Going Home

Homeschooling. We’ve opted to go the crazy path and not sign up for any online classes. I have no plastic envelopes filled with lesson plans and worksheets. I stared in horror at the empty calendar my child was going to have this year. What in this lockdown-crazed earth are we going to do? One hard look at my child and the answer was right in front of me: follow him. 

We’re so used to telling children what to do, deciding what they should learn that we forget about them. We don’t ponder on what makes their hearts sing, what makes their feet move, what makes the wheels in their brain turn. We think it’s always about knowledge. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked if he knows how to read yet? How is he actually learning? What will happen to his future? 

What I’ve come to witness is this — he is learning when he builds cities out of blocks, airport runways out of tiles; when he wants to read the same book over and over again; when we eat different kinds of fruits to boost our immunity; when he watches older kids play in the park; when he witnesses his younger sister go from crawling to walking; when he presses his lips to my bump and talks to his baby brother; when he makes a birthday card for the lobby guard who hasn’t seen his family since March. 

Following our family’s rhythm and values has been a risk worth jumping over the cliff for. We’re discovering who we are without dictates, without criteria, without plans. We’re finally learning how to move through life as a family, how to just be. It might seem crazy to plunge into uncertainty when the world is already uncertain. Yet here we are — living, growing, thriving as best as we can. As a family.