Home schooling - What was I thinking?

So I took the plunge. I am officially a homeschooling mom (gulp). I signed up for a home school curriculum which will allow for transcripts and in my state this school functions as an accredited private school (to help avoid any messy issues when/if I choose to put my children into a school situation). I also filled out my paperwork for the state including telling them about the curriculum I planned to use and proving my status as an acceptable teacher for my children. I found the process a bit insulting since I wouldn’t be homeschooling my kids if the state school I was paying for with my tax dollars was even remotely something I wanted to send my children to (but that is an entirely different issue and not one I have any desire to depress myself with right now).

Three weeks in and my kids and I are all still alive, smiling sometimes, learning at least a little bit(I think), and split on the good and bad moments. The jury is still out on if I would call this a success or not. I have learned that positive feedback works wonders and if they can succeed they yearn for more. I’ve also learned that I can get compliance by suggesting some other less desirable activity or threats of punishment but this usually leaves me feeling pretty crummy. I’ve also found that at times I really question how smart my children are when they don't seem to be able to get some very basic stuff. This too leaves me feeling pretty crummy.

Homeschooling families keep saying how much they love it. Or at least that’s what I keep reading, but then the ones that don’t I would imagine are no longer homeschooling families. I guess that's why you just don't hear about them. At this point I can’t say I’m in the loving it camp. I’m hoping to get into a few groups for homeschoolers and maybe that will help. For now well we’re giving the experiment a try. The public school situation (Loudoun county's inability to provide a "local" elementary school that I could actually get my children to) and the really insanely high cost of private school leaves homeschooling as our best option. And so on I go...

Happy Easter!

Hope: This is not the end of the story

Fear is a powerful emotion. When I was studying for my Ph.D. in counseling one of my professors quoted another theorist saying that it is not pain that causes the damage to people’s lives but rather the actions people take to avoid feeling the pain. It is the fear of pain that causes many problems for people today.

With everything that is going on in our country I have to admit I am afraid. I see my government become increasingly involved in banking, the auto industry, health care, and student loans. I see my government grow itself, and spend money it does not have. I see my government talk about things like the fairness doctrine and I am afraid for my countries future. I am afraid for my future and mostly I am afraid for my children’s future. My fear is increased because of my family history. Before coming to the United States my family had lost almost all of their earthly possessions and in some cases their lives. In Eastern Europe my family witnessed the rise of “big government” and the loss of freedom.

My mother was born in Romania in an ethnically German farming town. When World War II began the country sided with the axis powers. When they began rounding up the Jewish residents my family helped hide a cousin, the Jewish man she was married to and the rest of his family. My grandmother took on the job of taking them food. Early in the war one of my grandfather’s cousins complained to his superiors about what was being done to the Jewish people. He was immediately transferred to the front in Russia and was dead within the month. My Grandfather decided it was time to go. He deserted the army, packed up his wife and two children and took them to Germany. He took a job in a bomb factory. My mother was just two at the time. Things in Germany were very hard. The regular bombings and the food shortage caused my Grandmother to take the children and return to her parent’s farm in Romania. Shortly after the return to Romania the country surrendered. They were hopeful to surrender to the US, but the US allowed The Soviet Union to handle the situation. The Russian army moved in and began the work of establishing the new government. The young ethnic German citizens of Romania were rounded up and shipped to Soviet labor camps. My Grandmother was one of these people. Around 65% of those sent died. My grandmother was lucky. She returned 5 years later. During her absence my mother remained on the farm with my great-grandparents and watched as all of their possessions were “collectivized”. Everything was taken, homes farms, equipment, all of it. Those with larger homes were forced to take in boarders. However, after a time ownership of homes was returned because the buildings fell into such disrepair that the government was unable to pay for the upkeep of the structures. To me this clearly demonstrated a key principal of human behavior. People take care of things that they own and do not show the same care for things that they are “given” by the government.

Growing up in Romania my mother learned many things, among them to not speak freely outside of the home, to avoid the police and if confronted fain stupidity, and to trust no one. My mother was able to leave Romania when she was eighteen. My grandfather, who had tried unsuccessfully to get his wife and children to join him in Germany, had been sponsored by a cousin to come to the United States. This cousin and her husband had provided my grandfather a job and the opportunity to gain his citizenship. When he became a citizen he was able to have his family join him. The Romanian government agreed to let them go. On the day my mother was to come to the United States her village came to see the family off. Many in the village were in tears wishing they too could leave. At the train station the upper level government official questioned why so many people were crying. At finding out that my family was going to the United States the official stated she understood their tears. It was a terrible fate to have to leave Romania for someplace as terrible as the United States. This caused everyone in the village to laugh. Another key principle this highlighted for me was that the only people who did well under big government was big government.

