-D animal photo stickers in correct zones; watch Planet Earth dvds & PBS programs about wildlife (+ culture + history) paying renewed attention due to the region's greater resonance; consult numerous African national parks & reserves guidebooks to plan "someday" trip Current events: read about Obama's journey to Kenya to visit his grandmother & other relatives in Dreams from My Father & stalkgoogle map his ancestral village (no street view, only satellite images); follow news stories, esp environment-related Field trips: zoo & museum exhibits, particularly the Menil Collection and HMNS' Lucy
Finally, while reviewing the symbolism of the African flags' colors, M&K decided to make a few mini flags for their binders. So blown away were they by this flagging interest (winded its way into their hearts, did it?) that they produced enough for Katrianna to turn it into yet another game, writing the countries' names on back & taping them onto theme dividers as look-see, interrogation-ready décor. (Not to be flip-up-pant about the thrill-a-minute excitement that is homeschooling, but for us this was a Banner Day.) Wanna play? At the top of this page, rest cursor on each flag til its name appears.
Of course, as usual, the very best part was sharing the music. Tracing the roots of American tunes - spirituals, blues, rock 'n roll, peace music, protest songs, zydeco - back to African rhythms & messages, a rigorous curriculum requiring listening to a variety of traditional African groups (tho I'm ashamed to admit, at that time we somehow overlooked indigenous blond Shakira) & crossover 'pop' artists including Ladysmith Black Mambazo with (or w/o) Paul Simon, Alpha Blondy, Majek Fashek, King Sunny Ade, Fela, and Rocky Dawuni, mixing in The Specials, Steel Pulse & Sweet Honey in the Rock for good measures. Yet the overriding instructional incentive was even more fundamental to providing M&K with a proper education: Got to regale them with an epic tale known as The Legend of Mom's Fall.
Exhilarated by a Johnny Clegg & Savuka** concert celebrating Nelson Mandela's freedom in 1990, I was graciously demonstrating to an appreciative audience (our dog, Picasso) several of the moves gleaned from close observation of that evening's performance. Duly impressed, Pico immediately began his own show of solidarity by running ever-accelerating circles around the perimeter of the backyard. As you can imagine, it was a revelry of merriment! That is, until my glorious finale - a flurry of dead-on-authentic Zulu kicks - came to an abrupt, spinning-heels-over-head halt in a spectacular collision of centripetal force. An unanticipated audition for Dancing with the Stars, my hip-stir status was validated upon landing, dislocations notwithstanding. "Once again, kids, demonstrating that the personal sacrifices Mom has made for South Africa are truly stunning."
So this extra meaningful World Cup, we honor Madiba Magic, responsible for bringing the World Cup to South Africa and Africa to the world. It's been a chance to celebrate not just nationalism, but internationalism! (Hey, wait just a second, doesn't MLB do the same thing in its aptly named 'World Series'? Why, take last year's contest of global proportions, spanning the widely disparate ends of the New Jersey Turnpike -- going the distance, Philly to NYC! Aw, c'mon, just sayin'... no assault on battery intended.) Overall, it was a hugely successful tournament, Fate's failings aside. (Struggling to cope with misinterpreting Destiny here... thought for sure they were Ghana go all the way.)
Plus it's also infected each of us with our own symptomatic cases of World Cup fever. For Dad, it's all about soccer. His primary goalie now being to call in the plays posts for soccerblog.com from a bench couch-warming position. (Altho to Chris' his football-lovin-pals-turned-bloggers' credit, it does fit the inclusiveness criteria, receiving 5,000+ visitors a day from all over the world. Hardly a blip compared to that psychic octopus' reach, but still.) For Mikaela, it's been an opportunity to relive her soccer days of yore - yup, she took along a library book for our communal (big screen) sports bar visits, content to be chaperoned by The Vicar of Wakefield. For Katrianna, it's served as a great culmination to our studies, an occasion to display global geography preeminence while actually watching some games, as long as we kept those pub fries & pineapple Crushes comin.'
And, lastly, for me -- well, isn't it obvious? As no doubt this World Cup blog series underscores, I believe we homeschooling parents deserve a lot more credit than we're given. For clearly it demands an enormous amount of dedication & patience... to bring each & every subject around - sooner or later - to a story about me. "Organic learning" at its finest! Truthfully, why else would we so selfishlessly homeschool our children? Oh, that's right, to teach them to embrace connections, understand that ultimately everything is related, and realize that discovering the ties that unite us all is what makes learning worthwhile, fascinating & fun. Yeah, well, I guess those are OK reasons, too....
*Ironically, this occurred at that same 'liberal'
college freshman
year... Her bold reaction to its audience was much more outspoken
than mine, after which she collected her
speaker's fee, thank you very much.
**Clegg was repeatedly
jailed for performing in a racially mixed band, an illegal act in
apartheid-era South Africa. Banned by state radio, "Asimbonanga"
("We haven't seen him") called for Mandela's release & named
activist martyrs Neil Aggett, Stephen Biko, & Victoria Mxenge. In 1988,
Michael Jackson cancelled his Lyon, France concert due to Clegg &
Savuka's attracting a larger audience. Savuka translates "We have
risen/awakened."
And now for an extra Specials treat:
From his BMOC days, the song Chris cranked up on his Chevy Chevette (whenever it would start) ~
I've never been a big fan of perfume. Or jewelry. Or cut
flowers. Nope, on Valentine's Day no need for those symbols of romance. Unless there's some
dirt attached. And roots. And how-to care instructions. After all,
should love be allowed to wither & dry up like a bunch of thorny
roses in 7-10 days?
Or should love, like a rare & exotic specimen (found at Home Depot's nursery center), be transplanted and nurtured to grow. And flourish. And, given at least the minimum
amount of required sunlight exposure, spread. So that eventually it can
fulfill its destiny. And become an invasive species....
Yep, it was with some relief that we had kids. And could return to celebrating a pressure-free Valentine's Day the way it's meant to be: Sweet. Creative. Poetic. Filled with love stories. Yet, sometimes heartbreaking. Even puzzling. Or full of cross words. And, quite often, cutting. With scissors, that is. For snappily sniping snipping construction paper hearts in homemade valentines. Made out to relatives, playmates & their very bestest buddies, ie Jane (Goodall), Ben (Franklin), Ozma (of Oz) & Zoboomafoo (of Madagascar).
Originally, it started with a fella who was all heart(s), my grandmother's handiwork, saved & passed down to the girls. I wasn't too fond of him, but Mikaela was smitten. So together we came up with new versions, adapted to fit our particular family's peculiarities: We love each other, true. But we -- work at home/school at home/stay at homers -- also bug each other, no denyin' it. Obviously, we're a family of LoveBugs!
Ahh, the enigma that is love. How confusing. With multiple, elusive variables. And seemingly endless unsolvable problems? Sounds like MATH! So M&K became matchmakers, pairing up brokenhearted equations. Some were real, to reinforce subtraction or multiplication practice, yet others were more algebraic & abstract, for instance OX/X = O (hugkiss divided by kiss = hug) or Mom = Super Cool (huh, too easy?). In addition, we played the usual weekly arithmetic games, but with sweet tarts as the tokens of our affections, plus the spoils of victorious conquest. When we really wanted to strike at the heart of the matter, our coordinated
strategic attack was to rally the troops by playing Valentine
Battleship with heart stickers as targets. The girls put their whole hearts into making puzzles of all kinds, out of stray pieces of cardboard as well as pre-jigged varieties, and incised increasingly intricate labyrinths of love (masterfully minute mazes). And, for our math club's Valentine's Day party, we rearranged tangram hearts & then figured out their irregular-shaped areas. (Now if that doesn't combat affirm stereotypes about the exciting world of homeschooling socialization, don't know what will...) Finally, to introduce the idealistic youngsters to that all important lesson that love is a gamble, we dealt them life's their hands & taught them to toss out their Hearts with abandon while making it a point (ten, actually) to protect the diamonds in the rough & ignore the others ('cuz they're all cards). But equations - even learning them by heart - wasn't enough. One must also be well versed in the language of love. So we started -- as do most of the world's great thinkers, recognized philosophers & gurus d'amour -- with conversation hearts. First, M&K composed unique messages, such as My Sweet Jabberwocky, U R Spooky, Hug a Turkey, Got Heart? Next, they picked 5 random candies to use in a short story. Katrianna's
was about two lovers (an orange & a banana) who are trapped in a chilling ivory tower (fridge) & must escape in order to
achieve their shared burning desire (hiking the entire Continental Divide trail in one sultry summer).
Traditionally, every February 14th we recite a selection of loveworthy poetry, perhaps Linus' favorite How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning or that more oft quoted (well, only by Chris) My Cheeseburger, originally performed by the gourd-eous Mr. Lunt of VeggieTales fame. Then we write our own. For example, a couple of years ago the result was Mikaela's poem about an oatmeal canister's unrequited love for a shapely bottle of vanilla extract:
In the pantry, on the shelf, Sat - and sighed - an oatmeal jar; It loved the vanilla with all its heart And so it wished upon a star.
Though the door was fastened shut, The oatmeal wished so much, so loud, That the mango heard and laughed so much He attracted quite a crowd.
The vanilla sat on the cupboard shelf In oblivion to all; The oatmeal wished and wished in vain All for his sweetheart tall.
The vanilla was a container large As was the oatmeal, too, But the vanilla knew not of the oatmeal jar Whose heartbreak grew and grew. The oatmeal languished in the dark And pined the whole day through; Yet of her lover, sighing so, The vanilla never knew.
When the flax moved in, with flaxen curls, The oatmeal smiled, and shook, and gasped; Though the vanilla remained on the cupboard shelf, It was now a thing of the past.
Of course, soon it became clear that our daughters needed to gain some historical perspective on love. And its tormenting capabilities. Ya know, the general, pervasive misery it's inspired throughout the ages? (Oh, sure, and the joy, too.) So they read books about Saint Valentine and the Romans' Lupercalia festivals and the quaint courting customs of America's pioneers. Mikaela even created a crossword puzzle to honor the holiday in her newspaper.
Down 2. It is sometimes used to trim paper hearts 3. A type of candy with messages written on it 5. Venus' son 6. The Greek goddess of love 7. Another word for embrace 8. Roman festival where boys meet girls 9. These can be pink, white or red 11. You pucker your lips to do this 12. Lovebirds
Across 1. A gift that is an expression of love 3. Feb 14 was named for _____ Valentine 4. Heart-shaped boxes of _____ 5. Another word for dating 10. This _____ symbolizes endless love
We also had heart to heart talks about Greek mythology. Taking heart (notes) & learning about love's hospitality through Baucis & Philemon, the dangers of idolatry from Pygmalion & Galatea, and the woes of Romeo and Juliet's precursors, Pyramus & Thisbe. Echo & Narcissus urged reflection on vanity's futility and we admired Daphne's ability to remain chaste while being chased, though her ultimate fate seemed unnecessarily treesonous. But primarily we were intrigued by Cupid & Psyche, eager to see what happens when 'Heart' & 'Soul' unite! O my, whatever occurs?! Not much, not after their mother-in-law gets in the way. (Hey, this isn't coming from me. I'm merely repeating what that ol' scholar-woman Edith Hamilton said. About Aphrodite, Cupid's mom. If literature teaches us anything, it's that it would be wrong to apply these universal truths to all situations, right? Grossly eros-neous, imho.)
But most importantly for our little red-haired girls, the majority of their Valentine's Days are spent with Charlie Brown. As in Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown & You're in Love, Charlie Brown & It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown. Or, for a radical change of pace, Snoopy's Getting Married. These toons cut straight to their hearts sparkying more elaborate papercuts cutting ventures, as well as "Love Is..." sentence completion exercises based on Schulz' Happiness Is... series. A sampling of their efforts: LOVE IS... snuggling
your gorilla, cinnamon toasts, sharing a full box of crayons, an evening without baths, a good book, an Indian summer day with caroling birds, a Shipley's chocolate iced doughnut with extra nuts, a hard challenge, and...
Jam-In Valentine Butter Cookies 3/4 c softened butter 1/2 c white sugar 1 egg yolk 1 tsp vanilla 1 3/4 c all-purpose flour
Roll
dough into 1" balls. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie
sheet. Flatten & shape into hearts with raised edges. Fill with ¼
tsp fruit preserves. Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown on bottom. If desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar after cooling. Makes 2 dozen.
Lastly, for parents - or should I simply say "those currently experiencing a post-Romanticism era"? - Valentine's Day offers the perfect excuse to expose your children to love's loftiest heights. In the form of 24 consecutive hours of mushy Motown love song classics by Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Stevie & Smokey. And don't forget those maudlin Temptations, the Supreme sentimentalists or the cheesy Chi-Lites. What about the saccharine Spinners, the gushing Commodores, the 4 tottering Tops, and Earth Wind & Fire's global heartwarming (or has that been dissed proven lately?)... Wait a minute, sorry, there's nothing special here. I already make our kids listen to this stuff monthly. Ok, weekly. Ok, ok, daily. But it doesn't seem to exalt Love irrationally. Instead, M&K perceive Love to be omnipresent, yet somewhat analogous to background noise. Now that's putting love in its proper place... with the mute button just out of reach.
CROSSWORD ANSWERS DOWN: 2.lace 3.sweetheart 5.Cupid 6.Aphrodite
7.hug 8.Lupercalia 9.roses 11.kiss 12.doves ACROSS: 1.valentine
3.Saint 4.chocolate 5.courtship 10.loveknot M's poem, drawings & crossword puzzle are used here with her grudging permission & retain her copyright. Or else.
From The Call of The Wild's chapter 6, "For The Love of Man" ~
"Now, MUSH!"
Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol shot. Buck threw himself forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body was gathered compactly together in the tremendous effort, the muscles writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half-started forward. One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. The sled lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it never really came to a dead stop again... half an inch ... an inch... two inches... The jerks perceptibly diminished; as the sled gained momentum, he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along.
Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and as he neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards, a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel.
But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head, and he was shaking him back and forth. Those who hurried up heard him cursing Buck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and lovingly.... Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thornton shook him back and forth. As though animated by a common impulse, the onlookers drew back to a respectful distance; nor were they again indiscreet enough to interrupt.
But we were never the kind to let a little indiscretion stop us. "Whoo-Hoo! Buck did real good, right?!" cried Katrianna, relinquishing her grip on the dining table's edge & jumping from her chair to race about the living room in a fury of exhilaration. While pushing the table 3 feet back to the original position from which Katrianna had propelled it while listening to this last scene (her moving response to rising action), I had to agree. "Yep, Buck was fantastic! And Jack London's pretty amazing, too, isn't he?"
"Well," declared Mikaela, from where she stolidly sat, "he's no Louisa May Alcott!" But at least she was in the room when she said it.
Knowing that the girls wouldn't have the heart to embark upon manly man Jack London's writings on their own, for the first time in a very long time I was reading aloud to the kids (and to Chris). Just a few pages or a chapter at a time, usually when we were finishing up with lunch or dinner. In the last few days I'd even found the book waiting on the table for me, placed there by Katrianna, instead of the usual preceding groans from both girls.
Indeed, there had been progress since page 1 when Mikaela literally ran from the room. That was OK, she didn't have to listen, I told her, fully accepting of her literary discernment and autonomy. I read just loudly enough for her to hear from the hallway, yet softly enough that she didn't catch on it was intentional. Worked! She had to strain mightily to catch each word and, as soon as we stopped, would reappear so the rest of us might patiently endure her long-winded explanations of how superior Alcott's Eight Cousins is in every way. Finally, she saved herself the trip, sometimes even forgetting to grimace, and excused her presence by citing a desire to leisurely enjoy dessert... before summarily assessing London his just desserts. (Eh, her bite is worse than her bark?)
We were answering London's Call of the Wild for two reasons: 1) to expose the girls to a recognized classic in a "boy book" genre that I knew they'd otherwise try to Pass the Buck on, and 2) because we were then in California, not far from Jack London State Historic Park. That's right, I was plotting for an imminent visit to Wolf House -- cuz, ya know, The Buck Stops There.
And Jack's Ranch really was a Beaut! A mix of oaks, redwoods, meadows & vineyards, with pretty views all around. There were gardens growing the practical & experimental plants he cultivated, such as Luther Burbank's "spineless cactus," which never completely lost its spines, a thorny non-development for the evolving gentleman farmer (and his hungry cattle).... And thick groves of imported Australian eucalyptus saplings that he planned on harvesting to sell as pier pilings or hardwood lumber, an unforeseen technicality being that their wood was deemed "too soft" (poor JL, always barking up the wrong tree... actually, 81,000 of them... turned out to be a shady business at best... he couldn't hardly stand it). But he did manage to reap record-setting oat hay crops from the previously over farmed acreage, plus personally design palatial pigpens that enabled one man to feed 200 swine simultaneously, a feat that would understandably inflate any male ego. Hmm,he found success sowing his wild oats & going hog wild -guess those accomplishments speak for themselves...
In the House of Happy Walls, built by his"mate woman"(aka, second wife) after London's death & now a museum, we saw many of his papers & letters, photographs, boots and a grand piano roarin' with vintage '20s tunes thanks to a genuinely genial volunteer (no, his name wasn't Charles, but he was a ton of fun, plus had an easy speaking style, was ready to Lindy an ear & didn't make no flapper about our rather Raggedy foxtrot). Throughout the mansion were numerous souvenirs that he & Charmian had acquired on their South Seas sailing adventure, an around-the-world trip for which he'd allocated 7 years but ended after only 27 months due to health issues, a disappointment which made him sea-sick. (He'd always adored the ocean, even in his earliest days as a reputed "Prince of the Oyster Pirates" who, under fear of incarceration, suddenly morphed into a prodigal California State Fish Patrol deputy.) In the dining room, beside a long, narrow table with pine benches & chair seating, were the white china dishes that London acquired secondhand in Samoa, after learning that they had belonged to Robert Louis Stevenson during his stint on the islands. Artifacts were abundant, including statues displayed at nearly every turnon the wide staircases, featuring a recurring motif of the couple's entrusting to well-endowedments (?). Charmian's bedroom & bathroom also revealed a procleavity for noteworthy busts, such as those of Venus de Milo & Nefertiti.
After that, we were anxious to get some fresh (or perhaps less fresh) air & began a half mile hike to see the ruins of London's 15,000 square foot Wolf House. Moss-covered walls and deteriorating bricks are all that remain of his dream, creating an atmosphere very much like that at Tintern Abbey. Dampness, steeped in the towering Redwood trees, imbues a natural mist & mystique pervading the foundation of the gutted 4-story, 26-room, 9-fireplace structure with its once indoor, but now open-air, rainwater-harvesting swimming pool. Nearby, his gravesite, marked by a lichen-sprouting boulder & surrounded by a gray weathered picket fence, holds his & Charmian's ashes. Before leaving, M&K whispered their Secret Club password to them both, as they had to the spirits of Eugene O'Neill & Robert Louis Stevenson, two more authors with northern California connections who shared such an honor.
We walked back through the woods and past the London-made lake where he liked to swim & canoe with his many invited guests, that is when he wasn't too busy playing pranks on them. And then on to the cottage where he lived and wrote during his eleven years at Beauty Ranch. He couldn't afford to fulfill his promise to rebuild Wolf House after the fire (hard to believe, but he'd made just 750 bucks for Buck's tale spin), so he added a study annex on the groundskeeper's cottage where he'd first started out at Glen Ellen.
There, his sleeping porch was the most intriguing place of all, for it was where he spent his nights after staying up late with the company he kept (Charmian had her own bedroom) and where he woke early to complete his "profitable chore" writing allotment for the day.
Strung across the small, sun-drenched space was a thin wire dangling slips of paper clamped on with wooden clothespins -- his novel filing system for jotted phrases & story ideas -- the original post-it notes? Nearby was his study, adjoined by another nook filled with books, a gramophone & a typewriter, the space often used by Charmian while she typed + edited + added descriptive passages to his manuscripts (sorry, Mr. Whipple, it seems he couldn't help but squeeze the Charmian).
Which leads to a 3rd, unanticipated reason that Call of the Wild was such a special book for us: It spurred conversations and memories of our own family's wolf-dog. Though in appearance he resembled White Fang much more than Buck, we couldn't help but get taken in by London's (or Mrs. London's?) description. The story's violence and dogs' poor treatment are, as expected, very difficult to take. But since we'd already studied a lot of historical accounts about the Gold Rush & learned about London's own trip to the Yukon (where he got such a debilitating case of scurvy that the doctor forbade him from working his claim & promptly sent him home), the truthfulness and reality of the experience helped offset, a little anyway, the brutality and inhumane aspects. Yet, it was the portrayal of Buck & his transformation that got us -- his depiction is so well done and provides such comic relief at times. When Buck finally finds Thornton, his last, nice owner, London shows his stuff by perfectly capturing the our dog's character, playfulness, and pride & nearly redeems himself for all of his 'dhishoom - bhishoom' author sins. As a result, long after we'd finished the novel & trip to California, thanks to Jack London & much to M&K's delight, we continued the ritual of sharing stories about our lauded hero - in the form of a family dog - while finishing up dinner desserts.
