A Balm For Our Home (A Winter Homeschooling Story)

(Winter Wonderland photo by Ryan Myer)

February 1996 found the inside of our home as blustery as the snowy wind outside.

My 8-year-old daughter's cystic fibrosis had taken a turn for the worse and our time was consumed with administering treatments and medications and hashing out insurance problems on the phone. My 5-year-old responded to the chaos with daily temper tantrums, and my 3-year-old constantly cried and begged to be held. In the midst of this storm I was trying to homeschool.

We can't get behind, I exhorted myself. Our math program called for daily drills, our spelling workbook demanded a page a day, our terrific science curriculum required frequent nature walks with detailed journal entries and research, the planaria we were raising had to have their water changed daily, and our engaging history unit studies were full of elaborate projects. We had to keep learning, keep doing. Not only because it was good and right, but because we lived in Pennsylvania.

A Chair In The Flower Bed (A Conversation While Playing Badminton)

I hit the birdie back to my teenage son. Glancing toward the house while he retrieved my way out of bounds shot, I saw something slightly unusual.

“Why is there a chair in the flower bed?” I asked.

“I had to move it off the roof when the guys came to put the new roof on,” he answered, with a swoop of his racquet.

We rallied a few moments in silence, he, my daughter, and I.

Then I laughed. “That leaves a big unanswered question.”

They both laughed, and my son offered: “It’s a good place to sit. On the roof.”

I looked at the sloped roof with its new rainy-sky-gray shingles. I looked back at my son with bemusement. “How can it possibly be a good place to sit?”

He smiled a crooked smile, pointed his racquet toward the roof’s peak, and said, “Up there, at the top. The chair fits perfectly - the legs come down on the sides and rest against the roof.”

I pictured it. “That’s dangerous! What if you fall?”

“I won’t fall. It’s safe. It fits really well on there.”

We continued hitting the birdie back and forth, and I found myself choosing to trust him. People sky-dive and bungee-jump and do all sorts of risky things.

I imagined him sitting up there, and I didn’t ask why he would want to sit on the roof.

After all, he was my son, and I remembered clearly winter nights of childhood when I walked barefoot in my flannel nightgown through the midnight snow gazing up at the stars, the moon, the inky vastness above me . . . wondering, pondering, questioning, and just being me in the world . . . a little perplexing to my parents, who always wanted me to come inside and go back to bed before I froze . . .

So, a chair on the roof — temporarily in the flower bed — made sense when I allowed it to. And while perhaps not entirely safe, it seemed natural, and necessary, and magical, and . . . good.   ♥

P.S. If you or someone you love wonders, wanders, ponders, and perplexes, you may find comfort, as I did, in the pages of Strong-Willed Child or Dreamer? I was (am?) a “dreamer child” and when I read this book several years ago it felt good to be understood.