My Father was born in the Ukraine also in an ethnically German farming village. His family witnessed the rise of the Soviet Union. One set of my Great-grandparents starved to death during the grain famines as Stalin set about breaking the will of the Ukrainian people. My other Great-grandfather was arrested and placed in jail where he was tortured nightly. While he was in jail the government levied tax upon tax on his farm until the family had no choice but to turn it over to the government. When he was released from jail he was a broken man who was never the same again. When my father was just a baby his father was arrested and placed in jail. They day the Soviet’s supposedly shipped him off to the labor camp my Grandmother went to the prison to see him one last time. She never saw him. She did however see someone else wearing his coat get put on the train, but she maintains it was not him. Since he was over six foot five it would seem that he would be easy to pick out giving some support to my Grandmother’s assertion. Some time later she received a letter from the government saying that he died while serving his “sentence” at a labor camp. In the end what the family does know is that he was never heard from again.

My Grandmother, her three children and her mother left the Ukraine ahead of the retreating German army in World War II. They spent some time in a displaced persons camp in Austria before making it to the American section of Germany following the War. My Grandmother got a job cleaning a church. While she was there an American priest and Lutheran minister came on a humanitarian mission. My grandmother was the only one at the church when they arrived. She arraigned accommodations for them, offering to put one of them up in her apartment. It was this Lutheran minister who helped bring my Grandmother and her children to the United States. My father was eleven years old when they sailed to the United States. In the US my father’s family had a one bedroom apartment. My father and his brother slept on a box spring, while my great-grandmother slept on the mattress. My Grandmother slept on the floor. She worked cleaning houses to support her family.

From those troubled beginnings my parents worked their way through night school. They earned advanced degrees and put their own children through college and medical school and a Ph.D. program respectively. My family is in many ways the quintessential American Success story. They achieved the success that America had promised to those willing to work hard. Today I see my government turning its back on the very things that made my families’ success possible and instead turning to the type of policies they had escaped in Romania and the Ukraine. My mother would tell the story of how her grandfather would read the “state” newspaper and shake his head saying, “I don’t know what they are writing about. This is not what I saw happening.” Since the latest presidential election I have found myself saying those same words and it has scared me.


I find myself questioning what my response to this growing fear should be. This Sunday as we celebrated Palm Sunday the priest urged the congregation to remember Holy week and the need to celebrate not just Easter Sunday but to remember the week leading up to it. He urged us to remember the death of Jesus not just his triumph over death. Listening to him talk I was drawn to think about what it must have been like to be a follower of Jesus to watch him humiliated by the soldiers, beaten, ridiculed, and then killed on a cross between two criminals. I thought about what it must have been like to be one of the apostles gathered together in a room after their Lord was killed. The fear, the confusion, the sadness they must have felt must have been almost unbearable as they sat in that room.

And yet that is not the end of the story. We know that Jesus did not leave his followers alone in that room and he provided for me some lessons that gave me a peace and a hope. Our lord has told us he will not leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). Time and time again the Bible tells us to trust in the Lord. And so in response to my own fear I have chosen to turn to the Lord in prayer, asking for wisdom, peace and discernment. Another lesson I drew was that in the face of fear the Apostles gathered together. This drawing together helps to provide support and keep the fear from becoming overwhelming. For me, I’ve found some bloggers who share my fears for our nation and my faith and I’ve stopped reading other sources that I’ve found counter to my values and beliefs. The support and encouragement I get helps to sustain me as I wait knowing that we have a gracious God who answers prayer and that this is not the end of the story.

Independence and Dancing Feet

I am a competitive person not in a direct in your face kind of way, but in a more subtle I will keep working until I have overcome and conquered kind of way. This has always been a positive for me. It has allowed me to complete a Ph.D. program (despite a professor’s assertion that I did not belong there), it allowed me to qualify for and complete the Boston Marathon, it has allowed me to write a novel and a whole host of other things. But last week I ran into the down side of my competitive nature. You see last week the items to be accomplished were not mine but my daughters.

The first event occurred during the course of a normal run of the mill conversation with my children. We were talking about preschool and what they had done that day. During the course of the conversation my daughter mentioned that several of the boys really like another girl in their class. Now it must be said that physically I completely resemble a grown up with laugh lines that will someday be crows feet/wrinkles, some extra weight from three pregnancies, and joints that are starting to creek when I get out of bed in the morning. Despite these facts at that moment I was transported back to a school aged child who deeply cared about who liked who best and how to be “liked best”.