There were a few other, lingering effects on the kids, as well. Three days after our visit to Jack London State Park, Katrianna lost her first front tooth. She hopped around clutching her tooth fairy pocket, filled with hopeful prospects of the "gold" she might discover under her pillow the next morning. And for two or three months, inspired by London's next dog adventure story, she proudly referred to herself as "No Fang."
And the following Christmas, Grandma gave the girls sweaters. A bright, multicolor, striped one with a hood for Katrianna, but a light gray-green, "old-fashioned, ladylike Louisa" cardigan was Mikaela's pick. The aspiring author then began waking very early in the morning, when it was still a bit chilly, to don her sweater & take pencil in hand to write 1,000 or so words before breakfast. Mere coincidence, certainly, that she settled on that number... For she'd never readily admit that Jack London could offer any good writing tips.
Jane Austen is Mikaela's favorite author. Well, unless she happens to be in the Middle of marching through a George Eliot novel... In fact, because of our pre-teen, who continues to find the gaping holes in my graduate school literary education, I'm cutting my wisdom teeth on The Mill and the Floss right now (actually, have been for the last 3 months). Her laughing repeatedly & for crying out loudly at Eliot's "the best sarcasm ever, Mom!" was humiliating. No, not because a young girl is devouring novels thirty years before I ever started them. That is mildly threatening. But not nearly as alarming as the thought that my acerbic wit preeminence might be usurped in my darling daughter's heart. By George, that Eliot is taking it too far.
Yet, every now and then, Mikaela humors me. And we read a novel together. Slowly. One or two chapters at a time, followed by an in-depth discussion where she asks me lots of questions. And then goes on to answer all of them herself.
Last month was my turn to pick, so I'd chosen The Chosen. It was a favorite book in junior high, introduced by an English teacher who tossed out the regular 7th grade textbook in favor of bombarding students with excellent 'young adult' novels, class periods spent debating the morality of characters' decisions, and weekly, intensive essay writing tests. (She could only do such an irresponsible thing because she planned to quit teaching after that year anyway. Between classes, we drilled with the 1,000 handwritten vocabulary flashcards she'd made for the upcoming GRE. That is, when she wasn't busy in an administrator's office receiving poor evaluations for her unacceptably slacker teaching methods.)
The Chosen is a wonderful and challenging book, with layers of meaning and an intensely nerdy appeal. It's about the joy of learning. It's about friendship. And it's about the arduous, often tedious, phases one must endure for the sake of both. But, it also has kids as its main characters, so, compared to Mikaela's usual fare, is accessible and at the "appropriate reading level" for her age. Moreover, I could actually contribute something to the discussions, further explaining the numerous detailed passages regarding Hasidism, orthodox practices and the subtle distinctions in various sects' beliefs.
But the most significant theme in the novel is the necessity that intellect be complemented by the soul. It is a powerful concept when reading the book and identifying with its teenage protagonists, both Reuven, who seems to have a natural inclination to empathy, and Danny, whose brilliant mind often hinders his emotional insights. But it is equally poignant when rereading it as a parent, with the added responsibility of guiding a child young woman to achieve - and yearn for - that balance.
After wrapping up our study of the novel, we happened onto this article in TheNew York Times: Yes, Miky, There Are Rabbis in Montana. It was a neat summation to our talks, as well as a reminder of how the history of Judaism comes into play in today's current events. The reporter prays upon readers' expectations in the post-9/11 era, toying with biases and perceived prejudice, both toward a Hasidic rabbi and the dogged police officer. The premise serves to provide contrast to commonly held preconceptions, by revealing a community in Billings that creatively fought intolerance, for example, as well as to set us up for his surprise ending.
Yet, it was not so very surprising to Mikaela. In part, this was due to our reading of The Chosen. But, its relevance went further, into homeschooling experiences that we never would have connected to the novel on our own.
We, too, had met a K-9 policeman and his dog. Back in 2004, Mikaela wrote about it in her own news article:
Her interview with Alpo came about by chance, on one of our many, many visits to the Houston Police Department's stables. At the time, our lil' National Velvet was in a typical, horse-crazy girl mode, memorizing everything equine, briefly taking riding lessons, and primarily devoting her energies to corralling her folks into weekly field trips to call on her HPD favorites (neigh, she loved them all). It soon evolved into a regular family outing, including a ritual first stop at a local Latino grocery for bags of carrots & apples for the horses and fritters & churros for us, followed by lazy afternoons spent watching & petting the horses. But, when we arrived early one morning instead, Alpo and his best friend were working out on a dog-sized obstacle course. In addition to learning all about K-9 duties, M&K's attentions turned to trying to coax Alpo into accepting a carrot and, with it, a vegetarian lifestyle.
More recently, we traveled to Bozeman and visited several small towns in Montana, including Libby, where we stopped for lunch. To our dismay, it perfectly fulfilled our every notion of the Wild West: As we stepped out of the (station)wagon, air thick with smoke & cinders stung our eyes... due to a wildfire raging on the ridge right above town! However, besides an occasional airplane pilot circling round to drop fire retardant, no one else seemed to notice. People were doing their grocery shopping, cracking jokes at the gas station or lingering over Subway sandwiches, with nary a glance at the looming orange flames. We city slickers got right back into the car & hurried on as fast as the 25 mph speed limit would allow to Glacier National Park, with a quick detour through its three gateway towns, one of which is Whitefish. Little did we realize then that being awed by Montana's scenery would also let us in on a sophisticated NY Times inside joke. (A rabbi, a cop and a German shepherd walk into a capitol building...)
None of these events were essential for understanding or appreciating The Chosen. And all happened independently of each other, with no foreseeable connections amongst them. But, one of the most exciting things about learning is seeing the relationships between what at first appear to be disparate things. And one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling is that it allows the time & opportunities to delve into topics of interest, engage in thoughtful conversations, build a one-reporter newspaper publishing empire, stroll around some quaint & heretofore obscure small town, or just pass the day horsing around. And, by doing such random things, find the connections between them. And, by doing that, see the connections to ourselves, as well.
My hope is that Mikaela has absorbed The Chosen's lesson that intellect must include compassion. It is a philosophy that applies to us as individuals, yet also necessarily extends to all levels of interaction. The conflicts facing the Middle East are just as complex and divisive now as they were when Chaim Potok described them sixty years ago. The need for an approach to the peace process which balances reason and compassion for both sides concerned, and the ultimate worthiness of engaging in talking rather than silence, would be well chosen.
When the girls were little, I was looking for art project ideas & browsing in a craft store where they had an entire book dedicated to nothing but pompom creations. Supposedly a kid's craft, these things were elaborate, requiring pipe cleaners, feathers, gemstones, conch shells, stamps, buttons, spangles, pre-cut foam pieces, woodsies, batting, felt, embroidery floss, sewing and glue guns (This is a Holdup! Is burning adhesive in close proximity to ponytails really a good idea?).
What I told myself - and even came partially to believe (not always the case with motherly justifying) - was that the end results were not even cute. If you're going to spend $7.99 on a book of silly ideas [which I'm not] and then closer to $27.99 on all of these odds 'n ends supplies, at least the final product should be "Awwwww!" Instead, they were jumbles of accessorized excess which seemed to lead them further and further away from not only reality, but also attractiveness. At the very least, it all seemed like a lot of unnecessary pompom & circumstance to me...
As I've always been quite comfortable being simplistic.
Yet, we hadn't found a satisfactory way to express it via pompoms until this past October when I got sick. And then generously shared the experience among my loved ones over the next couple of weeks. Due to a plethora of doctors & nurses & news reporters telling folks to just stay home, secure in the knowledge that "there is a 99% chance you have the swine flu," we never found out if it was truly H1N1. Besides, since a strain of pig-headedness runs on both sides of our families, there really wasn't any sure way of telling... (Nothing's worse than being falsely positive, is there?)
Probably, it was just a regular ol' flu-ke.
But vertigo has its advantages. All those visions of blinking lights & sugarplums breakdancing in our heads led to a sudden urge to make Christmas ornaments. And once we could crawl over to the dining table, we were all set to give expression to our long-latent pompomposity.
Of course, the details are necessarily a bit fuzzy. But, rest assured (& remember to drink plenty of liquids), there are no complicated sequins of events to follow here. Materials include one dollar-bin bag of pompoms & another of googly eyes (all I could bring myself to buy that day), some cardstock/construction paper, toothpicks (ladybug antennae), aluminum foil + colored markers (frog tongue), & non-NRA sanctioned glue. Oh, and, if so desired, add a cold or flu to ensure your intellectual capacity is equal to the challenge...
Here are some more easy & inexpensive Christmas tree ornaments we've enjoyed making over the years, most of which require ample amounts of acrylic paint and a minimum of nuts (oh, yeah, you'll need a couple of walnuts, too) ---
It's that time of year again! Yep, time to prepare for the seasonal celebration of death, honor those who have passed away, face our own immortality and dwell on the wonders of the afterlife. As usual, M&K have been planning a party for weeks & have nearly wrapped up their costume designs. (Which, if you know our family, should be easy to predict - as always, they're going as little Mum-mies.) Certainly, an annual, festive excitement pervades the whole country & has even spread across the world. So, please allow me be just one of many who will greet you this week with that dear, recurring chant from our childhoods:
"HAPPY HOWARD CARTER-KING TUT'S TOMB DISCOVERY DAY!" (Trick or treat?)
Except for a week or two of high school World History -- which was supposed to be a review, but was all new to me -- I could not recall a thing about Ancient Egypt. I'd always heard that this was one of those subjects, like dinosaurs or singing vegetables, that supposedly turned kids onto learning. But, based on my own experience, where teachers generally devoted 3-5 class periods per civilization before moving on to the next millennium, I was in a bit of a panic: How could I possibly fill 4 weeks of homeschool history on such a dull, uninspiring topic? (Admittedly, a Nile-istic attitude.)
I went with my strength. There was one lesson about Ancient Egypt that I not only memorized as a kid, but - and I add this in all modesty here - that I still remembered perfectly as an adult. So, just like back in the day, I was willing to demonstrate my mastery of this subject matter if necessary & upon request (my own - for I am nothing, if not obliging). And now, thanks to youtube, I even had an accompanist:
OK then, that got us through the first two days of the month! Our golden girls were delighted to learn the words & practice all those form-idable, op-pose-able palms moves... why, they continuously roamed the halls in head bobbing, stylized sync! [Well, until I told them they could stop. Sure, 72 hours of this is par for the Egyptian course, but homeschoolers tend to pick things up a little faster, so we were able to declare our proficiency after only 48 hours (not counting the snack and government-mandated napping breaks).]
I hesitate to share the next step in our exploration of Egyptology's merits & nuance, but might as well since perhaps it highlights the full extent of my desperation curriculum-creation powers: Again, I turned to youtube - aka, vestige of all that is educational and worthy of attention - & played The Bangles'Walk Like an Egyptian. Thank Ra, the girls much preferred "King Tut." (Can I get an Amen-Ra?)
Of course, this was all just as I planned it. M&K found my approach extremely motivating. And, the following week, completely took over the direction of our Egyptian studies.
Which meant a play. On words. In 8 scenes. Mikaela was the primary playwright, but they worked collaboratively to come up with ideas for action which "mustcombine tragic & comic elements" to meet the artistic criteria set by the demanding director (older sister). Mikaela also wrote new lyrics for a musical interlude. Although it was in the same tempo as Steve Martin's, she claimed her song was a much improved version since "It's more factually accurate." They then set about memorizing lines, making costumes & props, and rehearsing for hours. Well, there were several minutes of rehearsal, but add those to the hours of arguing, storming off and refusing to continue under such creative duress and you've got real, honest-to-goodness drama!
In addition, Katrianna composed a ballad to be sung by Amenhotep (Katrianna) to honor Cleopatra (isn't she a doll?) as the curtain (baby blanket) fell, a subtle signal to the dense audience (it was SRO - all chairs were taken by Thutmose, the scribes, Osiris, miscellaneous embalming equipment...) to begin shouting rounds of "Bravo!" & "Encore!" All of that happened right after Amenhotep weighed King Tut's heart on the scales of justice to find that "Sure nuff, it's light as a feather!" & we watched as the two buddies played a riveting game of Hungry Hippos in the afterlife waiting room. [For those of you keeping score for fantasy Hungry Hippos, Amenhotep won. Tut-tut! But only after first spotting Tutankhamun a 3 marbles lead, the fair way to proceed after one guy just got his brains pulled out through his nose in scene 7 (by a fancy silver plated 'S' shaped bookmark, a gift to Mikaela which kept slipping off the pages & made a lousy bookmark, but it was an excellent brain hook).]
Then there was a field trip to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Normally seeing their extensive Egyptian collection would have taken roughly 7 minutes, but on one of our visits (actually, this time it was to play with the Simple Machines exhibit), we happened onto a class of third graders being lectured to by a matronly docent. Katrianna kept straying over to their group gathered in the corner, huddled around a small cabinet of Egyptian artifact goodies that were brought out one at a time for prompt display once the woman paused to relock the treasury's door & securely deposit its key back into her pocket. Our daughter was mesmerized. She scooted in closer, sidling up between two girls who were paying great attention to smoothing the seams on their crisply pleated, navy blue skirts. Her hand shot up! And there it stayed as the flustered docent droned on. And on. And on. Wow, I thought, could this mean that she really wanted to be in school?Had she been unable to tell me that she yearned for this sort of social interaction? That she was so eager to seek out others whose expertise could teach her more than she was learning at home?
It was humbling, but I reminded myself that this was always her choice to make. However, she'd managed to move up another row & the chaperones, if they ever noticed, might get unnerved at such a display of insolence. So, I tapped her on the shoulder. And tapped. And tapped some more until she finally acquiesced and disconsolately followed me over to the other side of the museum's basement. "So, you really liked that class, huh? The teacher was pretty interesting, wasn't she?" Clearly frustrated, Katrianna said nothing, so I answered for her. "Yeah, it might be fun to go to school like those kids. And get explanations to all your questions. What was it you wanted to ask her about just now?" Katrianna stared at me, confirming my suspicions of teacher-mom inadequacy, and then replied, "I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. Khafre's pyramid looks taller, but Khufu's is really. And they're in Giza, not the Valley of the Kings. And after they did that CAT scan thing, no one thinks Tut was murdered anymore!" She sullenly walked over to pedal the stationary bike until its light bulb flickered on....
After we'd officially finished with our Egypt month of studies, we started Christmas vacation. It gave Mom a much needed break from the rigors of academia. And, amid holiday activities, carol singing, present making and Peanut's specials, it gave M&K a much needed chance to finally break into the rigors of academia they'd so desired. (Until then, they'd felt E-gypped.) "OK, Mom, that settles it," pronounced Katrianna, who was flat on the floor examining an 11x17 xerox copy of the Rosetta Stone. Laying her 3" diameter magnifying glass aside for a moment, she declared, "I'm going to have to learn Greek!" Her progression in deciphering hieroglyphs was unacceptably hampered by this linguistic deficiency and how else could she be certain that Jean-François Champollion had correctly translated all 3 scripts? Sure, she could engrave the hieroglyphs & demotic script with confidence onto her handmade model magic RS replica, but that was hardly satisfactory... And, despite the fact that when we went to Europe a year later & she was limited to one carry-on bag for packing all of her belongings, she insisted on taking along that same magnifying glass for the express purpose of using it in the British Museum to verify the Rosetta Stone's authenticity.
In January, we started back to school & other topics. But, for her New Year's resolution, Katrianna solemnly vowed, "I have to study every day if I want to be an Egyptologist. So that's what I'll do." With that, her Independent Studies began in earnest. On Easter, the Bunny (not without reservations due to his keen sensitivity to irony) delivered the request topping her wish list: The Book of the Dead, replete with be(plastic)jeweled cover & full page, color photos (just like the original). All that year & into the next, she read from her growing repository of meticulously detailed Egypt books, including the Cairo Museum's Collection Guide. Within a week, Katrianna memorized its floor plans & set the daily agenda for our family's impending(?) visit. She also drafted several letters to her hero Zahi Hawass, though they were never mailed because her uncooperative parents refused to finalize our (her) travel itinerary & "C'mon, can't you find a customer in Cairo, Dad?!" After all, how would it look if she sent a resume to the Secretary-General without specifying her dates of availability for meeting with him in person? Not an advantageous way to negotiate her responsibilities & membership on the Supreme Council of Antiquities, is it? But, alas, her best laid pyramid schemes have yet to result in a trip... So, no kidding, here's what the kids had to do to satisfy my original syllabus expectations:
Science Explain 'What is archaeology?' Experiment w/moving heavy loads w/'logs' (Lincoln logs) Geography Draw, color & label Egypt map Math Use compass to make equiv sides & draw pyramids, cut out, fold & tape Games: play Totally Tut; learn & play Senet Mythology & Writing Read & discuss Egypt's divine kingship chapter in big MYTH book & write summaries, responses or illustrate the following stories: The Wandering Eye; Preparing for Eternity; The Duat; Thoth & Horus' Eye; The Dream of Thutmose (make up Sphinx riddles) Play Word-within-Egyptian Words game
Art Make Egyptian mummy mask w/paints & "jewels" History & Reading Read pages about Egypt in History of the World (compare DK to B&N); read aloud A Little History of the World Egypt chapter; kids pick out & read a few library books Identify famous pharaohs: King Tut, Ramses II and... umm, TBD Hieroglyphs: become familiar with character script, learn to write name
And here's what they did to satisfy their own:
Science Learn intricacies of mummification process, incl all technical aspects of brain removal & organ preservation; Watch NOVA The Mummy Who Would Be King video about Ramses I mummy found in Canada; Wrap a mummy, then take turn as the mummy to be wrapped; Understand & explain process of carbon dating; Practice archaeology digging & brushing techniques on 'You Dig It' Kit's clay-encased miniature pyramid, sarcophagus, skeleton & amulets (K's bday giftcard choice); Watch Ancient Egypt --kids archaeology video; K continues pursuit of archaeologist career in dirt, sand or snow mounds where she uncovers miscellaneous Mom-buried treasures (ancient, delicate ping pong balls); Watch PBS Newshour's Face of a Pharaoh about reconstructing Tut's face; K develops her own theories to explain the "unsolved mysteries" of various pharaohs' deaths; K researches native & endangered animals of Egpyt w/DK Animal, Safari & Geosafari cards; K makes Shrinky Dink pyramid puzzle (for our Chemistry states of matter unit); Build shaduf w/Tinker Toys & test (before we got it to work, we blithely addressed fellow lab mates as 'Hey, Shadoofus!')
Geography Study 3 different Nat'l Geo Anc Egypt maps + "Great People of the Past"; Watch Touring Egypt video -- explains ancient & modern sites; Memorize regions where pharaohs are buried, ID on map
Math K draws pyramid blueprints, incl her detailed 'Secret Room' discovery plans; Play Math Pyramid game; Complete Egyptian numbers worksheet + make own probs; Figure volume of our paper pyramids w/Dad; Build various sized step pyramids w/Lego; K makes "fortune teller" with math probs & Egyptian pharaohs' names (spelling practice) on alternating flaps
Writing M&K make up & perform Egypt play M writes King Tut essay based on bk suggestion M makes her own 7 pg version of The Egyptian News (part of it covers Elvis -- he's from Memphis) K writes & types up in most ornate font "Cleopatra & King Tut: A Relationship of Time!" Her fly page promises "- A Dangerous Story! - And a Great One! - And You Will Love to Read It! - And a Love One!" Includes: moment of destiny when Cleopatra's crown is blown off & it is retrieved by "love at first sight" Tut, a palace in Giza, lots of dancing + praising Ra, followed by a wedding, the birth of Nefertiti (their daughter) w/examples of her 1 yo hieroglyphs & 3yo bday celebration, touring Sparta & purchasing a summer home there (in the nice neighborhood, not the one where "Spartans were still busy punching each other"), more action in "dark & creepy" woods, and the perils of repeatedly battling a "man-munching" cobra.
