The Eleventh Day of Christmas

Today we start back to schooling.

It's been a lovely month or so of just being a family, but now it's time to get whatever our act is back into gear and prepare to take it on the road that is life. We're not getting into gear fast enough this morning; we overslept a bit, and there are still about an hour and a half of chores before we can begin. But we're getting there.

We're actually beginning our final semester of homeschooling. I have to admit I'm being pulled into it; John and Mary have decided that she'll be going to high school in the fall. This one. It's a good one, and she'll do well. But I'm in mourning.

It's partly because this student of mine has never been to school. We've been responsible for her education from the age of 3. She's learned how to read here, how to count her money, how to draw and sing and ride horses and care for dogs and chickens and goats. She's learned to sew and paint and do laundry. She knows about Europe and knights and mummies and hobbits and kings and queens and emperors. She knows that rocks are hard and soft and many points in between. She's dissected fish, raised and killed various bugs, bottle fed baby animals and learned to organize her time and things. But now, for some reason, we aren't able to educate her anymore, and, in two and a half years, she'll graduate with a diploma that says someone else made sure she was ready for the world.

We'll have to pay tuition, and, in order to do that, I'll have to go back to work. I like the work I'm doing now. I care for my home and family, which is not the mindless occupation some think it is. I garden, and care for animals, at least when my feet are healthy and I can go outside!! I do not sit eating bon bons and watching soap operas; I find it hard to believe that that sort of housewife ever existed! I find it ironic that, in order to pay tuition for someone else to do what I apparently am not able to do, it is suggested that I go back to (get ready for it) teaching. "That's a good job, Melody, and you'll still be home with her on school breaks." Bwahahahaha!

Yeah, I knew this would end. I figured that, sometime in the next 2 years or so, I would release her to the world of higher learning. But I really thought she'd follow her older brother into college. I'm a high school teacher, for cripes' sake. But this is her choice, and we're honoring that. We gave the same choice to the boys, and they chose differently.

I just hope we don't live to regret it. I already am.