“Why do they like this girl* so much?” I asked trying to sound nonchalant while my hand gripped the countertop like a vice.

“Oh because she’s sooo beautiful and extra special” my twins agreed and my daughter seems completely unfazed by this revelation, while the angry voice inside me screamed, NOOOOOO, no she’s not, she’s not beautiful, she’s not special, no no no no no no no. My child is beautiful, my child is special, mine, mine, mine.

Out loud I again tried to sound nonchalant when I said, “You know I think you guys are pretty special.”

“Yup” my twins agreed and almost in unison said, “God made us special and he loves us very much.”

Not that it exactly made me feel much better, but at that point I decided to cut my losses. In retrospect, I know the girl in question and from her mothers own mouth the reason these boys like her daughter so much is because she is willing to play the game the way the boys tell her to play. In other words she is compliant. My daughter is many things but compliant is just not really one of them and while at times this makes life challenging I would not have it any other way. My daughter is not going to do what someone else tells her to do just because they tell her to do it unless she has determined it is something she wants to do. She has a mind of her own and I take comfort in knowing that my daughter will not be a “follower.” Her independence will serve her well in life. Now all I have to do is grow up enough not to feel threatened by a popular four year old. A lesson my daughter seems to have already learned.

The second event occurred later that week when I took my daughter to her second ballet lesson. She was joining an already established class and as such was a bit “out of the loop.” The first lesson in an effort to help her catch up I taped the recital dance so she could learn it on her own. However all week long she decided she had other things to do, so there I sat on lesson day watching other girls twirl effortlessly to the steps while my own daughter did half steps. As I sat I felt anger rising. She talks about wanting to dance, she wanted these lessons, she goes on and on about wanting to dance on a stage, and when she has the chance she doesn’t practice, she doesn’t even really try. And then I remembers my own father, when I was only six and doing well as a swimmer. He would watch the practices and tell me things I could do better, how I could swim better, be better and how this killed any joy I had for swimming. I quit swimming after two years and it took me almost ten years to go back to it. So I resolved to let my daughter dance and to let it be her way and if that way is badly then let it be badly. I will let her enjoy her dancing and as for my competition… maybe its time for me to go back to road races.



*who shall remain nameless mostly because it doesn’t matter what her name is, what matters is what she represents which is anyone who I have ever felt inferior to.

The New Normal

When I first got Watson there was a song that made me thing of him called “To Make You Feel My Love” and I still can’t hear that song without tearing up….

To Make You Feel My Love
Written by: Bob Dylan
________________________________________

When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love

When evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
To make you fell my love

I know you haven't made your mind up yet
And I would never do you wrong
I've known it from the moment that we met
There's not doubt in my mind where you belong

I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blue
I'd go crawling down the avenue
There ain't nothing that I wouldn't do
To make you feel my love

The storms are raging on a rolling sea
And on the highway of regret
The winds of change are blowing wild and free
You ain't seen nothin' like me yet

There and nothin' that I wouldn't do
Go to the ends of the earth for you
Make you happy make your dreams come true
To make you feel my love

It’s been over three weeks since Watson died and I’m trying to adjust to the new normal. I miss the way he would follow me around the house through the day and the way his tail would thump when he saw me. I miss his smile and his gentle spirit. He was such a special dog to me and he taught me some very real lessons about life and love. I think the most important lesson he taught me was the power love can have to transform, taking a skinny, fearful pup and turning him into a round, food loving, and devoted friend.

On a larger scale Watson showed me what it will take to change the world. You see I met Watson when I was volunteering at the animal shelter. I helped raise money for rescue organizations, I donated time to help socialize the animals to increase their chances of getting adopted, and I tried to do some good, but in truth I don’t know that I made that much of difference, but to Watson, the dog I adopted, the dog I took ownership of I made all the difference in the world. In doing so I learned that to make the biggest impact and truly make a difference you have to take ownership of that which you wish to change not just take something on as a “rental”. For these lesson and the years of love and joy he brought me I am very grateful to Watson my little Wo-bear.

Wo-Bear

Yesterday I lost my sweet “wo-bear” After months of battling lymphoma Watson’s rear legs went out on him and left him in pain. We tried increasing his medication and waiting to see if it would improve but with the lymph nodes increasing growth and his failure to return to good functioning after his last round of CCNU we made the painful decision to let Watson go. His passing has left me with a large void in my heart and I will miss his sweet spirit. I am grateful for the good months I was able to have with him thanks to the medications and efforts of the doctors and staff at the Hope Center, unexpected assistance from my brother in law, and the love and support from my husband.