Art Make amulets, scarab beetle & other symbols w/modeling clay Make rings + necklaces patterned after Egyptian designs in Fun with Beads: Ancient Egypt kits (found in our Met MoA store at 80% off)
History K preps & teaches us Egyptology lessons, followed by true "pop" quizzes (administered during meals, while grocery shopping, in car...) K memorizes ALL of the pharaohs' kingdoms & orders {though she skipped phyla in her classes? - still, a phar-aoh cry from what I'd planned...} Pride forces M to learn most. Learn about gods & symbols: Ra sun; Horus falcon; Bastet cat; Scarab beetle; Ankh life; Anubis jackal Hieroglyphs: Learn to write everyone's name; write secret messages/decode; include hieroglyphs in essays, stories & newspaper headlines
Related History
Watch documentary on Egypt's WWII involvement (M was studying WWII in the spring, but K's Egypt vid covered this. K also listens as M describes WWII facts & the novels she reads, so they both throw around WWII terminology and trivia, usually mixed in with Egyptian references and German culture, unaware that most people cannot talk about Cleopatra, Akhenaten, Napoleon and Hitler all in one sentence.) K rereads Bible stories related to Egypt, ie Moses, pharaoh, plagues, Exodus; Watch The Prince of Egypt animated vid Learn about pyramid of Quetzalcoatl, Chichen Itza, Mexico See Night at the Museum in theater (kids' reviews: "Terribly unrealistic" & "Fun!")
Reading Fiction & NF Books: Encyclopedia of Ancient World; Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt; Nat'l Geographic's Egypt (PBS show bk); Royal Diary series' Cleopatra - read book + watch video; Illustrated comic classic Cleopatra; How the Amazon Queen fought the Prince of Egypt; British Museum's Anc Egypt pop-up bk; Great Bk of Archaeology; Mummies, Pyramids & Pharaohs; Pyramids & Mummies; Ms Frizzle's Adventures in Anc Egypt; Tutankhamun's Gift; Hatshepsut; Cleopatra; DK Revealed: Ancient Egypt; The Egyptian News; Egypt in Cross-section; Letters Home from Egypt; The Curse of the Cheese Pyramid (Geronimo Stilton); Look what came from Egypt; Pharaoh's Egypt; The Egypt Game (Newbery award but M dislikes); Everyday Life in Anc Egypt; Inside the tomb of Tut; Akhenaton & Tut: the Religious Revolution; Tut: Mystery of the Boy King; Your Travel Guide to Anc Egypt; Going to War in Anc Egypt; Egyptian Cinderella; Magic Schoolbus Mummies in the Morning; Curse of the Pharaoh; Secrets of the Sphinx; Mystery of the Egyptian Mummy; Egypt diary: Journal of Nakht; Mystery of the 9 Scarabs - games, activities, bkground; variety of modern travel guides
And More Books (from K's Egyptology Ind Studies year #2): Ramses II, Egyptology, Book of the Dead, Ency of Anc Egypt, Atlas of Past Times, Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, Scieszka's Tut tut, DK Pyramid, ZH's Tutankhamun: The Mystery of the Boy King, The World in the Time of Tutankhamun, 100 Things You Should Know about Anc Egypt, Mummies, Mummies Made in Egypt, plus follow news developments for discovery of new tombs, ZH's website, etc
Websites & Computer Games www.ancientegypt.co.uk - hieroglyphs + underworld game; guardians.net/egypt Brit Museum; www.rom.on.ca Canada museum; Aton Ra @ funschool.com; online Senet
Party Plan Nov 4th Howard Carter anniversary activities (becomes annual event): serve Ancient Egyptian snacks; play Pin the Head on the Sphinx; make up & exchange new Sphinx riddles in the form of anagrams & word ladders; play all Egypt-related board games; K distributes her word find puzzles w/Egypt vocab as party favors
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-fullscience 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 architectJulia 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?
Mikaela and Katrianna are just like the Williams sisters. Yes, that's right, so similar to Venus and Serena, it's hard to know where to begin...
Well, you see, Mikaela and Katrianna are also sisters. And best friends. They spend nearly all their time together. Homeschool together. Travel together. Are too two together? Really, like V&S in every way.
Only M&K can't play tennis. No. Not at all. But besides that one little exception -- of sharing 40 Grand Slam titles between them -- our daughters could be the identical twins of the Williams sisters.
They just don't want to be. Not that we haven't tried. And it's not that the Easter Bunny didn't do his part ... nor is it the foot fault of Coach Grandma, who gave them several enthusiastic lessons: to Mikaela, on how to serve and volley, & to Katrianna, on how to scoop up the balls & NOT throw them as far away as possible. (Granted, watching those funny men on the next court rushing the net and, just as they were going for a smash, make contact with one of those errant balls underfoot - well, let's just say, in Katrianna's humble opinion, that was a sport in and of itself.)
Of course, tennis wasn't the only game in town. Or even their first athletic endeavor. I mean, who creates those kinds of expectations for someone who has just come into the world under 24 inches tall? (OK, besides Andre Agassi's parents?) Not us, we were fair. Without any pressure, we patiently let them grow to 2'6." Then we went with basketball.
And, just for the record (is that American or world?), it wasn't like we christened Mikaela with sports in mind. At least not her 1st placed name. Instead, I casually selected her middle name for its sporty nickname potential, something that could be easily shortened and then chanted by stadiums full of adoring fans. That way, her entire identity did not have to be wrapped up in being an athlete. Thoughtful, no? OK, so she did attend Houston Comets games before she was actually born. Her first shoes were high tops. She dined exclusively on the Breakfast of Champions (mom's milk, supplemented with Special K). She had a Michael Jordan coloring book. And we'd insisted on using Hakeem Olajuwon's brand of drinking water for her baptism. In terms of nothing-but-net gains, it seemed all was going well. By the tender age of two, Mikaela had learned to slam dunk - her balled up socks - into the Sheryl Swoopes mini hoop rim set over the laundry basket. A guarded Cynthia Cooper [Mom] often assisted with 2 pointers. She even learned to count by keeping score during these grueling five-minute shootarounds. But, most importantly, she gained the confidence & assertiveness necessary for trash talking during pick-up games (ok, that might be unrelated... reminding her dad to take out the garbage is not really the same thing, is it?).
When she was finally ready for Show Time, we presented her with a real hard b-ball (though technically it's still smaller than "real" since it'sfor girls, pro-playing WNBA'girls'?). Swish! This is fun! It was easier to dribble, shoot, pass, catch -- until she stretched her hands out and misjudged - Ow! jammed her finger. She responded as any future hall of famer would: shock, anger, disbelief, all culminating in a dirty look shot in my direction. I encouraged her to try again. So she did. Seconds later, Ow! sprained the very same knuckle. I explained that it was just part of the game, better shake it off. So, again, she did. Only not the injury, the whole sport. Just like that, her basketball playing years were over, her last ever jam session done.
[By the time Katrianna was old enough to play, it was too late - she got the "benefit" of her big sister's experience - for Mikaela, unlike some other has-been hoopsters, smooth-moved into retirement with maturity and grace, content in her new role as a tv color commentator: "O my, what excitement! See all those grown ups rolling around on the floor after a silly ball?... Hey, look - there's that player who got a bloody, broken nose and has to wear a plastic face mask. Now listen, Katrianna, Mom says that's just part of the game... Let's watch him try to shake it off!"]
Then there was soccer. Though I never had any aspirations to be a "soccer mom," Chris wasn't about to let that stop him: Take notice, playgroup moms, minivan or no minivan, Daddy's little girls were gonna be fútbol stars! I have to admit, he gave it his all, put in 110%, kept his focus, stuck to the game plan, executed at crunch time, never gave up, just wanted it more, took it one game at a time... no, that last one is not true. In fact, he skillfully used his young prodigies to get a pass to watch not just one or two soccer games on weekends, but whole World Cupfuls of games at a time. For instructional purposes. For the sake of our children. He also read to them daily from scripture (Pelé'sMy Life and the Beautiful Game), requested they respectfully rise from the couch and sing "Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé, Brasil, Brasil!" every time Ronaldo scored, and, if I proposed that maybe the girls should get back to school (or just go play outside... play some soccer even?), he countered that this was educational: After all, weren't we studying Spanish? And here he was modeling full language immersion, encouraging them to absorb every linguistic nuance this romance language & Univisión's Andréas Cantor had to offer.
As many rookie parents learn, soccer is the first organized team sport available to 3 year olds - so how difficult can it be? The YMCA emphasizes that a successful season is determined by two factors: 1) everyone plays & 2) everyone has fun. Yet, despite three years of attempts, those impossibly high standards remained elusive for our dear daughters. Then again, who am I to judge? It is quite probable that the girls were getting just as tough a cardiovascular workout running away from the ball as they would have had they actually run toward it. Absolutely, the sum total of exercise was impressive. All that bending, stretching, building up a sweat, straining to reach out & score - that perfect dandelion or clover stem needed to complete the fresh-picked flower necklaces they and their friends were braiding on the sidelines (or, not to stifle their creativity, often right in the middle of the field as the game went on about them). Plus, that doesn't even take into account all of the miles logged while traipsing after butterflies... It did make me wonder, exactly how realistic were the goals we were setting for them - or, for that matter, were those goals occupied by the opposing team's goalies? You know, the ones at the end of the field, girls, where the ball is supposed to go? Wait a minute, Dad -- what ball? Even Chris came to accept, as far as M&K were concerned, soccer would forever be an "away game."
We were 0 for 3 with sports. For the love of the game, any game, I decided to throw seven-year-old Mikaela a softball. Spring into action, it was time for Little League! Besides a few rounds of catch with a tennis ball & making sure she didn't knock herself out when swinging a bat (plus showing her how to break in her glove by oiling it, folding it around a ball, placing three rubber bands just so and then sleeping with it under her mattress), I didn't work with Mikaela very much ahead of her inaugural season. We'd been homeschooling for a couple of years & I purposely intended to use this opportunity to let another adult coach her and act as a role model. Not surprisingly, she fared poorly at tryouts. I imagine she was drafted in the last round or two, an afterthought at best.
A few evenings later, I found myself at a champagne reception for parents. It started with a toast: "To the winningest team in the league, for two straight undefeated seasons!" Turned out, amid bites of hors d'œuvres, this was a strategy session. Item #1 (scratch that, the only item) on the agenda: How to manage that again. The head coach boasted he'd exerted all his influence with the board to secure the best practice schedule available - most importantly, one where the weak players would be able to practice on a different field. Nods of appreciation circulated the room. Later, the team mother assured me not to worry, that all the starters made a special point to talk to the other girls between innings in the dugout. Wasn't that nice? Plus, and this was not theoretical, my daughter might not play even one inning in a single game & she could still be guaranteed a first place trophy at the end of the season. Well, thank my lucky stars, Mikaela'd really hit one outta the park this time, hadn't she? Ever so briefly, the mom stared at me, then laughed loudly and suggested, "Now, how's about some more champagne?"
In my own athletic career, I'd made it a practice not to quit. For my daughter, however, I justified that the season hadn't officially begun and perhaps this didn't count because Mikaela had not yet met her teammates (or the bench). Sure, it occurred to me to request a transfer: Please, sir, can you trade my kiddo to the lousy team? Not only would we be pariahs of the league after that, but, if she did end up being good, the potential consequences were even worse: she'd inevitably play for these All-Star coaches eventually and/or, every time she came up to bat, have to subsist on the blue home plate special: daily servings of cheap beanings. The next morning, I stopped by the treasurer's office and explained that something had come up (values, but I didn't specify) and that, due to unforeseen circumstances, I was sincerely sorry that Mikaela would be unable to participate this year (that last part was true, I did feel like one sorry mom for months afterwards). No doubt, it was another missed opportunity for my daughter to win that coveted "good sportsmanship" award - or, if she allowed herself to dream, the "most improved player" plaque - and it was all my fault.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe M&K are not exactlylike the Williams sisters. The honest conclusion is that Mikaela & Katrianna are actually just like the Andrews Sisters. Well, except there are only two Sarkar Sisters... And they can't sing.
The following is a petition for enTITLEment allowances: I know, there are some homeschoolers who are really good sports. So good, in fact, that the very reason they homeschool is to free up more time to devote to training, schooling their adversaries on the court and bringing home(school?) the gold. But, those rare, fast-ballin' pitchmen certainly throw off the curve (or is that the slider rule? Ut oh, I'm getting that sinker feeling again... O, screwball it, this jock jargon is just splitting fingers, runs afoul ball of the law of homeschool averages & will never produce a hit anyhow) for typical 'athletically challenged' homeschoolers, who proudly took their ball and went home schooling... Anyway, "Homeschoolers Are Such Bad Sports" was Title number IX - the first eight I thought up couldn't get equal fun-ding & had to be phased out. Along with - and to the dismay of - my conscience's wrestling squad. Hey, gotta make those cuts somewhere.
Of course, I turned to Edith Hamilton. Yes, that Edith Hamilton and her 1942 classic Mythology.The very same book that nearly made me abandon English class completely and swear off literature forever in the 7th grade. The very same book that, as a first year instructor without any "cred" to choose the curriculum, I found myself having to teach to ninth graders. (No way around it, the department chair insisted, plus it was the year's required first unit - couldn't have some of the 9th graders doing different things, could we? No, that would be utterly unthinkable, I agreed silently.) Reluctantly, I searched for my old, battered edition with its drab, mostly missing, black & white cover, in disbelief that I was put in a position to try to present this deadly-dull stuff to others. But, once I confessed these very feelings to my students, all of us unwillingly embarked on our Greek mythology misadventure together. Probably because of this shared sense of dread and the "freshman naïveté" of both students and their 23-year-old teacher, we had a fantastic time, employed any and every creative approach to get through the material and learned more Greek & Roman mythology than even good ol' Edith could bunker. (And that's no Bullfinch's.)
Years later, I again pulled out Hamilton's Mythology, this time its cherished remnant of a cover barely hanging on, askew from its binding despite numerous applications of scotch tape. Little colored post-it notes were peeking out from between the pages now, tempting my daughters with all the hidden intrigue and secrets they suggested. We began with my favorite stories, sometimes reading the text verbatim, but mostly picking out only a descriptive line or two and then breaking off into old-fashioned storytelling mode. We also supplemented with the children's classic D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, geared for kids so Mikaela could read it aloud to her sister, but the girls preferred Edith's detail-oriented prose interspersed with my elaborations. Soon, they knew the stories as well as my high schoolers and thought it was super fun to take the "so easy" quizzes they found folded up in the back of the book.
But, after a while, we ran out of those fairy tales, too. Luckily, it just so happened that we were studying ancient Greece anyway - my subtle segueway to get the kids primed for watching the 2004 summer Olympics (a very educational experience to be had while sitting on a couch eating potato chips, btw).
So, I turned to Homer. After all, he was Greek to me. Why not share?
For about 20 minutes each morning, we started the day with a book from The Odyssey, taking turns reading significant passages aloud and learning new terms like epic simile, extended metaphor or "gray-eyed Athena" epithet (that last one sidetracked us for a full day, suspending all other activity, so M&K could dwell on making up fitting nicknames for various stuffed animals, playmates and relatives). We used Robert Fitzgerald's translation, the version college profs liked when I was a t.a. & that I then taught to those Greek-lovin' 9th graders. For, despite my unorthodox practices to make literature accessible & engaging, I'm not a big fan of retellings which lose the writer's voice or "dumb down" the story. "Big words" do not have to belong to adults-only - as the experts say, young kids can soak up language more easily than at any other age, so why deny them the joy of knowing those 25 cent words (that mean the same thing as the ones they already know - so there is some context - but the new, fancy lingo provides entertainment because it "sounds funny" rolling off the tongue... and, bonus, these words, now memorable because they were learned in small doses, will then be all-too familiar when they show up again on that all-important SAT). Admittedly, it's a strange combo - I'm somewhat of a purist as far as text goes & retaining the beauty of an author's poetry, but, once we've paid homage to the language, I have no problem digressing from there, freely taking poetic license & following things out to their illogical conclusions... My focus this time around was simply to expose the girls to The Odyssey as an exciting story, the way it was originally meant to be sung (no, c'mon, I didn't really do that to them - the way it was meant to be told, I should say), before it became nothing more than a dry topic for a Humanities essay or was reduced to a cram session for some loathed final exam. And, besides that, there was just a certain something about our Homer boy's bardy humor that inspired us to go 3-D with our homeschoolese aMusements...
Our Homeric tale began where all great sagas do - in a plastic hotel. Inexplicably, someone had thought (and this was well before our "globeschooling" began) that it was the perfect present for our girls - Barbie and Ken meet the Radisson? For a long time, we did not properly appreciate the pleasingly pink - with aquamarine décor highlights - toy or its inherently transcendent & imaginative qualities. Until at last we realized, by Zeus, this playset was just the thing to stage our production of The Odyssey! In Homer's version, Athena cleverly crafts a bronzed-tan Odysseus to better secure Princess Nausicaa's favor. Similarly, in our version, Odysseus is played by a perfectly sculpted, god-like 'Ken' knockoff, with the words "Made in China" imprinted on the back of his head. Close enough, right? In Greek, I've been told, that phrase translates to lead-in [Pb] man (though I wouldn't want to be tested on it). His son, Telemachus, was the hotel's nondescript and very stiff - a suitably immovable action figure - bellboy, who doubled as the elevator operator in the one nifty feature of this wonderful motel de résistance (somehow it included an ingenious crank & pulley elevator system, excellently illustrating that scientific principle for our Simple Machines study). Of course, it wasn't long before we began Trojan horsing around. Odysseus had to trick Troy into letting him enter their fortified Lincoln Log walls, did he not? Yet, the hotel did not come with a horse - after all, it was no New England bed and breakfast. Alas, the playtime must go on so we improvised. Oh, what would the "wily Odysseus" do in this situation? (Aside: we watched several Wile E. Coyote cartoons to reinforce that vocab word - or actually, in the case of the coyote - and, an often shockingly obtuse Odysseus - the antithesis of the word.) Why, isn't it obvious? He spied Mr. Potato Head! Surely you've noticed that discreet trap door on the potato gentleman's posterior, where all of the spudly accessories belong (but are never properly stored since they most often are used to provide invaluable traction on the playroom floor instead). Into the hatch went the Greek soldier-sailors (aka, NASA playset astronauts - isn't it remarkable how the connections abound since that's a Greek word, thus indisputably, authentically Homeric?). Later, in a pinch, Mr. Potato Head had to step up again, for he was the understudy in a second minor role, that of Cyclops. The Playskool makers had mistakenly left out a single myopic eye when they boxed ours up, but we made do with a Halloween eyeball eraser secured with some Tacky glue (fyi, I see no correlation there). Odysseus then speared Polyphemus' eye with a handy pick-up stick, rendering the giant's gangly, permanently outstretched white-gloved arms ineffectual in snagging any more of the manly morsels strapped beneath the escaping sheep (combined herds from our Noah's Ark and Old MacDonald's Farm).
Oh, please, will this duality never cease? No. But to summarize: The effect of Circe's magical powers, which subtly revealed the inner nature of Odyssey's men, was portrayed by our family's cute & cuddly male chauvinist pet pig, the mechanized walking & snorting "Oinky" (another thoughtful? gift). The sirens were represented by the motel's complimentary bikini-clad young lady with her alluring Madonna-esque tunes (I ask, who wouldn't want to crash into some rocks after listening to that? OK, I hear ya - going back to minding my own beeswax). For Charybdis, we first tried constructing a "tornado in a bottle," which, like so many of our science experiments, turned out to be a disappointing failure. So, we reconciled ourselves with the dramatic realism afforded by watching Odysseus in his (Captain Feathersword pirate) ship swirling around our bathtub drain. Argos was our very own panting dog, complete with feebly wagging tail, waiting patiently on the patio until we could tear ourselves away from the non-stop action to let him back indoors. And, finally, after twenty agonizing years (condensed into 3 weeks) of this off-oh-so-off Broadway production, the Kenly Odysseus returned to his hotel and identified the tree (well, sort of a neon green, ferny, Triassic period tree) that grew right through the lobby so he could be recognized by the ever faithful Penelope - duh, Barbie. For months afterwards, M&K referred to all of these assorted toys and dolls by their Greek-given names, effortlessly reinforcing the events and our lessons from Homer's Odyssey. Sadly, they eventually learned to put away such childish things as "ancient history" (unlike their mom, who kept busy figurine out ways to exhume them for the occasional Iliad-conceived revival).
When we'd nearly finished our little odyssey, Mikaela let slip what we'd been doing to another homeschooling mom. "Ah ha," she accused, "I knew you followed TheWell-Trained Mind!" I had no idea what she was talking about. She didn't really believe me, but proceeded to inform us that I was obviously following a very particular kind of "Classical Education." The truth was that I was blissfully & quite intentionally ignorant of homeschool teaching methodology or factions. Moreover, I had no plans to change my approach - we were already too busy trying to cover all of the topics Mikaela had thought up once we'd decided to homeschool & I'd unwittingly asked her, "So, whaddya want to learn this year?" However, within days, I found myself at the library reviewing the gigantic tome of classical education, at first impressed by its weighty reading list - indeed, it did include The Odyssey (though not for kindergarteners) - if not the sheer "heaviness" of its 764 pages of content suggestions.
