I miss homeschooling. It puts a shadow over my heart every day I see the kids off to school, especially the youngest one. Thank God I got to teach her to read last year. She's the last one, the end of our parenting young children.
We decided to put the kids into a private school here in Moscow for a variety of reasons, not the least being that I'm very busy here. The school is also quite the experience in itself, one the kids are really enjoying. And I didn't want them to miss this experience out of my own needs or out of a misguided belief that my children could only thrive in a homeschooling environment.
Also, sometimes it's good to completely shake up one's life. Everything about the way we live now is different from what it was for the last 14 years. And it's exciting. Change is hard and inconvenient and risky. But it also gives one a different perspective on the passing of time. It's tempting to make life flow by with few snags -- everything just right, the routine smooth, the food predictable, the company comfortable. You live by the seasons and holidays, the rhythms of the year, year in and year out, not noticing that time is puddling under your easy chair and not much is left.
Real change is like depth perception. Suddenly, the days aren't so much flat as spread out before you in a panorama of hills and troughs formed by memory inducing activities and sights. I feel time more now that I no longer hold to a comfortable routine. That's a gift. But I still miss my children.
Puddling under your easy chair...quite the allusion there, sweety.
DH
Posted by: DH | 02/02/2010 at 06:13 AM
a little too intellectual for ya?
Posted by: MTheads | 02/02/2010 at 07:31 AM