Yet, based on my cursory review, it seemed the primary exercise for children's history lessons was showing mastery of a subject by outlining chapters. Parents could feel assured that following this rigid format would instill discipline, plus provide superior college preparation to boot. I have no doubt it succeeds at both, but my overriding impression was "You choose to homeschool your kid so you can do this?" Displaying the kind of hubris which only emerges when one feels fully threatened & insecure, I made Chris listen as I droned on about the mind-numbing potential of chapter outlining for the rest of that evening. Three or perhaps four hours later, Chris had finally achieved deep REM sleep and I was wide awake, once again absolutely confident that I was right to summarily dismiss this approach....
The next morning, I sat Mikaela down in her little school chair at her little school table, which was laid out with clean, lined paper, sharpened pencils at the ready. I made her read a few pages of a children's typical history text. I demonstrated how to outline the first paragraph. Then I told her to outline the next two. No pressure. Just to prove she could. Pshew, she could. I then promised her that she would never, ever have to do that again. Our sole attempt at "classical education" was exhausting.* That's so Classical.
Meanwhile, back at playgroup, when an unrestrained Mikaela explained a bit more about the specifics of our Homeric similes (ie, personification by Ken & Barbie), a different mom felt obligated to let me in on yet another sacred educational theory. "Oh, I NEVER allow my daughter to play with plastic things. Not good for the tactile sensory functions, you know? Waldorf encourages all-natural toys - like from nature, you know?" No, I didn't know. Oh, the shame and embarrassment. Sensing my distress, she empathized, "Honestly, I just threw out our plastic toys a couple of months ago. Replaced them with only natural toys, so we can reconnect with nature - like our seashell collection. I got a whole bag of 'em on sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond!" Immediately, I realized what a fool I'd been... if only we'd told the Odyssey using mollusks, river rocks & twigs, imagine the superior learning & retention possibilities. A lost cause, I didn't dare tell her that I'd already planned our next storytime - Beowulf - based solely on the fact that we'd recently acquired "Rex," a tyrannosaurus puppet that came with a fast food kids' meal to promote Toy Story 2. Turned out, he served very nicely as the terrorizing dragon.
*Despite my protestations, our reading selections probably do align most closely with those considered 'Classical Education' or, at least, "the classics." But, our approach to learning from & experiencing the material resists formality or static categorization. Like many homeschoolers, we take the "easy out" and, if forced, define ourselves as 'eclectic homeschoolers,' picking & choosing from a variety of styles (most often, our own).
"You're a birdbrain, Katrianna!" Mikaela declared.
Katrianna spun around, gave her sister the eagle eye & replied, "Why, thank you!"
She then resumed her hour-long presentation on the intellectual superiority of the Corvidae family -- crows, magpies & jays. Quite obviously, she's raven mad (or is that crazy as a loon? Despite her seminars, I'm still not very ornitho-logical).
In the early mornings, Katrianna can often be found at a window, bird book in hand, pressing a button to serenade some passing songbird. The befuddled birds sit just outside the windowsill, heads pivoting this way and that to locate their new potential mate or - since we don't truly know what she's saying with these recorded messages - possibly their territorial rival.
Actually, most of the time, she prefers to talk to them herself, sans technological devices. She croons out the window repeatedly and then some crow will show up. They carry on and pass pleasantries, no doubt discussing the weather and/or preferred flight patterns.
Originally, of course, Katrianna didn't know how to cry fowl. Her multilingual efforts began one day when she and I were sitting in the car waiting for Chris & Mikaela who had gone into a ranger station to ask about - what else? - directions to find pairs of nesting raptors in the area. We were near a field, but there was no activity or movement indicating any "life." It was hot, dull, quiet, nothing to do, lethargy. Without warning, Katrianna bursts out at the top of her lungs with "Quack, quack, QUUUUUAAACKKK!" Before she can answer my "What in the world?" what do we hear - yep, a mallard duck calls back from out of nowhere, sounding like it's right beside the car. Katrianna answers, duck responds... I sank further down into the driver's seat, a lame duck.
More recently, when she was replaying and memorizing the calls in her book, a raven appears - but, this time, Chris was there. He gets so excited, he can't even wait a decent, conversationally-polite interval for the bird to finish its call before he jostles her aside to push the button. He then keeps interrupting Katrianna's poor pal, who gets so frustrated and, quite sensibly, offended that he flies off in disgust. Undaunted, Chris grabs the book and runs to every open window to beckon his fine-feathered friends, madly pushing that call button incessantly and indiscriminately.
Eventually, bereft of her book, Katrianna loses interest and wanders off to find something else she can play with by herself. For the next ten minutes, her father continues unabated & oblivious. I suggest to him that it was originally sweet, even cute, to see him humoring Katrianna and bonding with his young daughter over bird calls, but that perhaps now he should get back to work and not exhaust the battery on her prized book any longer. Sullenly, he agrees.
Not 15 minutes later, I go upstairs to find him alone, back at the window, swiftly riffling through the bird descriptions and scanning the skies as he presses the now nearly muted - but still birdlyaudible - call buttons. We concur that Katrianna's book should probably be reserved for her and he should only "borrow" it when she knows about it, is present and is also participating. Got it, good thinking! OK, everyone gets back to school/work. Diligence and duty prevail.
Yet, less than thirty minutes pass before I hear in hushed tones, "Psst, hey, psst... Katrianna, c'mere!" Katrianna gets up from what she's doing and follows her summons (with me not far behind). We find Chris, again clutching the bird book, motioning with his hand and whispering with all his persuasive, enthusiastic might, "C'mon, let's see if we can get them to answer. Aww, c'mon, it'll be - - Oh, hi, Cat!... Katrianna just wanted to call some birds here..."
In the meantime, Mikaela had read the book's introduction which warns against using the recordings in just this way, at least if the birds are endangered species. She begins lecturing her dad against "the evils of harming innocent endangered animals for sport!" Finally, facing his older daughter's threats to report him to the Audubon Society and/or Greenpeace, his younger daughter's sudden & inexplicable disinterest in birding, and his wife's ruffled feathers, for the third time Chris acquiesces. Reluctantly, he returns to his pressing, due-yesterday work project.
Ohhh, imagine the chaos and loss of productivity if we only had a birdbath!
On a lark, we made the birds as an art project when the girls were 5 & 8 years old and we were studying everything birdy for Science. It was very easy & fun. A light clay, such as Model Magic, works well, then acrylic paint & gardening or floral wire for legs. There is a lot of room for error & they still come out looking pretty life-like. We use them every year as Christmas and Easter tree ornaments.
Fresh off the heels of a Bastille Daydo-si-do, the next day was devoted to that even more universally understood, unquestionably patriotic and supremely worthwhile national pastime: waiting 7 to 10 hours queuing up in anxious anticipation of 7 to 10 minutes of spine-tingling, if blurred and/or obstructed, Le Tour de France excitement.
Mildly despondent over my girls' lack of athleticism or even feigned interest in traditional sports, I thought what better way to inspire them than for us to become part of the esprit de corps celebrating the quintessential triumph in the Wide World of Sports - man's conquering of mountains atop a bicyclette. It was disappointing that we wouldn't get to cheer on Lancelot "C'est moi"Armstrong and that the American presence, however loathed (or reluctantly lauded), was absent that year. But, at the same time, I was spared from having to explain those insidious daily headlines accusing LiveStrong of taking illegal supplements and, besides, my travel-size 75' x 125' Texas flag hadn't fit into my carry-on bag anyhow... So, early the next morning, we set off to find our place along the Stage 8 route between Le Grand-Bornand and Tignes.
After several false starts & time trials, we finally ended up at a sweet pâtisserie in the little town of Seez. No one was astir here, there were no signs of impending Le Tour like we'd passed in previous towns - RVs lining the sides of the road, women liberally sunning (all of) themselves in lounge chairs, Smart cars jamming into hardware store parking lots along the route, police cars circling in anticipation of the riots sure to erupt any second - all a vicious (bi)cycle that we were eager to avoid. At the bakery, in exchange for our convivially in treating ourselves to some tarts, the éclair-voyant women assured us that indeed the Tour was supposed to pass down Main Street (which doubled as the highway) and that they wouldn't mind if we parked our van there for the day (we try to avoid tortes - unless they are drizzled with chocolate - whenever possible... mostly, we stick to our just desserts).
Mere minutes later, we emerged to find numerous Tourists staking out spots alongside ours, their hatchbacks popped up, vast smorgasbords being assembled on car hoods. Tout de suite, two different groups offered to let us share their hastily constructed shade tarps and picnic bounty. Vraiment, we had found the festive spirit that had eluded us the day before - Tailgating!
Of course, we did what international protocol demands: We thought it quite odd, politely declined and hurried away. (Mais oui, it seems rude, but not only are we Texans, we're also vegetarians and we don't drink - Mon Dieu, we are a Frenchman's worst nightmare. In our experience, this is truly the least offensive way to proceed, lest one takes pleasure in being pummeled with a baguette. Ok, it's not fair to generalize- in Bavaria or Austria, make that a hearty German sausage instead.)
We spent the afternoon lingering - very uncharacteristically for us, common Americans who unabashedly eat & run - over a leisurely lunch in order to secure a table &, with it, a spot alongside the route. As expected, the meal served its purpose, keeping the girls occupied for quite some time as they debated the intricacies of how to fairly divvy up three forlorn whole olives wallowing in a scant amount of fromage on our "sans viande, s'il vous plaît" pizza. That fractious repast over, our attention turned to ordering another round of drinks and predicting just how long each beverage's single ice cube could valiantly resist melting. Would the sparkling Perrier's bubbly action increase or decrease the rate of dissolution in comparison to the Coca-Cola, which flatly refused its reputed effervescence?
Though these math & science lessons already exceeded what we normally consider a week's worth of homeschooling, we were in luck. Out of thin air, the Alpine sky opened up (actually, a random pre-peloton truck rumbled by) and tossed a newspaper for our complimentary perusal. So, we discussed European politics, scrutinized the latest in Parisian haute couture and practiced our flawless French (by translating the comics). Tireless (yep, still no sign of the bikes) overachievers, M&K then calculated the riders' cumulative elevation gains (pneu math) and began making up those time-honored word problems, such as "If Pepé Le Pew pedals east from Paris at 30 km per hour and Mickey Mouse comes cycling 'round the Space Mountain from the wild West (EuroDisney) at 70 km per hour, how long will it take..."
... Too easy, 0 seconds! For there he was, the leader of the Tour! Wait, it was hard to tell - was he a man or a mouse? But then, it was clear - to the Mickster go the spoils! Mickey was floating our way & tossing out coloring books. "Me! Me! Throw it to me, Mickey!" He whisk(er)ed right by us with nary a glance. Color me blue, what kind of Mickey Mouse outfit was this? M&K consoled themselves with the fact that, on principle, they never would have wanted a Mickey anything in the States and did their best to ignore the adults high-fiving across the street.
Although we knew about the peloton - the main group of riders, plus their entourage of cars loaded with extra bikes, news vans full of perilously clinging photographers & satellite vehicles transmitting intermittent tv signals - the caravan was a surprise. Long after the road was blocked off so team buses & logistical equipment could pass and the t-shirt vendors had come and gone, a grand procession of sponsors came parading through strewing free merchandise. Immediately, things took on a festive spirit, with folks vying to attract attention and catch prized items. Très gauche, but who wouldn't succumb to temptation with rewards so dear: sample size packages of laundry detergent, mini beer bottle key chains, sacks of pretzels, paper pizza fans, single-serving tea bags & Aquarel bottles thrown to replicate air-to-ground heat-seeking missiles. Granted, it's not as though they were as valuable as colored plastic beads... No, sorry, that's Mardi Gras - but it was much the same thing. Once, long ago in New Orleans, I found myself among the throngs jostling for those precious purple (or green or gold) pearls when, all of a sudden, I was grounded. I looked down to find a little boy with a pocketknife sawing at my shoelaces (intertwined with strings of beads) -- apparently, this was a much more lucrative approach for the under 4 feet tall set. Similarly, the Tour worked its magic - people jumping up & down, madly waving their arms about, generally behaving in ways for which they would necessarily need to repent. Oh là là, to live in the fast lane today, who would not willingly fast tomorrow?
With the capture of their first trinket, M&K were also hooked. Not long into their bountiful hunting, a driving Hotel Etap receptionist caught Katrianna's eye & a gentle, underhanded throw, along with an errant gust of wind, sent the gift skidding to her feet. Juggling other treasures, Katrianna failed to retrieve it immediately. Quel dommage,she who hesitates... With remarkable speed, a white-haired old man teetered over, deftly reached around her and grabbed the tantalizing gem! He quickly shuffled off to regain his original derrière position several yards away & carefully examined the hotel chain's logo emblazoned on its discounted key chain. Like taking Haribo bonbons from a baby, he slipped it into his pocket and then seemed content to let his wife collect the remaining loot. A difficult blow, Katrianna regained her composure after recognizing the bitter truth - this ain't no church-sponsored Easter egg hunt, this was the Big Leagues! Time to put away childish things & up her game. Had we not realized it before, we now fooly understood -- this was a world-class event. Finally, the motorized recycling dumpster signaled the fin du fin de carnival. M&K happily bent over to admire their amassed good fortune when, to cap it off, the key chain culprit abruptly etapped Katrianna on the shoulder with the day's most esteemed giveaway - a polka-dotted cycling hat, the crème de la crème of Champion's (a grocery store chain)! Despite Katrianna's attempts at refusal, he insisted she accept his hat trick and left only after she'd finally granted him "Merci." Our hats off to him, he was rather a good chap-eau, after all.
And then, without further adieu, the real, live Tour de France raced by! In front of the first set of riders, we saw Michael Rasmussen, the man who would win the day's stage and, with that, don the yellow jersey for the remainder of the Tour. Amazingly, in this 15 minutes (make that seconds) of fame, we'd witnessed the most critical moment in the 2007 Tour de France! Le directeur sportif beaucoup modeste de Team Sarkar, I took a victory lap.
For the next 10 days, Rasmussen retained his lead & we reveled in the glory of being part of history every time updates came on the news. There was none of the chauvinistic divisiveness like when Lance was winning - in one afternoon, all nations had united in global camaraderie. Sports really were rewarding, the girls had to admit, as they played Crazy Eights with their Télé 7 card deck or passed many a pleasant hour deliberating the true identity of a bank's stuffed animal mascot dangling from yet another key chain: marmot, squirrel or chipmunk? The virtue of athletics was redeemed, though some of the lustre diminished slightly when the wheels literally fell off the little plastic axles on their little plastic Kleber car... (How deflating is that?)
We were even inspired to explore more destinations along Le Tour's hallowed ground, following in the bikers' stirrups. We visited the cycling-friendly towns of Le Bourg d'Oisans and Briançon. So encouraged were we by the red & white ALLEZ! messages spray painted on the roads, that it was almost possible to pretend we didn't see the cycling purists' cigarette butts or the many fans' scattered trash littering the Alps at every hairpin turn on the scenic Col de Galibier. Forevermore, we'd be able to watch future Tour coverage and fondly think back to these affirming experiences...
Then, four days from the favorite's ensured victory on the Champs-Élysées, we got one last French translation lesson. On its front page, the newspaper ran an unexpected obituary - the passing of Le Tourch -
Leaving behind grieving past winners (relatively speaking), the Tour de France died on Thursday, July 25, 2007, 'at the age of 104, after a long illness.'
Rasmussen was kicked off his team and removed from the Tour due to drug allegations. [Alberto Contador, now Lance's 2009 nemesis - and teammate - would go on to win.]
"Ummm... excuse me, but could you tell me where Isaac Newton's clapping hallway is?"
Katrianna stood on tiptoe to peer into the ticket booth at Trinity College's Great Gate.
"His what?"
Katrianna tried again. More than anything else at Cambridge, she wanted to see the hall where Newton tested his speed of sound hypothesis by clapping his hands and listening for the echo. Earlier that day, when driving to the university, our family voted on which college to visit based on limited time & expense. Katrianna convinced the rest of us that Trinity's Isaac Newton trumped all other notorious cards who'd attended our second choice, nearby King's College (we could save face(s) for another trip).
She dejectedly walked back through the heavy wooden doors to report, "He said Newton didn't do the clapping experiment. It's just another tourist trap!"
Impossible! Could Rick Steves be wrong? All four of us simultaneously looked up to check the sky - nope, still intact. Katrianna pulled out her well-worn pocket travel log and made a tally mark - "That's #42, Mom."
Alas, once again, we would have to hold our applause. We consoled ourselves on the outside of Trinity's ivory towers (which looked a lot like exterior brick walls) by taking a photo of Newton's dorm window which faced the street and looked down upon a small apple tree.
"If I may, do you know who is up there above the gate?" asked a man who suddenly stood beside us, apparently taking it upon himself to point us in the right direction. (Verily, it was the same gentleman whose truth telling had taken its toll on Katrianna minutes before.)
Mikaela giggled self-consciously and Katrianna held her breath. "Ah ha," he thought, "I've got them!" But just as he was about to explain, Mikaela realized that his was not a rhetorical question and exclaimed, "Sure, doesn't everybody? That's Henry the Eighth!"
"And he had six wives!" jumped in Katrianna, who was busily leaping from cobblestone to cobblestone in a game of imaginary hopscotch.
The gatekeeper looked up to Henry and then back down at the girls with a quizzical expression.
"Your turn?" Katrianna asked. Mikaela gave the nod. They took their positions - face to face, two feet apart. Mikaela cleared her throat. Katrianna attentively bounced in place. Their Henry VIII call and response commenced:
"Catherine of Aragon --" "Divorced!" "Anne Boleyn --" "Beheaded!" "Jane Seymour -- " "Died of her own accord!" "Anne of Cleves -- " "Divorced!" "Catherine Howard -- " "Beheaded!" "Catherine Parr -- " "Survived!"
"Crikey, that's more than most English schoolchildren know!" He scratched his thinning silver crown and reconsidered, "I've been working here for over 30 years - that's more than most people at Cambridge know!"
He told us about the students' annual prank of stealing Henry's scepter and replacing it with either a chair leg or a broom handle. Indicating the globe held in the king's left hand, he next queried, "Do you know what an orb is?"
Evidently, unbeknownst to him, this was a multiple choice question, for Katrianna started, "O swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb..." And Mikaela finished, "Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere."
The poor fellow hadn't realized his miss fortune. M&K had spent months reciting that "orb" line from Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene and Mikaela had grown especially fond of the Twelfth Night quote after seeing it engraved on a statue of Shakespeare's jester in Stratford-upon-Avon. From then on, she seemed to find it applicable to any and all situations in Europe, even without such fortuitous prompting.
Additionally, M&K ran through their sing song rendition of Henry's greatest hits (on his wives) on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis - it was part of their top 40 repertoire at the time. Besides DK or Michelin travel guides, we'd brought along only 4 books for this entire European trip (we'd agreed to "go light" & the limit was one book per carry on bag). The kids had never experienced such a dearth of literature and so had devoted themselves to memorizing the minutiae of The Complete Illustrated Guide to the Kings & Queens of Britain. (By chance, we'd found it on Border's 60% off clearance shelf just before our trip and, unlike the Don't Know Much about the Kings and Queens of England series or similar children's books that were considered "age appropriate," M&K were fascinated by its 250+ pages of stories and argued over whose turn it was to reread the best parts aloud as we drove around Great Britain.) [As far as learning English history for the even younger set, we liked an 1897 edition of Short Stories from English History by Albert F Blaisdell, a book passed down to us from Grandma's collection.]
Luckily, our self-appointed phantom of the tollbooth discerned (or forgave?) the jovial spirit of the girls' copious (or would that be quote-idian?) exuberance and graciously suggested, "Jolly good, now why don't you take a tour? You do have time to look around?"
It was getting late and most of the colleges were closing to visitors soon. "Well," I answered, "we just have this afternoon... And we'd hoped to see Newton's hall, but now that we learned the truth about that - thank you, by the way - we're pretty happy to see his tree here..."
His eyebrows went up (proof he adhered to a naturally principled philosophiæ). I calculated (though it seemed an infinitesimal differential), "Or a descendant of his tree?" He nodded, the gravity of the situation sinking in.
"We're thinking we'll go ahead to King's College." I'd unwittingly touched a nerve.
"King's College? Why there's so much to see right here! Come with me!" Immediately, he waved his arm and the gates to higher learning open sesamed.
We entered Trinity's vast courtyard together, but soon after our spontaneous guide noticed a bevy of VIPs congregating at the entrance. He quickly imparted instructions for us to stand in a very particular spot and he'd return for our answer to "What is significant here?" No doubt pleased by our puzzlement, he cried as he sped away (in much the same fashion as Alice's rabbit hurrying off for his very important date), "It's to do with the clock! Go, watch the clock!"
So, we compliantly bided our time in front of King Edward's Tower, taking care to steal only furtive glances at this side of Newton's paradise, aka an inside job view of Sir Isaac's dorm room. But our satisfaction was short-lived as we realized, in watchful ignorance, that we had no idea what he was talking about.
Was there a ghost of a chance that Hamlet's father was still lurking about up there? No, that was not to be, I was quite off the Den mark - he'd be over at King's College. Ah ha, the clock struck the hour! Surely now we'd learn for whom the bell tolls. From their tower roosts, disturbed doves fluttered about cooing secret messages to us, but regrettably their pidgin English was merely indecipherable squab(ble)s... Then, from the adjacent college, another tower's clock chimed out of sync - was that it, were we caught up in the chronic[ker] showmanship of rival superiority? Or, a once-in-a-sentry breach in the time peace? Whatever was the Greenwichmeaning of this? I admit, I was getting ticked.
"Having a good time, all tickety-boo?" Our seer, mortarly bored of regents perhaps, had enthusiastically returned to us at last! However, his new hints were to no avail and finally he just told us that this was the clock featured in Chariots of Fire - the "stopwatch" timing Lord Burghley's famous run about the perimeter of the Great Court during its 12 noontime strikes. We never would have recalled that detail on our own, mostly due to the fact that the girls had not seen the movie and their parents had watched it in 1981. He'd done it! We were speechless. He then took pity on us and revealed that the scene's filming had actually taken place at Eaton College, not Cambridge, and that the Harold Abrahams character is erroneously portrayed as fleet footing it when historically Lord Burghley was the only runner to successfully beat the clock (yet not in 1919, preceding the '24 Olympics, but in 1927).
He escorted us to the chapel, lingered over a few more questions and then allowed us to tour the rest of the grounds on our own. It felt as though we had the place all to ourselves (well, with the exception of the omnipresence of our ol' pal, Newt, Sir Francis Bacon, Ernest Rutherford, Charles Babbage, Niels Bohr, John Dryden, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson, A.A. "Pooh" Milne & William Makepeace Thackeray) and we were suitably charmed by its vanity fair. When we met up again with our host, he had one final question for Mikaela: "So, do you think you'd like to study here at Cambridge?"
Wishing not to offend him, a wise Mikaela summoned all of her tact, saw fit to spare him of her "homecolleging" plans and simply reverted to a schoolgirl giggle by way of response. "Indeed," he proffered, "we should have given you a degree already!"
The rest of our gloaming Cambridge evening was filled strolling along the River Cam like typical tourists and unintentionally finding ourselves trespassing through college yards and campus grounds (to which we were politely told by the guards to go back the way we came, essentially permitting us to freely explore many of the colleges' "backyards" and hangout spots at our leisure). There were more repeatedly surprising and remarkable conversations, as well: the first was struck up by a friendly biology professor & her teaching assistant; later, graduate exchange students wanted to compare impressions of England's attractions (and dwell on the weather's detractions); and finally, the local grocery store's chatty & inquisitive checkers were keen to hear all about our "brilliant" adventures throughout Britain, although they were incredulous that "there was anything interesting to do here in Cambridge?"
At the end of the day, it was clear to us that America's Southern hospitality and manners have some serious competition from the Brits' warmth and easygoing gentility. Not only that, but despite Mikaela's uni-lateral acceptance deferral, I readily consider this the kids' first college scholarship offer (at least in terms of its third degree potential?). Of course, it seems a mite presumptuous, but after all we obviously have very powerful connections with those in charge of Cambridge U's highly selective admissions process.
[Editorial note: We know, it's Oxford with the Rhodes Scholars program, but Cambridge has the Golden (Bill) Gates.]
During HO-HOsanna hey! Christmas vacations, my childhood days of yore were filled with carols sung by Mahalia Jackson, Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole. But every night before going to bed, I'd lie down on the living room couch and tune into the Jackson 5's Christmas Album. In the dark, I listened while I watched the magical patterns created on the ceiling by the Christmas tree's colorful flashing lights. This was my most sacred yuletide ritual. First came Side 1's rollicking, jolly songs, full to the brim with Santa's promised visit, ol' St Nick's chimney antics and Frosty's lively dilemma. Then I'd get up to flip the lp, always scratching it just a little as I tried to set the record player's arm down ever-so ineptly (that really needled my mom & brothers - producing an earful of stereophonic surround sound). Now it was Side 2's time to be mellow. I grew anxious on behalf of a tearful Jermaine who just broke up with his girlfriend, allowing myself to be swept over by as much germane nostalgia as a six year old single girl can muster. I wondered about "the couple upstairs wanting to know there's someone who cares" and always renewed my vow to give love on Christmas day, per Michael's request. I duteously dreamt of someday at Christmas when we'd all know what Christmas is for (essentially - no wars, universal love, hope & peace on earth, plus any bonus treats that happen to be peeking out of the top of your stocking). Finally, I'd nod off amid visions of Mommy kissing Santa Claus, even years after I was in on the "secret" of Santa's true identity known by all older, jeering brothers. Then, each year on Christmas morning, my very own personal archangel Michael heralded our family to open presents and I had myself a merry little Christmas, just as the Jackson 5 wished I (ok, and everybody else, too) would.
These days, Mikaela might take after me in some obvious ways, but there was nothing akin to the pride I felt when, as a three year old, she demanded that we play the Jackson 5 Christmas cd incessantly from Thanksgiving through Christmas (and beyond). She'd solemnly strap on her toy drum and reverently march around the house with The Little Drummer Boy, repeatedly hitting the replay button just as it was nearly tapped out. Eventually, our percussion section expanded - as soon as Katrianna could, she toddled around after her big sister with her own miniature smiley face drum (really a tambourine, but somehow Mikaela drummed other notions into Katrianna's head) & was kept completely off beat with some buggin' centipede-styled drumsticks.
Yet, M&K's Jackson 5 playfulness couldn't be contained to merely the adventurous months. Instead of Mama's Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird, their mama sang "Rockin' Robin" to hush her little babies in the middle of the night. And, instead of the traditional alphabet song, it was "ABC" which, with some slight tweaking, schooled our scholars in their letters. Really, try it. Listen for the melody, then here we go now -
Sit yourself down, take a seat, all you gotta do is repeat after me - I said ABC, as simple as do re mi - DEF - GH I'm a gonna teach ya how to sing it out, C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, let me show ya what it's all about - JKL - MNO oo oo- PQRST - t - t- Teacher's gonna show you - Shake it, shake it, baby - UV double Ew wee - XYZ, baby, you & me, girl!
And, in 1, 2, 3 simple lessons, that's how easy reading & rhythm can be!
Next, for math & counting by twos, we cheered "2-4-6-8, who do you appreciate? (Please say that mom is me...)" Well, you get the idea -- our particular form of homeschooling would have been impossible without the curriculum guidance and educational expertise of little Michael and his big brothers.
But, is the "little Michael" qualification really necessary? Yes.
In a twist on the I Was Country When Country was Uncool theme, I was a Michael fan when Michael was uncool and right up until the moment when Michael became too cool - around the time that the Jackson 5 left Motown and became The Jacksons & Michael grew up to ascend Pop's solo throne. In my opinion, that's when his off the wall behavior started. And then, soon enough, the Thriller was gone for me (to manila or bust?). All it took was a few rockous guitar licks and one signature crotch grab, a shot seen round the world, and I beat it. He was Bad, I knew it.
But, that was ok. As the preppy tween-teen crowd clamored to expose blindingly white socks beneath their flooding black pants & worship at the King of Pop's penny loafers, I claimed little Michael all for myself. It seemed I was the only one at the time. While my older brother was romancing his dates with Steely Dan or the Carpenters and the other brother was hard rocking with Van Halen and Pink Floyd, I was perpetually stuck on the likes of Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5. Decades later, I still am.
[Though, I confess, I make one exception for the elder Michael's efforts. Whenever Chris or the kids ask me to do some extra chore or favor, I almost always agree but they have to pay a heavy price - listening to me sing a few bars of "Got Me Working Day & Night." Usually they turn away by the time I get to the squeals, up kicks, spins & moonwalking... but it's purely strategic on my part: not only do I thoroughly enjoy myself, it's a subtle yet very effective way of keeping requests to the essential minimum.]
In some respects, I had to come to terms with losing Michael Jackson in the early 1980s just when seemingly everyone else began emulating him. It sounds overly dramatic, but especially in these last years - once I had kids and had to explain my a-synchronous admiration and sadness - making those distinctions became even more poignant. Young Michael was the most talented singer I have ever heard, the most mesmerizing and dynamic dancer & performer I have ever seen, as close as I imagine we will come to witnessing a modern-day Mozart - our era's most popular musical prodigy. So, after a lot of practice, that's how I choose to remember Michael today, as well. I hope his someday has come and he can now receive a share of the peace, serenity and happiness that he bequeathed to so many of us.
We're officially on "summer vacation." That can only mean one thing: Mikaela & Katrianna are now doing more schoolwork in a week than we accomplish in an entire month all together. Over time, I figured out, if I really want the kids to get busy with the academics, I just declare a holiday.
When they were little, M&K loved to "play school." Actually, they've never stopped. Our school curriculum & tempo are already guided, in large part, by their self-motivated learning styles and interests, so there is little difference when school is "on" or "off." Every now & then, however, I feel the inexplicable urge to exclaim, "Give me a break!... Please?" That's okay, the girls happily take charge and institute some discipline around here. And, since it's merely semantics anyway, I write down all the stuff they do "for fun" on our "vacation" and count it as school without their knowledge.
So, what are they doing? Well, there's the usual summer stuff: all-day playdates, lots of hiking & outdoor activities, plus baking, crafting & gardening. We're also visiting museums, zoos and state parks before they get too crowded. (FYI, we generally begin 'summer vacation' around mid-April... uh huh, homeschoolers are renegades.) And they're currently publishing the fifth issue in yet another newspaper venture...
But, mostly, they are preparing for the SAT.
No, I did not manipulate them into this (not that I'm knocking that technique, don't get me wrong). All on their own, they proclaimed one day that they weren't going to college because "We're going to HOMECOLLEGE, Mom!" Believe it or not, I wasn't immediately filled with a sense of maternal pride or teacherly accomplishment. When Mikaela was born, I'd come to terms with the idea that I would have to do my best by the kids for the next 20 years or so and, in our case, that includes homeschooling them. But, after that, I want to rest (or learn to fly airplanes, not quite sure). So, with no ulterior motive except perhaps to completely discourage the idea, we eventually came to an understanding. If they got such high SAT scores that they could win academic scholarship offers to competitively ranked universities of their choice, I would then agree to let them skip college. Otherwise, no dice. (Of course, I'm also counting on the inevitable, evolutionary desire to get as far away from one's parents as possible kicking in at around 17. Ok, who am I kidding? - maybe 16? 15? Do I hear a 14? Or, if they really are so smart, certainly they'll divine the genuine lure of further education: no full time job required. So, I'm not too worried. Yet.)
It all started last summer. At the bookstore, Mikaela picked out the gigantic, comprehensive Barron's SAT prep book which included several practice tests, the longest & driest vocabulary list she could find (sans cartoons or cute hints to help you remember the definitions - perused but rejected as "too easy") and infinite math problems with obligatorily convoluted explanations (not the entertaining, user-friendly versions Chris was leaning toward because he might be able to understand them). She was fervently commending the (national?) merits of this particular guide when, lo and behold! a guy suddenly pops out from behind a corner display to concur, for - did we all realize? - he himself had used that very same study guide when he was in high school, and had, in fact, made a [dramatic pause] ...1600! What the dickens?!He was an indisputable apparition of Christmas future - vividly demonstrating to our impressionable, starry-eyed pupils the fate of those who get a perfect SAT score: You shall forevermore spend your evenings haunting test prep aisles in bookstores to pounce on unsuspecting passersby, the only ones who might still care 15 years after that momentous day when the postmaster delivered verifiable proof of your preeminence to the mailbox. But, that's not all: if you continue to strive & work hard, like this admirable chap, you might turn your laudable efforts into a full time career as a Princeton Review tutor. I guess what the College Board attests is indeed true - SAT scores are obviously the #1, infallible indicator of a person's potential for life-long success.
Despite the genius hustler in our midst, Mikaela stuck with her choice and was quite pleased with the prospect of spending her "free time" riffling through 1,000 vocabulary flashcards and even looked forward to solving for x. (Since higher arithmetic had often been an exercise in patience with poor instructors who didn't understand the problems any better than I did, Chris took over math teaching duties when we hit algebra. Hey, I figure that if the kids do well on the math portion, we'll look back on this as a wonderful father-daughters bonding experience. And, if they don't, I have someone to blame besides myself... I fail to see any negatives in this solution.)
However, Katrianna spent much of the car ride home slowly brooding & fuming until we turned around just in time to see Mt St Katrianna erupt right there in the back seat. POW! She was incensed: Why is Mikaela getting a SAT book and I'm NOT? I never get any challenges! Why can't I have any challenges? My math's too easy! Don't we remember when Mikaela was learning her times tables, who yelled out all the answers first? Same with spelling - admit it! So, tell me, exactly why can't I have a good vocabulary, too?!
It was a full-blown temper tantrum, the likes of which we'd never seen, all over a SAT book. It didn't appease her when, in desperation, we suggested she could use the accompanying cd whenever she liked - appealing to her computer-geek nature, usually a surefire pacifier. The fact that she was technically supposed to be a 2nd grader didn't provide any solace, either. So, since there was nothing else to do, I pulled over, donned my powdered wig & black judiciary robe (stored in the glove box - heck, they thought of everything in those government-issue emergency supply kits, didn't they, Brownie?), and delivered a Supreme Court-level presentation of the evidence, with a full recounting of the history & progression of Mikaela v. Katrianna's scholarly preparation thus far: an exhaustive, logical proof of the necessary steps to SAT readiness. Unable to refute the fact that Mikaela had long been doing long division - the bane of K's existence (she always came up short) - Katrianna acquiesced on the condition that if she practiced her multiplication & division all year, we would allow her to participate in each & every SAT verbal and mathematics lesson. Furthermore, if she could follow the math as well as (or, we had to concede, better than) Mikaela, we'd rush out at once and purchase her very own, personal Barron's. A quick swing by the notary's office to formalize the contract & peace was restored on Katrianna's earth.
After months of long, divisive days (actually, they were colorful worksheets), Katrianna reached her quotient at last. In addition, she'd completed all of Dad's assignments & continued to get as many answers right as her big sister because she went more slowly, but with more accuracy... So, the steadfast tortoise met the rite angles of passage requirements & this summer ended up with a SAT 3-book set that was serendipitously on sale for $8 total (pshew, no cosineR needed). First thing, she devoured the writing book, highlighting significant tips and all the while talking nonstop about how it's improving her imperative skills moment by moment! She then started in on the practice questions and, when she "graded" them, her exclamations of "Hey, I got it right!" were just as gleeful as those of "Oh, I got it wrong!" Plus, we overheard her suggesting to Mikaela, "I wonder if anyone ever missed every single question on the whole SAT?" In other words, if you can't get a perfect score, consider that as the next best option...
Now M&K are envious of each other's SAT vocab lists & traipse around trying to outdo each other in erudite panache, dropping sophisticated word choice at will. They are also very possessive of their words and take great umbrage when the other kid tries to usurp their "turf," as in "Hey, you can't use that - that's my word!!" Mikaela enjoys taking the reading comprehension tests and then discussing why she missed a question and what possible mindset the test makers could so erroneously have employed when coming to such poor conclusions. And the essay prompt practice has led them, after two or three frantic paragraphs of
timed writing, to that age-old discovery: "My hand hurts."
Still, they insist that they're having loads of fun. It adds a completely new dimension to what seems to be the standard(ized) practice of "teaching to the test" -- only instead of cramming for the two weeks before it's administered, they're blithely serving hard time of 5 to 10 year sentences (including some with No Error). And, finally, no test-taking detail is too small: they've meticulously planned
out which snacks they'll take along for the break times between
sections.
Irregardless, in a continued effort to promote collegiate aspirations, I make it a point to tour universities everywhere we visit. But,
honestly, it's not helping. For instance, an amiable but overzealous Stanford co-ed's thrilling accounts of wild 'n crazy
cafeteria tray stair sledding, unfettered splashing in fountains between
classes, a finals week tradition of paper airplane combat, and the "totally
hilarious" time capsule buried with a four-year-old pizza slice inside
it didn't exactly light a fire - intellectual or communal - under M&K. Moreover, the absolutely mortifying idea of a nude beach on the
campus of the University of British Columbia likely contributed to
rejuvenating their homecolleging resolve. No, this is definitely not working. . . at
least that's what I tell my husband when I look up long enough from How
to Fly Airplanes for Dummies.
Pretty soon, I think we'd better start the new school year - and give the kids a chance for some "down time." Next spring, I vow to seriously look into options for summer camp. You know, the fancy free kind where you get to braid those ultra useful lanyards, build up the nerve to cannonball off the floating pier, spend forty minutes peering into your shoes to check for hidden scorpions, slap mosquitoes in time to Kumbaya and eat s'mores, like 'em or not. Golly, that sounds swell! Precisely what M&K need: no more moping around, complaining about being bored with nothing to do & asking every 15 minutes for permission to go outside and play - the girls just hate it when I do that. I wonder, should I sign myself up for two sessions or three?
I was a product of public schooling. I fully expected my kids would be, too. Applying that old adage "If it was good enough for me..." seemed apropos. Although my SAT scores were nothing special, I'd won scholarships for college, worked as a university teaching assistant as a senior, and went on to two different graduate school programs with fellowships at each. I had ample reason to be a big proponent of traditional, public education. But, when my daughters neared school age, it caused me to reflect - what were the primary lessons I had learned in elementary school?
Kindergarten I learned to sit 'Indian style' on a 14"x18" carpet remnant. I also learned I did not like boxing, wrestling or martial arts, even as a spectator. Every time the teacher left the classroom, the boys would jump off their mats and begin kung fu fighting.
One day, the teacher caught them. Now I understand that a logical punishment for some mistakes is to let children follow the negative behavior through to its natural conclusion, so they learn the consequences of making bad decisions. After all, that's what Ward & June Cleaver did for Wally and the Beav... But, these were 5 and 6 year old boys, so when the teacher made them continue the fight until one boy clearly won, all of the rest of the boys wanted a turn, too! From then on, every morning after we recited the pledge, sang the alphabet song, ate a snack and had a bathroom break (which usually meant we had 30 minutes left in our kindergarten day), the teacher refereed. Girls got ringside seating, our mats arranged in a circle so we could dutifully watch on the outskirts of the action. Not that we didn't get attention, too. "Miss Cathy, did I see you uncross those legs? Now just sit right back on your square, little lady!" And, of course, that's exactly what I did. Partly because in those days teachers paddled for obstreperous behavior like uncriss-crossing your legs - thereby, crossing the teacher. And partly because, up to that point of my life, I was ambivalent about my "luck" at being born female. I hated wearing dresses and itchy tights, especially when my big brothers walked around without shirts on. But, after a few months of kindergarten, I really appreciated the advantages of being a girl - and not a boy... or a pit bull.
1st grade I learned to read. In the first couple of weeks, I was put with three other kids in the Owls' Gold Star Reading Club, a great honor. Of course, that meant the teacher spent the least amount of time with our group and always quickly grew impatient with us because we kept forgetting to move the tongue depressors along the page as we sped read aloud. She was a nice lady, though. When she saw me walking to school in the mornings, she'd stop and offer to give me a ride the rest of the way in her yellow Cadillac. "Thank you, but no, Ma'am," I'd always say. She'd smile back at me quizzically, twirling a finger around wisps of blond hair dangling down to golden hoop earrings, and then drive off as the passenger window magically rolled up without her ever leaning over to turn the handle. I'd walk the rest of the way to school thinking of three things: 1) I wasn't sure if Mrs. L counted as a "stranger" or not; 2) anyway, Dad told me to never accept a favor if you don't absolutely have to because you shouldn't feel beholden to anybody; and 3) Be Thankful for What You've Got.
2nd grade School administrators decide to create "accelerated classes" and select the 25 brightest seven year olds to compose a fledgling elitist class. The principal visits our room on the first day of school to tell us how fortunate we are and how he thinks very highly of our fine teacher. And it became clear he did, too, as our princi-pal was constantly summoned to his office to consult about advanced teaching methods... she'd tell us not to move, she'd be right back, then hurriedly switch on PBS television as she left the room. That year, I learned to loathe "The Electric Company." Halfway through the year, I loathed "The Electric Company" and "Sesame Street," which aired afterwards. By the end of the year, I loathed "The Electric Company," "Sesame Street" and no, I did not want to be Mister Rogers' neighbor. Finally, I simply learned to prefer the testing of the Emergency Broadcast System to the resumption of "our regularly scheduled programming."
3rd grade We covered all of the material for 2nd & 3rd grades with a wonderful teacher who'd taught both of my brothers and was in the last of her forty year career. Did not watch wrestling - live or on tv - even once. I learned the best teachers have naturally retiring personalities. 4th grade In another attempt to meet the academic needs of its students, the district implements "cross-graded classes." They took 15 'gifted' kids from the fourth grade and the top 15 fifth graders, stuck them in a classroom together & told the privileged teacher, "Congratulations, this should be easy." Yet, there was still a wide disparity in the abilities of the students, plus the teacher had to go back & forth all day between grades & lesson plan preparations. Eventually, Mrs. McC decided to just give us a week's worth of assignments on Monday morning. We'd race to see who could finish first, a few of us wrapping it up by Tuesday afternoon (in her defense, some kids took until Friday and she was busy helping them). But, whenever you were done, you got free time, which meant you could access the hallowed land behind the partition. For a few months, we reveled in a smorgasbord of craft materials, board games and old sets of Highlights, Ranger Rick & National Geographic. After we'd exhausted those, Mrs. McC supplemented with magazines from home: I learned about feminine etiquette from Redbook, feminism from Ms. and was pleasantly amused by the droll quotes in Reader's Digest. I also learned that you can fit no more than 126 games of eraser tag into a regular school day, 97 on assembly days. Sure, I could have done more independent study. One girl did - she'd break out a book & start reading as soon as she finished her class work. But, that was because she had connections. While the rest of us were limited to checking out two books on our weekly library visit, her mom volunteered and schmoozed with the school librarian so much that she was permitted to check out four books! Frankly, I wouldn't have read four books a week anyway... not when you could play dodge ball instead.
5th grade We were now the fifth graders in Mrs. McC's cross-graded class. Repeat routine from fourth grade, but bored games were replaced by new-used board games, bought for us at garage sales by Mrs. McC's husband. Her teenage daughter also donated some of her "cool" subscription discards, from which I learned my preference for Mrs. McC's Better Homes & Gardens' spreads on leaves or garrets to Tiger Beat's glossy foldouts of Leif Garrett. All year, I reigned supreme as Dictionary-looking-up-words-faster-than-anyone-else-Champion. I stood to deliver an acceptance part of speech, but then meekly sat down when I realized the fleeting fame of a lexicon job well done. Still, it was in fifth grade that I was told that I was scoring at grade level 13+ on many sections of the annual standardized test - how bogus, I thought, who's gonna believe that one?Everyone knows there's no such thing as grade 13 (at least I hoped there wasn't). But, Mrs. McC and my mom seemed very pleased, so I kept my suspicions to myself and asked if I could go outside to play because the rain had made the mud just perfect for slip n slide freeze tag.
6th grade By now, our little core of students had been together so long, we were all aflush in a frenzy of anticipation because we were finally going to get "the hard teacher." She was young and pretty, but aloof & strict. Without a doubt, she'd whip us into intellectual shape. No more free time, no games, no fun of any kind: this was going to be good! We were busy from the moment the bell rang - grammar, math drills, quizzes, more worksheets than we'd done in all previous years combined. I wasn't too sure what I was learning, except for that fact that I was clearly a 'C' - for handwriting - student. But, just as I was about to wilt under her curs(ive)ory disapproval, she suddenly quit to go have a baby and never came back. We were halfway through sixth grade with nowhere to go - whatever were we to do? The next week, Mrs. McC emerged from retirement to finish out this last year of elementary school with us. From that, we learned how much we liked Mrs. McC and just how much she liked us back. Also, her propitious return was of the utmost significance on a personal level, as the third time did prove to be the charm for my shoebox. Gloriously and gaudily transformed into a card-receiving mailbox for her third and final Valentine's Day class party, it was awarded first prize & shrewd Mrs. McC had taught me that all-important lesson about perseverance paying off. And, finally, just for review in case we'd missed it those other times, we learned again that sometimes the "best teachers" are not the best teachers.
But, really, I liked school, as I'd happily tell any adult who asked that original, recurring question. What wasn't to like? I got good report cards, teacher-parent conferences were a breeze, and where else could I be sure to get up a rousing game of kickball between the hours of 8 am & 3 pm on weekdays, which was truly the only worthy criterion in my eyes (revealing the real reason I so despised dresses). Besides, no one had ever heard of homeschooling back then. And, I had no desire to go to a private school like some of my friends, whose parents paid lots of money so their girls could wear uniformly plaid skirts, brag that they scored two whole years above grade level due to their superior educations and meet with the "foxes" from the boys' private school behind the rectory. (I know, that's a cliché, but that's what you get when life imitates art/movies... you get to talk about it with more clichés... Wow, I guess it's, like, a vicious circle, ya know what I mean?)
Plus, I moonlighted. My mom became a teacher at an inner-city high school across town when I was two. For years, she took me with her on in-service days and I accompanied her to many afterschool activities. I got to help decorate her bulletin boards, write on the chalkboards anytime I wanted, shag balls when she coached tennis and, the very best, straddle the rails at football games & dance with the cheerleaders as the band played during halftime. One evening, we went to a school play and I was exceedingly proud because some big kids with whom I was enamored allowed me to sit with them. To prove my sophistication, I distinctly remember pulling out a book from my own backpack at intermission and pretending to read. I even timed it so I turned the pages of Green Eggs and Ham after silently counting what I felt was an appropriate interval (had I actually known how to read). Though they didn't let on how impressive it was, I sensed from then on that I was "in." So, when I told people I loved school, I really did... High school, when I was in preschool, was the greatest learning experience of my life. That was my "home" school, as far as I was concerned, where I found my zone.
Learning can, should and does happen everywhere. Ultimately, we chose to homeschool Mikaela & Katrianna based on our family situation and the girls' personalities. But, I don't think there's one "right" way to get an education. Public school, private school or homeschool - it's often what we learn outside of these constructs that counts the most.
For most of my student years, I was not fond of history. Too many teachers had focused solely on dates & famous leaders and, in even the most challenging classes, tests were mere measures of meticulous memorization. The 'story' in history was lost, taken over by war generals, names of battles and what I suspected were some teachers' overwrought compensations for their own frustrated machismo. Even in college, I was bothered to find that friends, who seemed quite nice otherwise, were in fact history majors - what sort of deep seated psychological issues were they hiding? Who wanted to spend all their time delving into the gory details of madmen, power trips and world destruction?
Well, I'd eventually discover, my kids did. But, tyranny was only a minor part of their enthusiastic attraction to history, so they ended up - in ways much more persuasive than any teacher I'd ever had - taking me in and showing me the excitement that could be had by studying history. In a way, their tabula rasa innocence allowed them to accept the past 'as is' and skip the moral judgments which made me categorize things as 'good' or dismiss them as 'bad.' More effectively than Shakespeare, they put the play-fulness into historical drama, bringing individuals' personalities, the fascinating interplay of flaws & virtues, back into the stories. Of course, we also end up learning "the lessons" - both academic and ethical - intrinsic to the events, but without our primary concern being the weapons used or detailed listings of physical wounds inflicted (and without the requirement to demonstrate ultimate subject mastery in the form of a unit chapter test).
When Mikaela wanted to learn about WWII in fourth grade, I initially practiced my usual evasive maneuvers & put it off, hoping she'd forget about it until she was "old enough to handle it." I'd taken a college course on Holocaust literature that was thought provoking, mostly depressing, yet sometimes uplifting, and I solemnly looked forward to the time - when she was in high school, maybe - that I would be able to share those books with her - Night, Schindler's List, Survival in Auschwitz, Judgment at Nuremberg, What's to Become of the Boy? But, there was no way I felt she was ready for that now... or seeing war footage... or watching the compelling but brutal movies that even overwhelm adults...
I couldn't figure out how to teach WWII to the under-10 year old set besides the pedantic "just the facts, ma'am" approach, so I did what any thoughtful parent or teacher would do in that situation: I stalled. But, it wasn't long before Mikaela started independently building her own reading list and surreptitiously checking out WWII books from the library. She'd easily defeated my curriculum-setting axis, so my next strategic move as a homeschooling mom was clear: I allied myself with her efforts and she immediately began teaching me and her sister.
Freed from my preconceptions or didactic objectives, I was soon able to find excellent, age-appropriate resources & made several suggestions, but mainly I relied on Mikaela's instincts. Some books she started and then stopped after a few pages or a couple of chapters because they were "too scary." And, although I very anxiously put aside my apprehensions about letting her read The Diary of a Young Girl with its abrupt, wrenching conclusion, in an outcome I couldn't have foreseen, she never reached the end. Stopping halfway through, she declared that Anne was "too boy crazy" for her to continue. Since she had read other accounts of Anne's fate (including letters by Anne's father) and I know she will one day reread and finish the diary, I found this temporary assessment rather telling - it was clear that she saw Anne as a full person, not just a symbol of war, and, ironically, that genuine identification made her realize (even inadvertently) that she would better understand Anne's situation when she was more mature herself. She put Anne Frank's diary back on the shelf "for the next time we study World War II, Mom." In the time we devoted to WWII, Mikaela learned an enormous amount and taught me even more as we followed her student-led syllabus (recorded in my teacher'slog):
HISTORY - JANUARY: WWII for Mikaela, brief overview for Katrianna (studying dinosaurs instead)
Create collage of WWII drawings & symbols for portfolio theme divider NY Times The Complete Front Pages & NY Times Greatest Stories collections: read 'real time' newspaper articles leading up to war, during war & victory celebrations; discuss tone of war-time ads in paper; read current articles about Pearl Harbor 65 yr anniversary & google for more info Read fiction & non-fiction books: One Eye Laughing, The Other Weeping: Julie Weiss (Dear America); Number the Stars; Lily's Crossing; Sadako & the Thousand Paper Cranes; I Am David (too scary); American Girl: Molly on the Home Front series + A Spy on the Home Front + nonfiction study guide; The Devil's Arithmetic; Introducing Shirley Braverman; My Secret War; Diary of Anne Frank (1/2) + Nonfiction book w/photos, Anne's report cards & various info about her; The Causes of WWII; Witnesses to War: 8 True-Life Stories of Nazi Persecution; WWII Days: Projects ideas + background, facts; The Bombing of Pearl Harbor; A Time to Fight Back-Stories of Resistance; Growing Up in WWII; Memories of Survival; Children & War; Rescued Images: Childhood in Hiding; Hey, Don't You Know there's a War on?; Ten Thousand Children: Kindertransport; Carrie's War; Early Sunday Morning (Pearl Harbor); Journal of SP Collins, WWII soldier; Journal of Ben Uchida (Internment camp) Watch movies/videos: Sound of Music; Miracle of the White Stallions (Vienna's Spanish Riding School); What Have We Learned, CB? (Omaha beach, France, poppies); 60 minutes show @ just released WWII records w/interviews of camp survivors, original Schindler's list document, Anne Frank's papers, etc; K's Egypt video: section on Egypt's involvement in WWII; PBS documentary @ women pilots program in TX (WASP); PBS show @ 1949 Berlin airlift; Bedknobs & Broomsticks (movie has WWII references, book does not); Molly on the Home Front tv movie Fold 100 origami cranes based on Sadako book Learn terms: anti-Semitism, Axis powers, Allies, D-day, blitzkrieg, dictator, inflation, fascism, Gestapo, Holocaust, kamikaze, isolationism, nationalism, U-boat, Nazi, Aryan, crematorium, concentration camp, deportation, genocide, ghetto, swastika, yellow star, atom bomb - Hiroshima, Nagasaki Complete workbook pages; look up definitions in encyclopedia for terms; make battles list Discuss artists, ie Paul Klee, labeled as "degenerate" by Nazis who removed works from museums Write & type original WWII story: diary format @ US kid & her soldier dad serving overseas 12 pg Interview grandparents about their experiences as children during war Write & type 1000 word research paper on kids' contributions to war effort, cite primary & secondary sources + include bibliography (narrowed to 5 topics, started with Women Airforce Service Pilots & then switched to kids' contributions) Attend talk given by former WWII female resistance fighter at university memorial event Visit Holocaust museum, view & discuss exhibits
Visit Los Alamos "Manhattan Project" museum,view exhibits, A-bomb, talk with docents @ G-pa (M invokes moral absolutism here and insists bombs were wrong)
The following year in Europe, we got the opportunity to apply what we'd learned. One result of my newfound, daughters-inspired appreciation for history was an insistence that we not only see "fun" & touristy sites, but that we take some time to pay homage to the past, recognizing both the bad & good in history. I'd always struggled with the dichotomy of regarding war as wrong and ignoble, while I believed most soldiers were exceedingly brave and honorable. In WWII, the moral imperative for military engagement made 'right' & 'wrong' and the heroism of those involved uniquely evident. Yet, even when we cannot extol noble causes or justify a particular war, we will continue to glorify the people who sacrifice for our sakes and a victorious human spirit that often emerges most distinctly amid conflict. Having children - and relearning history with them - only deepened my sense of debt, humility and thankfulness to those who are willing to stand up and serve for their own and others' families.
For twenty years, I was an 'A' history student, but never retained - & usually couldn't forget fast enough- what I'd learned for the tests. History was summarily lumped in with my natural aversion to villainy, horror movies and obscure, irrelevant minutiae that, outside of a classroom, only occasionally showed up as Trivial Pursuit questions. But, apparently, what they say is true - even for the most incorrigible student, all it takes is the tutelage of motivating teachers: Katrianna, who began her Egyptology & Ancient Rome dual PhD program in preschool, and Mikaela, who so far has instructed me on medieval times, the British monarchy, the American Revolution and WWI & II. I'm receiving a first rate education this time around. In fact, I think I'm majoring in History...
For our first visit to Canada, we went to France. It was a tribute of remembrance for soldiers and civilians involved in The Great War. We drove the Circuit de Souvenir, a route that winds through WWI battle sites in the Somme Valley from Albert to Bapaume, France. Our tour concluded with a visit to the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, north of Arras.
Mikaela learned about WWI in a fairly traditional way before the trip: names of leaders, important battles, weapons development & new inventions, significant dates. But Katrianna hadn't formally studied WWI yet, so (unconstrained by the rigorous course requirements self-imposed by her 9 year old sister) her flights of fancy soared to WWI aircraft. She made every model in a vintage (cardboard) airplanes kit and knew the characteristics & insignias of Allied and Central combatants. Of course, there was also what she'd gleaned from the battles of the famed WWI flying ace, Snoopy... which led, to my surprise, to M&K memorizing every trivial detail about the real Red-headed Baron and his legendary dogfights (even those that weren't against a beagle).
Both girls recited "In Flanders Fields" and fashioned paper poppies. And our whole family watched "What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?" which is Charles Schultz' award winning cartoon salute with many Memorial Day facts interspersed with the Peanuts gang's car troubles (a classic, crank start automobile that repeatedly thrilled K - "Look, Snoopy's car!" - on our visit).
We began very early on a chilly morning in Albert, fog obscuring the view of Mary & Jesus who stood atop the Notre Dame de Brebières. The compact town centers around its fountain and the quiet town square across from the basilica. Many of the original buildings had been destroyed in the war and were rebuilt in the art deco style, but the church was restored faithfully and turned out to be my favorite in all of France. It is not very big or imposing and has little of the gilding or ornateness of France's famous cathedrals. But, it is airy, serene and beautiful in its simplicity and its soothingly fanciful interior design. It is also the setting for a salient WWI story. The church and its steeple served as an important landmark and base for soldiers who could see the Virgin from miles away, took up their stations under her gaze or passed by her on their way to the front lines. She loomed above as a symbol of sanctity and refuge until 1916, when Germans shelled the basilica, knocking over the statue but not fully dislodging it. Divisions grew among the troops as to the portentous meaning of God's divine hand holding the "Leaning Virgin" so precariously over their horrific conflicts. Ultimately, however, they seemed unified in their conclusion that the war would surely end when Mary joined them on the ground. So, in a truly ironic act combining both their hope and despair, all sides proceeded to take potshots at her golden likeness for months. The Germans, after being unsuccessful in toppling her but then taking possession of the cathedral themselves, even promoted a new rumor that whoever shot her down would lose the war. Finally, in 1918, British forces came under heavy artillery fire emanating from the basilica's tower. A colonel sent immediate orders to defy a newly instituted army order to spare all buildings and "blow the place to blazes." Fearful of reprisals from his superiors, a young captain - who was left in charge in the temporary absence of a general and his brigade major - hastily drew up plans of "imaginary trenches" that lay just beyond, but directly in the line of, the basilica and then commanded the battery officer to fire hundreds of rounds at those strategic trenches. Aided by such worthy accomplices, Mary did fall that day and, within months, so did the Central Powers.
After some time talking with Albert's welcoming greeters at the small but interesting visitor center-museum, we set off uncertain of what we'd find along the Circuit road. We're not war buffs and I'd had to do a lot of research beforehand only to find that there is not much to see in terms of intact WWI era sites. Development had occurred, the landscape had changed and we weren't going when the archetypal poppies would be in bloom. But, we drove down tiny villages' narrow streets lined by stucco houses and dilapidated barns, past farmers out plowing their fields and through the bucolic countryside that had once been overrun with soldiers and destruction - really, unable to reconcile the peaceful and colorful present images with the stark black & white war photos we'd studied. Then again, we couldn't help but wonder if that old stone farmhouse across the meadow was the very one Snoopy had crawled through enemy lines to get to so he could order a root beer. . . But, the most poignant symbol throughout the journey was the recurring cemeteries and their low walls concealing white crosses. The highway runs beside them, sometimes takes abrupt 90 degree turns right about them, and constantly provides glimpses of distant vistas and fields planted in furrows which skirt around scattered, small plots on the horizon.
By mid afternoon, we reached the Vimy Memorial, the most well-preserved site of our WWI expedition. France gave the land to Canada in 1922 in recognition of the Canadians' war efforts and their victory in recapturing the ridge from the Germans in the Battle of Vimy Ridge, April 1917. Almost all of its 220 acres are very hilly, but they are very small hills, like successions of dozens of pitchers mounds covered in short clipped, light green grass. These bumps and lumps of earth had been made as the terrain was exploded, exhumed, shored up or piled into heaps during the war. In other areas, there were large craters, created either by bombs that fell from above or in detonations, accidental and intentional, from interred munitions. Trees had been replanted and grown tall since being leveled during combat, but Katrianna couldn't run through them like she wanted because most of the ground had not been cleared of explosives and there were signs everywhere warning visitors to really "Stay off the grass" or else. The woods and fields were very still and empty with the exception of roaming 'grounds crew' sheep who kept the grass neatly shorn and tread lightly enough to avoid tripping any land mines (ewe, I admit I felt a little sheepish just watching them. . . but, by God's graze, there was no need to pull the wool over our eyes). [Sorry, I'd been pretty restrained up to this point, but still no excuse for that - returning to somber tone now.]
Instead, M&K played hide & seek and eagerly timed their runs through the mazes of trenches, recreated for permanence with walls made from concrete-filled sandbags and brick & metal grating flooring where there once had been streams of running, muddy water. Still, the kids' "war games" stopped every time there was a break in the trench walls for gunner lookouts, where you could stand and see the trench line occupied by the Germans just yards away, or at the numerous, small cubbyholes along the walls where soldiers had kept provisions or had to sleep.
The only way to enter Vimy's Grange Subway, an extensive tunnel system dug by British engineers, was on a guided tour. (Usually, we avoid guided tours, which are generally crowded, sometimes costly and often circumvent all of the fun for M&K, who - in their travel preparations - always call dibs on places we plan to visit and spend the preceding weeks reading up, memorizing facts & anecdotes and jealously guarding the privilege of playing tour guide when we finally arrive.) But, this time, our experience was excellent. The guides are college grads who won fellowships to spend four months showing visitors around the memorial and take their off days to sightsee. Our docent was extremely knowledgeable and fully lived up to the Canadians' friendly reputation, causing M&K to proclaim unequivocally that Vimy's was our very best guided tour in all of Europe.
After descending into the subway (and adjusting for tunnel vision), we noticed telegraph wires tacked to blackened chalk walls, damp with humidity and filled with musty odors. The tunnels were dimly lit, but were not nearly as dark as they had been during the war (pitch black for several yards at a time). We learned that, even inside the tunnels, no one was secure and the Allied soldiers, intent on expanding their own tunnel network, could often hear the digging of Central tunnelers just a few feet away. In fact, one technique was to purposely dig under the other guys' tunnels to set explosives beneath them and carry on the warfare underground.
There were many tunnel offshoots and mysterious barred dugouts that held supplies or ammunition caches (Katrianna likened them to the gladiators' storage rooms we'd seen in Rome's Colosseum). In one area, much of the booty found when reopening the tunnels was heaped into a rusty pile of machine guns, old cans of food, pistols, mildewed uniforms, grenades, wheelbarrows, utensils and unidentifiable rubble. Two weapons-savvy Belgian boys, also in our tour group, were ecstatic to try on helmets, wield hatchets and sip from canteens while M&K watched, mouths agape, from a safe distance.
There were few rooms, all very small, sparsely furnished with wooden slat chairs, cots and a couple of rickety desks in the officers' quarters. Besides the officers, the only soldiers regularly permitted to sleep inside the subway were the runners. Those were the men, required at a moment's notice, who would deliver and receive messages between the commanders below and the officers on the front lines. They had to sprint through miles of dark and harrowing tunnels and then emerge out onto battlefields to dodge sniper fire. Often volunteers from the regular ranks, they had a life expectancy, we were told, of 1-5 days.
Although there was no mention of it in our guide's narrative or the visitor center displays (probably in order to avoid any association with or semblance of bringing him positive notoriety), what made the runners' experiences even more intriguing was that Hitler, as an infantryman, had been a runner in WWI. And, during WWII, the then führer took great pains to protect Vimy from vandalism (even showing up there for a photo op to prove it). Though accounts I read differed, one interpretation was that he had been so impressed with Vimy's authenticity, he ensured its preservation - perhaps as a personal tribute to his early war career or, some say, due to his "soft spot" for fallen WWI soldiers. Another explanation was that Hitler respected it because, unlike other WWI memorials, Vimy did not exult in weaponry paraphernalia or vilify Germany, but stood only in remembrance of the dead. For whatever reason, he stationed Waffen-SS troops to guard the memorial for the duration of WWII.
As it turned out, our "tour of duty" to honor the veterans of WWI made our own world a little smaller, our alliances to others a little stronger and greatly magnified our gratitude to all those who served and brought us peace. Our debt continues to the men and women who do the same for us today, on Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day and always.
Chris and I used to plan our weekends around university and local library used book sales. We were bound to. These sales were full of all sorts of obscure, random & dusty titles with disturbingly nibbled edges (bookworms?) and torn, tattered jackets (not that we judged them by their covers). Invariably, Chris would turn up the volumes. He'd insist on purchasing a much needed fourth copy of Lancelot because 1) it was hardback, 2) it was likely the missing link to completing his senior thesis, and 3) it was 25 cents. So, that's how two aspiring literati became bookkeepers -- on account of our value system: 50 books for $12.50. (A ledger-ly, our living buy the book also kept us in the, well, read.) We always left with several boxes of rare finds that Chris would lovingly strap into the back seat, carefully anchored to the child safety locks.
That was no accident. For a long time, books were like our pampered babies. Until we had real babies. And needed more room for their pampers. So, though all parents deny doing it, it became clear that we would have to 'play favorites,' boldly declare our love for one fiction over another, and turn over some old leaves. The first 25 bags of books took their exit in preparation for Mikaela's nursery. The second batch packed it up for the girls' playroom. And, in the ultimate treachery, the third set was shelved (or, in this [book] case, unshelved) to make way for M&K's own, ever-expanding kids' book collection. (Drat, folio-ed again!)
Originally (sins I felt guilty for overbooking), I did convince Chris that we should try to sell the initial round of rejects to Half-Price Books in an effort to ease the farewell pinch. But, after the first couple of bags, the 'buy back' bookies caught on that our car's trunk was overflowing with more... Suddenly, we had no value in their eyes & our returns were pathetic. It just became too painful to be offered 15 cents for a book and see it up on their shelf two weeks later priced at $7.50.
Even worse is when we'd panic and seriously consider rebuying it! Sure, ridding ourselves of it had seemed like the copy right thing to do at the time... until we saw its new edition at Borders listed as a $19 novelty. Ya know how it is, when you realize you had a pretty good thing going with that open book? Finding yourself face-to-face with the lost love, it's so tempting to abandon all the progress you've made in the 12-Step Readers Anonymous Program. You start to sweat, experience those familiar withdrawal symptoms & can't remember why you two ever parted in the first place. Hey, you tell yourself, unlike with all those other used books you'd been considering, at least you know this one's history, who it spent time with before...
...and, next thing ya know, you're walking down the aisle to register that you're Reunited.
Thankfully, we finally brought that chapter of our lives to a close.
Though at first our losses were very difficult, we read between the lines and have faith that our castoffs are not really Books of the Dead. They've passed on to a better world,
one where they join all other virtuous books on golden, shiny shelves (with infinite shelf life
expectancy) and we can feel confident that we will see them again one
fine day. In fact, we often do -- every time we go to the library branch where
we donated them & recheck 'em out whenever we want. Verily, they
have returned from whence they came and, as a result, we have been
'saved' from paying monthly fees at Public Storage. Now we live on
borrowed time: what M&K can't afford to get with their Barnes &
Noble birthday gift cards, we simply loan out from the library. We're taking it two weeks at a time.
Wishing you a happy National Library Week and a fine(s) time! (Pardon me, that sentiment was overdue.)
Hey, hey, wanna
this page? (Did I read your mind?)
"Who's gonna win this week?" "Who's y'alls' favorite?" "Can you believe she got kicked off?"
We're bombarded with these questions at the park, at coop classes or at the Y. We know the librarians like Adam, the plumber is pulling for Allison, and our neighbors' bracket is betting on Kris. Each week at the grocery store, we listen attentively as our favorite checker argues the singers' merits with the less critically acclaimed (but more vocal) baggers. It's really all very exciting!
Of course, we're not watching.
But we did. Once. Season 5. It was thrilling! So much so, that it has apparently sustained us for the three seasons since...
The girls began watching the show, I'm happy to say, after succumbing to peer pressure. Friends in their homeschool hiking club were big fans and made it clear that, if M&K wanted to interact in conversation of any kind from January through May, they would have to fan the flames of idolatry. Discussing books, science experiments or poetry was out. "Normalcy" was in. For once, M&K decided to give that a try.
Honestly, we were all a bit skeptical. And, after the first audition episode, M&K's reluctance grew. But I only saw opportunity. When they announced that there was "no way" they were watching next week, I declared a national (ok, familial) emergency and imposed an executive order stating that American Idol was officially, from that moment on, part of our spring 2006 school curriculum. I justified it on intellectual grounds: it would serve as a much-needed impetus to study music theory, a subject we'd long neglected.
Besides that, I had a hidden agenda (I am a mom). I cynically judged the worthiness of American Idolfor its potential to expose the kids to something much more important than musical styles: namely, it could enhance their Jerk Identification Radar. I told a bewildered Chris, "This is great! Real, live jerks, so now I don't have to feel guilty for overprotecting them anymore!" (Sure, Chris and I do our best, but we're only two examples of jerks. . . How limiting is that?)
Truthfully, my strongest reservation about homeschooling M&K was that they might miss out on the most important lessons school could provide. No, not trigonometry, macroeconomics or physics. But, the study of human nature: "reading" people's body language, "calculating" others' ulterior motives and, basically, honing essential skills in the survival of the finesse. (Perhaps I was also overcompensating due to the haunting voices of former private school students who stated, "We may not be book smart, Ms. Sarkar, but we're street smart!" Irony on so many levels, I never could think of a suitable response... If that sounds too haughty and judgmental, blame it on months spent with Simon Cowell.) American Idol could supplement my innocent, sheltered children's education in condensed, 60-minute weekly classes that encouraged them to survey all aspects of American culture and social nuance. Together, we would watch many "types" of vulnerable folks parade across our tv screen and exercise our God-given right to judge them without mercy. And, bonus, it was fully sanctioned, socially acceptable scrutinizing that even scored them points at playgroup!
There were some halfhearted attempts to tie this into our academics. We did learn to identify whole, half & quarter notes and taught ourselves to play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on the girls' recorders. We rewatched Sound of Music - the 'do re mi' part - several times. We conducted ourselves admirably when reviewing the sections of an orchestra and even attended the symphony - and not just because there were fireworks. We listened to almost two classical music cds. And, finally, as Idol's singers exited each week to the tune of "You Had a Bad Day," I likened it to Aristotle's theory of tragedy and gave them an enlightening 30 minute lecture on identification with and empathy for the iconic tragic hero and his fatal flaw of hubris. I mean, isn't that what comes to everyone's mind upon hearing that song? Anyway, it counts because they took notes. Oh, and about halfway through the season (once we found out it was free), the girls loved haggling over the performances and calling in their votes - that was democracy in action, so I jotted it down under 'political science.' Who knew pop culture was so cross-curricular?
But, my original "social studies" mission didn't turn out as I expected. What I hadn't counted on was the preponderance of unbelievably nice and nerdy people wanting to be our next American Idol, many of whom were also quite talented. Pretty quickly, even before the final 24, the "mean girl" was eliminated and all we had left to ridicule were the country singers, Bucky & Kellie. They weren't very good, but still seemed too endearingly naïve to incur much of our wrath.
Plus, there is no way to express my relief or Chris' parental bliss when the girls did not swoon for the sultry Ace or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the squeaky Kevin. Mikaela's top crush was the clean-cut crooner and Sinatra crony, David, and Katrianna fell for Will, the Brady Bunch's lost sibling. Other than that, there was the very sincere Elliott (and his mom), the marvelous Mandisa, the effervescent Paris, the naturally graying & soulful Taylor and even the cool but dependable rocker dude who had married a single mom (thereby automatically securing the votes of many moms I know).
I heard that season 5 was the most watched in Idol history, ratings no doubt buoyed by our cutting edge, trendy family of 4. It showed that real life - at least as portrayed on a tv 'reality show' - is schmaltzy, heartwarming and generally the good guys & girls win in the end. Really, American Idol was chock-full of virtuous role models for the kids and it restored my faith in humanity. So, now you see why we stopped watching. Who wants a repeat of that?
A few nights ago, Chris finished telling another episode in the months-long adventure saga that comprises "bedtime stories." His tall tales are simply an amalgamation of all the "boy books" that he read growing up, but that our girls have rejected reading on the grounds that they are totally uninteresting and too "dhishoom - bhishoom" (Bollywood for "Zap-Pow! Kabam!"). Of course, that makes them perfect plagiarism candidates in Chris' mind and he happily takes all of the enthusiastic credit and eager anticipation from the none-the-wiser M&K. It's truly riveting stuff... that is, when he can stay awake long enough so that his snoring doesn't drown out the refrains of "C'mon, Dad, wake up - tell us what happens next?!"
But this time, when he ended with the usual cliff hanger, a drowsy Katrianna asked if she could share a story she'd been thinking of. It went something like this:
Once upon a time, my pet lion named Sandy - who lives in the attic - began practicing customer-driven innovation.
So he started his own consulting company to tell everybody else how to do it.
All he does is sit around & eat Valentine's Day conversation hearts and drink orange soda. Most lions in Africa weigh 250 to 420 pounds, but Sandy weighs 700 pounds due to good care -- and conversation hearts.
Sandy won't go into the center of the room because he wants to keep his cutting edge perspectives.
He's also getting into cloud computing, so he just bought his own server. . .
And, with that, she fell asleep.
Some children nod off counting proverbial sheep jumping over the clouds. Others are lulled to slumber imagining that they are princesses with their heads in the clouds. But our kid floats out into cyber space Neverland dreaming of cloud storage. . .
I think we are discovering the consequences of homeschooling while Dad is home working. So this April 23 I would like to propose the "Banish Your Daughters From Work Day." Or, better yet, the "Banish Your Husband From The Family Room and Make Him Take His Work Calls In His Office Month."
Or maybe we just need to compromise and set up one of those soundproof phone booths in the kitchen pantry. That way, after a "quick" three hour conference call, Chris can emerge - just like the caped Super Hero protagonist in one of his 'original' stories - to save our day. And Sandy the lion can give the consulting business a rest and finally get a good night's sleep.
Because we homeschool, I've always been a little hyper aware that Mikaela & Katrianna don't have the variety of teacher role models that I enjoyed and Chris drove into early retirement. So, like many overcompensating homeschoolers, we've supplemented with teachers for extracurricular classes in music, art and writing, participated in ongoing educational programs at science or history museums, nature centers & the zoo, plus had the tutelage of a couple of little league coaches. We've also discovered "positive influences" in many of the other homeschooling parents who have surprisingly diverse and interesting careers, such as NASA rocket scientists, professional artists, architects, doctors, ranchers, airplane pilots, supercomputer engineers, landscape designers & geologist 'rock stars.'
And a final, unexpected way we found mentors for our kids is through interaction with and learning from Chris' clients. We just spent most of March in Boulder, Colorado, so Chris could meet with colleagues with whom he has consulted for a few years now. Over time, we all have gotten to know many of them and several have become significant role models for our girls. Their greatest qualification? They are nerds who found a way to make it their life's work!
Now, before Chris gets fired, let me explain. In our family, "nerd" is a term of endearment, a complimentary title reserved only for those we most admire and idolize (and, obviously, what we aspire to be ourselves). Nerds are people who have been able to turn their passions into action. Bespectacled or not, they fully embrace and fixedly pursue whatever "turns them on," become specialists in their fields and, eventually, find a way to put their education, enthusiasm and expertise into practice. (For us, this applies to traditionally "nerdy" intellectual pursuits, but also to excelling in sports, politics, music, art ... ) At first they might seem too geeky or unconventional, but ultimately they become, often as a direct result of their previous "misfit" status, the coolest and most respected extra-ordinary people out there.
Really, it's quite similar to Ralph Waldo Emerson's call for "The American Scholar," only we prefer the ring of "The American Nerd" (pə-tā'tō as opposed to pō-tot-ō?). We constantly point out historical and contemporary examples of this phenomenon to M&K, who are true believers now due to an innate propensity to nerdiness [nature] as well as exposure to as many nerds as I can find to teach them about [nurture]. So far, our daughters' nerdy-cool heroes have ranged from Br'er Rabbit to Ben Franklin, Daniel Boone to Clara Barton, Martin Luther King to Mother Teresa, John James Audubon to the first dog astronaut (along with the lesser Neil Armstrong), Hatshepsut to Louisa May Alcott, Robin Hood to Nelson Mandela, Joan of Arc to Jane Goodall, Sacagawea to Eleanor Roosevelt, and Abe Lincoln to Barack, Michelle, Malia & Sasha Obama. That's all good, since these are laudable legends studied in textbooks, newspapers or from afar, but meeting and befriending real, live "pal"-adins is, of course, even better!
Stephen Mitchellis an author who readily admits that initially he had no idea he could actually earn a living by writing. But, to date, he has 38 published books and has gained a large and appreciative audience for his translations, poetry, fiction & non-fiction works, children's books and philosophical writings. He was in the middle of an eleven-city tour arranged by his publisher when we met him and attended his reading for The Second Book of the Tao. Many receptive thinkers and fans were gathered there to hear him expound upon its chapters, as well as to get a few moments to chat with him while he signed copies of his book.
In preparation for the reading & seeing Stephen again, the girls and I read his book and incorporated it into our studies for school which included a year-long unit on China (where we focused on all the typical cultural facts & wrote historical research papers, plus partook in protest demonstrations favoring Tibetan independence & watched the Olympics as "homework"). Even before the book hit bookstores' shelves, we had a sneak peek and discussed such concepts as accepting things as they are. Our perceptive daughters' understanding of this idea mostly centered around its application to Mom - their prime examples being my gracefully accepting the "perfection" of their untidy bedrooms, lackadaisical tooth brushing or school papers that are found everywhere except in their portfolios. Enthusiasm for their particular interpretation of "the way" then extended into the minutiae of our daily routine, as in 'Are not a correct answer and an incorrect answer to this math problem equally worthy and virtuous?'
After the reading, as we all strolled down the blustery Pearl Street Mall, Chris was the personification of "yes chasing no endlessly in circles" as he orbited in hyper leaps about the ever composed and serene Stephen. (The allusion would be a good one, except for one thing - I am the one who sits up all night sweating ethical
dilemmas, while Chris peacefully snores right through - clearly
demonstrating that he is much further along in his journey to Zen than
I am.) Finally, we found ourselves ensconced safely inside the Dushanbe Teahouse and enjoying a moment's peaceful silence when Katrianna, the existentialist, suddenly piped up: "Could it be that I'm a butterfly just thinking I'm having tea with Stephen Mitchell?" Well, at least it showed she'd taken a fancy to chapter 5...
Not long after that, coincidentally I'm sure, Stephen mentioned that he enjoyed doing the book tours and meeting people but that he would rather be home spending time with his wife, Byron Katie. His affection and respect for Katie, who he had also mentioned fondly several times during his reading, moved me to such an extent that I immediately gave
Chris an elbow to the ribs and said "See?!" before I realized I wasn't
Loving What Is...
Understandably, Stephen then expressed a desire to get back to the hotel and work on his next book, a highly anticipated translation of The Iliad. Just as the cab was about to mercifully whisk him off, Mikaela eagerly called out, "In your next book, remember when you're formatting not to align the text to the right - it has to stay centered!" By then, however, I believe he'd successfully plugged his ears with beeswax, so he just graciously smiled and waved goodbye. Certainly it had been a productive day, one that no doubt illustrated Chris' invaluable worth as a consultant, especially in his ability to fully test Stephen's resolve to adhere to the Taoist tenet of remaining calm and unaffected by worldly strife and drivel.
Another client we met last week was Robert Freling, who was in Colorado to receive the King Hussein Leadership Prize presented by Her Majesty Queen Noor at the Aspen Institute. Previous recipients have included Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Doctors without Borders and Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank.
Bob was introduced to our family over the phone a few years ago, when he called Chris immediately after returning from a trip to Rwanda where his team had been busy installing solar electric systems to replace diesel generators used in several community health clinics. My interest was piqued when I overheard Chris saying "No way... How many ribs?!" Turned out, a couple of very dark nights before, Bob had decided to take in a view of the stars, stepped out onto his bungalow's nonexistent back porch and promptly plummeted down into the wilds of Rwandan jungle. (Demonstrating the need for some solar lighting, no?)
He broke some ribs but still managed to hike several miles the next morning so he could fulfill the fun, relaxing part of his visit and see some gorilla families, descendants of Dian Fossey's beloved buddies. With that, he instantly became our family's latest hero and was thereafter affectionately dubbed "Solar Bob" by my admiring kiddos.
Bob, who also happens to be a native Texan, leads a charitable organization called Solar Electric Light Fund, based in Washington DC. They install solar panels in remote villages around the world, providing essential power for hospitals and vaccine storage, fresh water and drip irrigation systems for crops, lighting & electricity in local schools and personal power units for individual homes. Among SELF's many impressive projects are those for the Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania, for local schools in Nelson Mandela's birthplace, for the Vietnam Women's Union, in partnership with the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative for numerous medical clinics in Africa, with Brad Pitt's Make It Right project in New Orleans, and alongside the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide reliable technology access for the Navajo Nation. It's been a fun and ongoing inspirational lesson just trying to keep up with and learn about all of the places Bob has been to and that SELF has helped.It makes those places "real" and the world becomes, as a result, smaller and more accessible - if not physically, at least psychologically. Certainly it underscores the theme that one person (even a kid who grew up in Dallas, Texas) can make a meaningful contribution toward "making the world a better place."
Stephen and Bob are examples of "regular guys" whose natural interests and strengths became integral to their work and lifestyles. They do what they love & they make a living doing it. But, they are still nerds... after all, despite all of their accomplishments, look who they ended up hanging out with in Boulder.
It all started when we were trying to fit in with a new playgroup at their park day. We'd recently decided to homeschool Mikaela, but we hadn't found our niche yet in any of the homeschool groups where most families' kids were older than ours or we'd been rejected because we wouldn't sign the group's statement of faith, publicly declaring our animosity toward Satan and expressing our willingness to enlist the kids in a crusade if given 48 hours advance notice.
This group, though not homeschoolers, seemed ideal because it had an abundance of toddlers along with several five year olds who'd just missed the school district's birthdate cutoff. If it worked out, both of my girls would have plenty of potential playmates and our homeschooling wouldn't even be an issue.
It was a gorgeous 75 degree fall morning, full of buzzing bees, flitting butterflies and birds tweeting their sweet, melodic songs (this was long ago, before they communicated exclusively through twitter - 140 notes at a time).
Then, suddenly, he was upon us. Lawn Mower Tractor Guy. Oblivious to all due to the roar of the engine, his walkman headphones and the thick, dangling earflaps of his woolen winter cap, he was headed straight for the sandbox! Like Odysseus, who had to abandon his insanity act and rescue the infant Telemachus from an oncoming plow, I threw aside my frivolous, inane, getting-to-know-you banter just in time to hurdle the teeter totter and swoop up Katrianna.
The whirling blades just grazed the ironsides of the ship-shaped sandbox, barely causing a stir among the kids inside it who were too preoccupied with shoring up caches of pebbles (resourcefully stored in their pull-ups) for the inevitable battle that brought each and every playdate to a glorious conclusion. Still panting, I glanced around to see that the few moms who had bothered to look up from their cell phones were snickering in my direction. In an ironic twist in our odyssey to find playgroup inclusion, my conspicuous child-rescue action was regarded as egregiously overprotective and confirmed their suspicions that "the homeschooling mom" was indeed out of her mind.
I hung my head in shame. I called to Mikaela that it was time to go when an empathetic mom broke ranks and came over to commiserate about the odd fellow who'd nearly mowed down my daughter. Thinking it a lost cause anyway, I nervously adjusted the buckle on Katrianna's overalls and explained, "I just hadn't realized Ignatius J Reilly had moved to Houston."
She laughed, then added, "Oh, but he hasn't. That was Holden Caulfield!" Right then I knew we'd found our playgroup and I could postpone carpooling the girls to Lil' Missionary Club meetings for at least another year.
[Helpful hint: Undoubtedly, the Confederacy of Dunces allusion litmus test is a good idea, but that Toole's book only came up this one time. For no fail conversational icebreakers, I recommend going with War & Peace or Moby Dick - both are invaluable sources for discovering common ground among parents while watching soccer games in lawn chairs. Nevertheless, this was a refreshing change and I am forever beHolden to the Catcher in the Wry.]
Over the winter months, Charlotte and I and our four kids became good friends. We even went along when they invited us to some services at their church (but it was an Episcopal church, so it doesn't really count - as everybody knows, religion and Episcopalians never really mix... except maybe martinis... in post communion happy hours... the Reverend Father tends bar). But, one deceptively free & easy spring afternoon, we lingered to let our kids play when all of the other playgroup moms had left. Charlotte leaned across the picnic table and asked me confidentially, "Now truthfully, Cathy, why do you homeschool your kids?" Lulled by a cool breeze as we sat there in 96 degree shade, I let my defenses down completely and made a terrible mistake: I was honest. I blame it on sunstroke.
I answered that, like most parents, I strongly believed I was obligated to do the best I could for my kids. A huge part of that had to do with meeting their academic needs. Although I didn't think it would be "bad" for them to attend public or private school, I was in a position that I could stay home with them and we could choose to homeschool instead. They had learned so much already before they were of "school age" and, out of all the options I'd looked into, I felt we could do the best job of providing them a challenging education, letting them progress at their own pace and keeping the learning fun. Plus, I added, it was what Mikaela said she wanted to do & my plan was to go along with it for as long as she wanted...
Charlotte looked incredulous. I guess she sensed I was still holding back. She guilefully goaded me on with "But is being smart really soimportant?"
That did it, she got me in my Achilles cranium. I went on to explain that I thought God wanted each of us to reach our full potential. We'd all been given gifts and, since my girls so far had not demonstrated any Carl Lewis tendencies or Olympic aspirations (wiped away a tear there), I was focusing on what seemed to be their particular strengths and affinities right now. They were smart, they loved to learn, and they wanted to homeschool. My personal philosophy was that each of us should do our very best with whatever talents God had given us and, through conscientious effort, we would make the world a better place.
My spiritual revelation had the precise effect I always suspected it might. Charlotte immediately remembered a crucial need to replenish their goldfish's food supply, tossed the kids head first into her bicycle's pup tent kid carrier and shifted through all 3 gears of her bike's derail-hers in the fastest getaway I'd ever "witnessed."
Sincerity stinks.Had I learned nothing from Linusand the Great Pumpkin? In a momentary lapse of judgment, I'd forgotten to keep my blanket securely in place o'er this little (jack-o) lantern o' mine. And, I hadn't even told Charlotte the whole story... that the worst period in our pre-school years was when I realized three year old Mikaela was recognizing words and learning to read on her own. On the advice of several teacher friends, who told me that she wouldn't fit in at kindergarten and would have to skip ahead a couple of grades if she kept this up, I rebuffed all of her repeated requests to teach her to read 'real' books. The "rejection" seemed to hurt her emotionally, no matter how I explained it or tried to distract her with 'fun' activities and playdates. But I persisted, determined that she would attend traditional school.
I spent my time touring schools and visiting on parents' night open houses, taking Mikaela to our neighborhood school's Dr Seuss play to show her that indeed - in 2 more years - attending school would be wonderful, and even signing her up for pre-K classes where I was told she asked too many questions, overparticipated and refused to properly print lowercase letters using the "clock system" (because she had mastered upper & lowercase lettering already, but apparently that was not the point). After three months of this, my little scholar was literally at her wit's end. Finally, at home one quiet morning, I pulled out a chapter book and asked her to read it aloud to me. She was ecstatic and that decided it for all of us. What were we waiting around for?
Our families continued to get together after my unconscionable faux pas, but we always kept to safe topics after that: discussing our kids' vegetable preferences, debating the environmental impact of cloth vs. commercial diapers or, always a bonding win-win topic, listing all the things other moms did wrong in raising their kids. By the next fall, her son was accepted into the city's most competitive academic kindergarten program, reputed to produce only National Merit Finalists and Rhodes Scholars. He did very well but, for first grade, she transferred him to a magnet school for music, explaining that she sought a well-rounded education.
Sacrilege! Not that I'm judging... Few parents are comfortable putting all their little eggheads in one basket. Of course, we've been doing this homeschooling for so long now, we just went ahead and invested in a whole basket case... but that's just us. Most likely, her son will graduate from the music academy as a classically trained musician, receive a scholarship to Juilliard and be first chair in any of five instruments.
(That's okay, we play music, too... We adhere strictly to the Chu-ze-key guitar method -- if you don't know the fingering on a note, no need to fret, simply choose to play a different note or skip it altogether. Hey, when they're teenagers, who do you think will be picked to play in a garage band? See, we homeschoolers do consider socialization and the big picture.) As our kids grew, we met on their school holidays and during summer vacations and, eventually, we also found some like-minded families in homeschooling groups.
Certainly, we all got a lot out of that playgroup experience. The kids made many new friends, although -inexplicably- none of them elected to homeschool when it came time to start kindergarten. And, perhaps most significantly, it reaffirmed my promise to myself that I would never again divulge even the slightest hint of religious motivation in our homeschooling decision. Thank God, I've faithfully stuck to that one...
The truth is we're closet religious homeschoolers. But, if asked, I'll deny it. Three times.
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 & theleader 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.
Like all moms out there, I struggled with knowing exactly when to broach certain topics with my kids. When to assume they were mature enough for sensitive discussions about those "taboo" subjects that make all parents pause and shudder. Yes, you know the ones.
Things like beheadings, backstabbings, extramarital affairs, illegitimate children, political assassinations, love triangles, polygamy, suicide, disposal of bodies, hiding evidence, miscellaneous subterfuge and, of course, asps.
Essentially, all the facts of life. Why couldn't I find any chapters on those by the so-called experts Dr. Spock & Dr. Sears?
Well, let me tell you, the perfect age for exposing your impressionable youngster to each of these worthy life lessons is 4 years old. I know what you're thinking, just how long did I think I could keep overprotecting them? Homeschooled kids are so sheltered.
I admit, it wasn't even my idea to teach them any of this so early & in my master syllabus we were to wait for the macabre until kindergarten, at least. I'd adamantly refused to add Shakespearean drama to Richard Scarry selections for our storytimes, despite the kiddos' pleadings and peer pressure.
Really, some homeschooling moms were shocked. They extolled the virtues of condensed versions of Shakespeare's tales retold by Mary & Charles Lamb. They shook their heads at me & questioned whether I truly could have been an English major in college. But, I steadfastly resisted - I suppose it's that dysfunctional, parental urge to preserve childhood for as long as possible. . .
I just couldn't see how most of the historical plays, tragedies or even comedies transferred very well into abridged, ten page summaries. (If only my high school students had known about the Lamb version, all those wasted minutes reading Cliffs notes could have been saved. . . ) I mean, what's left in Romeo and Juliet: 2 teens go behind their parents' backs, swing around on a balcony one night, a friar actually helps them come up with a completely numskull idea & they both end up killing themselves. There's not even any redeeming Elizabethan blank verse and, horrors, all puns are edited out.
So, how did I lose control? It was when I least suspected it, got distracted and let Katrianna, a preschooler at the time, check out the comic book version of Egyptian pharaoh history. How could I be so irresponsible, you ask? (Sure, hindsight is always 20/20.)
Before I could "preview" it, she'd zipped through the whole thing in the car on the drive home. She'd been a very enthusiastic Egyptology student and even when we were 'officially done' with our school unit, she'd happily continued to pursue her independent studies. I tried to keep up, but she'd left me in the dust after the middle kingdom. . .
I was none the wiser, a complacent and oblivious parent, until weeks later when the "ides of March" was upon us. I referred to the infamous phrase in passing and then saw a quizzical look on the kids' faces, so I began to explain that it was an important day in Roman history & people thought bad things might happen. . . before I could get any further, Mikaela interrupted to explain all about omens and how a seer told Julius Caesar he would die that day. I hurriedly shushed her, casting meaningful Quiet! glances in the direction of her little sister who seemed to be listening. Mikaela finally got the subtle hint. All was silent.
Seizing the opening, Katrianna then commenced to fill in the blanks of our stories: "Julius Caesar was surprised and stabbed by some senators, including his buddy Brutus. Marc Antony had tried to stop it, but he was too late."
I thought, Brutus? And not the one who beats up Popeye?
I kneeled down and took her by the hand. "How do you know about Marc Antony, sweetheart?"
"Well, he was one of Cleopatra's boyfriends. Julius Caesar didn't want to leave her after they had a baby, but he had to go back to Rome. Then she and Marc Antony had some kids... twins!"
I was stunned, but she interpreted that as rapt attention so she continued: "And then before Marc Antony could lead an army against the conspur.. conspur.. con-spur-a-ters, he and Cleopatra were caught and he killed himself with a dagger. And then Cleopatra was sad, so she picked up an asp and it stung her, so she died too."
No way, this is not happening was all I could muster in terms of profound response. But, she wasn't finished, only catching her breath.
"Oh, and I forgot! Before all that, they showed Julius Caesar Pompey's head in a jar of honey." *
A jar of honey? And, for my daughters, that evokes not Pooh & Piglet, but a decapitated Pompey? (These are the same girls who at that time couldn't get through the witch & apple scene in Snow White. Apparently, make-believe, Disney violence is a lot more frightening than the real deal.)
At that moment, it dawned on me that I had misunderestimated** my little homeschoolers. They were, in fact, not ready for independent study. That evening at bedtime, all together, we began reading aloud Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, since really the bard could add nothing with his rendition of Julius Caesar.
Editorial note: I realize I reneged on my personal blogging vow and posted a whole entry here without any puns. True, some subjects are just inherently lacking in humor, but I still acknowledge I've let everyone down. As the Romans might say before throwing me to the lions, "What theHail, Caesar?! That was really bad forum."
Ahh, that makes me feel much gladiator. Two thumbs up!
*For the historical sticklers, it was actually Alexander's body that was stored in honey & Pompey's head which was presented in a basket. Katrianna's confusing them is evidence of our slacker, half-asped approach to history. Better get back to the basics. "Kids, go outline some chapters in a textbook."
**Don't judge. It happens to the best of us, doesn't it, Dubya?
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.
How did it ever occur to us to study such a radical subject as gardening? It could not have anything to do with the fact that every single "What your child should learn" syllabus lists it as a mandatory science item for alternating years until graduate school (or the 5th grade, whichever comes first). Our approach to the subject was surely more original & organic than that...
Katrianna was the one to push seed sprouting as part of her academic agenda this year. But, in the interest of full disclosure, please note: We do not claim to have invented the lima-bean-in-a-ziplock experiment. As far as I know, kids have been doing that one since around the time man first discovered fire. Only they used those other baggies, the old-fashioned kind, with the fold-in flaps. That's right, the kind we parents used to pack our pb&j in for summer camp, the ones made from the lining of goats' stomachs instead of the "zipper seal." But same idea. (Note to Homeschoolers: add this bit of trivia to your homemade world history timeline, charted on scrolling butcher paper, which winds its way around your dining room and down the hall.)
Really, if you want to learn more about lima bean sprouting origins, just take the guided Lascaux cave tour in France. (Did you think they painted all the time?)
And, as much as I'd also like to claim Katrianna's gardening interest was an offshoot of my playing Audrey Hepburn and our touring around the Gardens of the World, that's just not so either. It was not the result of seeing Monet's Giverny, British Columbia's sunken gardens, Portland's famed roses, or even Stratford-Upon-Avon's very own "Shakespearean herb garden" (bet Shakespeare wished he'd thought to capitalize on that back in the 1600s - he might not have had to struggle with playwriting & instead could have turned his father's glove making business into a gardening glove making business, thereby assuring his future success).
No, none of those visits made my daughter green with envy. The real impetus for Katrianna's verdant desires was simply sibling jealousy (but I do claim quite a bit of credit for fostering that whenever possible). When looking through Mikaela's old portfolios last summer, Katrianna found her sister's original flowers & seeds section, completed when Mikaela was 5 and she was 2. Exactly what was the attraction? It wasn't the nifty construction paper seed parts with their movable flip-up features, or the labeled diagram worksheets, or the still life watercolor renditions à la Georgia O'Keefe, or even evidence of her sister's kindergarten attempts at flower-themed Wordsworthian sonnets.
The pure motivational factor in this sudden passion for gardening was to acquire her own set of pages with seed packets & seed samples glued beside them. That's it. They were colorful, commercial, tactile, and as close as our family comes to displaying glitz & glamour. And, most importantly to both girls, it was that subtle "I have something you don't have" quality, repeated in singsong delivery week after week, that made it a must-do school project.
Leading us back to Shakespeare, who captured the universality of this phenomenon when he penned that famous, so oft quoted line from Romeo and Juliet:
Do you bite your greenthumb at me, sir? (Act I, scene i)
So, with that, we will Candide-ly continue to tend our own gardens...
Katrianna has been busy refining a self-watering seed contraption. Despite the fact that she actually enjoys hovering over her plants and watering them at the slightest indication that they might need it (or even without any indication whatsoever), she spends much of her time inventing and perfecting various irrigation systems which, theoretically, free her up to pursue other botanical designs.
Her "capillary action machine," as she calls it, has gone through several modifications and improvements, including the use and abandonment of juicy juice box straws, regular straws, popsicle sticks, glue, qtips, duct tape, toothpicks and about 35 dixie cups. But, it still takes more time to implement than the good old-fashioned watering can option.
Believing she actually did want to develop an easier method, Chris got caught up in the excitement and, like any true, empirically-motivated scientist, googled it. He then replicated a satisfactory (to him) solution - oh, did he ever miss the point!
But, now his "experiment" sits alongside hers and provides some good tension and suspense - less in terms of observing how the seeds progress, more in terms of observing how and when my daughter's patience with her overzealous assistant wears out.
It's official: we've become a family of bean counters. No, it's not the recession, as bad as the economy is.
It's also not our vegan aspirations, as we inconsistently but sincerely fail to achieve them. (Besides, just to clarify, vegans eat way more than beans. . . Nuts, for instance. There are lots of nuts among vegans.)
It's really, truly, that these days we simply spend a great deal of our time counting beans. And seeds. And sprouts. And, hoping and dreaming and, if you will, plotting for the day of fruition, when we can actually count real, live plants instead.
What's pathetic, and shows homeschooling parents might just devote too much time to their kids, is that my husband and I find ourselves conferring late at night (when the kids have finally gone to sleep and we should be having those pressing adult conversations we put off all day). Why? Well, to struggle with the ethical dilemma of what to do when one of Katrianna's plants begins to wilt. Similar to the proverbial replacement of a dying goldfish before the kid realizes the dire conclusion of overfeeding it. . . At least, in our case, there is no toilet flushing involved and the evidence, all those little dirt particles, can literally be swept under the rug.
We only did that once. OK, maybe a few times.
But, sometimes tough love is necessary. Now our daughter is having to face the consequences of waterlogging her beloved apple seedling. It hasn't been easy. She'd started oh-so-optimistically with ten seeds harvested from a Red Delicious. Five germinated, which of course led to blueprints outlining elaborate configurations of the rows and rows of trees we'd find in her future orchard.
It was not to be. One was lost to fungus, one had instantaneous leaf shrivel, another had root rot, and one suffered inexplicably, despite hours spent poring over gardening advice books and Katrianna's multiple diagnoses and subsequent attempted "cures." The sole survivor didn't have a chance, as her older sister kept diligently reminding her to water it. Begging the question, again, just how conscientious is too conscientious?
So, we're trying to move on. After that heartbreak, what's next? Surely something foolproof. This called for a surefire, horticultural confidence builder.
Yep, that means lima beans. In ziplocks. With damp paper towels. Tinyutopian models of self-sufficient eco-systems. Absolutely no worries.
It's not overly obsessive if I find myself waking hourly to check on the little guys, is it? And, I only sing them three lullabies a night, no more. I think that's fine and they really like it. I can tell, because I only sing one lullaby for the "control group" and they're suffering. Really.
Give your children roots. . . (on a worksheet, preferably with a diagram, to be labeled and colored by the child)
For years, I've been telling the girls that it's educational. It's music appreciation. It's social and cultural awareness. It's physical education. It's spiritual and psychological therapy.
But, as of February 22, I will have proof and it actually justifies and broadens my cross-curricular efforts -- it's now even verifiably historical!
What in the world could apply to so many aspects of one's academic & intellectual pursuits? You mean there is one answer to fulfill so much learning? Is that possible?
Ahh, there are few moments when my teaching has been so affirmed and rewarded.
I think it more than legitimizes all of my upper body dancing to "September" while I'm driving & the girls are sinking as far down as their seat belts will allow. For obvious reasons (some might think safety, yet those of us with the gift of creative improvisation instead see pulsating red, yellow & green signals of disco), I save my best moves for the stop lights, aka beacons of boogie. Sometimes other drivers are even inspired to join in, although I feel that's really unnecessary as everyone knows EWF already has an ample horn section... .
The official term for this, by the way, is "car schooling." Second only to attending the Governor's dinner in person. First time I've ever envied Sarah Palin... .
Be sure to mark this day on your calendars: the day disco became a core subject. Groove on.
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"Why do I haveta have such a baby sister?" moaned Mikaela.
However, we had timed it perfectly to take solitary, dusky strolls among deserted (even by modern tourists) Mesa Top farming villages, choose to casually overlook Cliff Palace all by our lonesomes, view a gloaming sunset from Park Point's 8572-foot advantage, and finally eat & sleep by starlight in Morefield Campground amid the soothing sounds of chirping crickets, crackling campfires and 
Clearly with well ingrained excitement, she segued to the climatic moment, "Of course, I bet ya'll already know what a kiva is!" No answer. 
"Mom, NOOOOOOOOO!" M&K gasped at my Dante-esque descent, certain that the 3-headed Cerberus awaited my demise below. Heeding Mikaela's dire warning -- "Don't step in the hole, Mom. It leads to the Underworld!" -- I dutifully performed a thorough kiva inspection, reported it safe & sound, and invited Katrianna to join me. 
Without a word, it was immediately understood -- time for us to take a hike. We headed out on the Petroglyph Point Trail which winds through & often clings to the walls of Spruce Canyon. Here, too, we were the only ones on the single-file track and soon found it challenging, as well as truly delightful. The canyon is coolly invigorating, verdant, with striking views in contrasting oranges, browns & greens. It's filled with narrow passages that require squeezing through rocks and grabbing onto centuries-smoothed hand holds pecked into the canyon walls by Mesa Verde's original inhabitants. There was an overwhelming sense of the past and its people each time we stepped into the foot wells formed by their ancient civilization, stony testaments worn away by daily use, comparable to the age-old depressions made in marble stair steps throughout Europe.... 
Eventually he revealed not only their existence, but also his
conjectures as to the obvious meanings of their Anasazi-chiseled
features. Take this one with the particularly menacing expression - would give cowardly aggressors pause, no? Or that one with curlycue
vines overhanging its brow & the silly grin - aha! "killed 'em"
with laughs. What about him, over there, with the quizzical
expression - meant to baffle & discombobulate the wary trespasser
(seemed to be working on Chris, anyhow). So convinced was he that he
filled our camera's photo card with pictures to document the find, in
disbelief that no archeologist before him had dared look this
phenomena in the face... 
