Who'schooling: Mom

Once upon a time, I tried so hard. With the books, and the papers, and the pencils, and the assignments, and the sighing, and stomping, and flopping with exasperation, and the crying baby, or the morningsick me, or needing to spend the morning mowing a lawn rather than battle my son's ironclad apathy about completing worksheets at the kitchen table. I did try.

Gears ground hotly in my head as my careful plans were, at best, rejected. At worst? Done badly, barely. My integrated and exciting activities were reduced to mere hoops through which an obligatory jump was half-heartedly executed. 

And I didn't even have packets.

 I was packetless. 

I'll back up. See, homeschooling wasn't my original plan when having kids. I loved school, and couldn't wait to enroll my own li'l learners, while simultaneously getting all up in the PTC/boosters/fundraisers/whathaveyou. 

Plot twist: The oldest two did not feel like playing along with my grand delusions of someday owning one of those My Kid SuperLoves School bumper stickers. They never even liked school, showing and saying so in a number of ways. I tried to talk them out of it, volunteered at the schools, backed off, pushed in, celebrated victories, tried to appear nonchalant about victories, ignored defeats, and nearly sounded like I was threatening them when their unhappiness stubbornly flared and I'd bring up The Homeschool Option.

I never expected them to take me up on it.

But they did, and we've got the blog to prove it. No need to say much more. Messy, fun, brilliant, frustrating years followed, as we learned and lived in the same sticky spot. A spot we find ourselves in, once again. 

With packets. 

And Zoom meetings, calls with specialists, and weekly online quizzes.

Across the world, millions of parents are currently realizing what I struggled to hold in my head without shame all those years: School at home, kind of sucks. It feels like a tremendous buck with very little bang, running in several different academic directions every day, while juggling a home and raising siblings/pets/corn. 

Reading friends' Facebook memes these days gives me no satisfaction. That thing I found so difficult? Really is difficult.

We are doing that difficult thing as well as we can right now, to stay ready for the fall, whatever it brings. But, these days have me reminiscing about a time when, instead of playing school at home, we did everything else, everyday, in the space created by bowing out of civil conventions.

Staying home can be the start of something valuable, something that might not have happened otherwise. That's how we rolled, for years, literally.

It is this belief that compelled me to have a talk with the homestudents,Thomas, George, and Mae, about contributing something here, soon. This blog could use some new voices, saying stuff about things.

This week, the BU crew has an unofficial assignment of the home variety: I have asked them to fill this space with their own original posts, photos, thoughts, antics, and exploits. What they're up to, what we're up against, and what it's all about.  I'll do what I do best: set the stage, rake up the aftermath, and call the authorities if necessary. See you all between things, just doing what I do best: trying to keep up.

Brainstorms: Take Notes

Welcome to the jungle, friends.

It's a shock to the system, isn't it? Suddenly wading through the sweaty mud trails of home education? Remember way back to two weeks ago, when we all thought Spring Break would be one week, and not, you know....all of spring?


If you live with kids, chances are, like us, you were just dropped into a chaotic and steamy world.

Stick close to me though, because I know this wilderness. Exactly ten years ago, our first grader decided to drop out of school during Spring Break, bringing our home learners count to three boys and a baby girl. Ten years ago, we faced the fact that we could never really do what a school can do for our four children, so we opted for something else instead.

Acknowledgement: What is happening in the world right now is not technically"homeschooling."

 It's families of all kinds making the best of an upended school year. Losing income, juggling the logistical aspects of life in something like lockdown, worrying about supply disruptions, all while suddenly having the house full of kids who are still 12 weeks away from being done with whatever grade they were just in is not a typical homeschooling situation.

Forgive yourself right now for failing to turn your home into an enviable Pinterest project during the first week of the apocalypse.

If color-coded schedules and popsicle stick systems make you feel simultaneously motivated and defeated, take heart. You're not alone. I wrote the following to act as muddy hand-prints on the tree trunks of this bewildering path. As I stumbled through backyard education a decade ago, I may have actually learned some things, or at least left a decipherable pattern of stains with my errors. Which is basically the same thing.

Spaces and Places Need Some Thought
You know the great thing about homeschooling?
We're all home all the time!
You know the awful thing about homeschooling?
We're all home all the time!

But, homeschoolers can do day trips! ehhhhxcept right now, so...

When I say we're home all the time, my emphasis is not on the "home all the time," part, rather the "we." As in, them, me, and all of our grime.

See the problem?

There's no custodial superhero at the end of our day, piling chairs in the quiet corner of an empty room, to reset the cleanliness of the floor. No, here at the BU, live spaces and learn spaces are often the same quickly filthy spaces. And the teacher is also the cafeteria lady, secretary, bus driver, psychologist, and janitor.

My advice to you, when clearly I could use advice on this matter? Um, turn Go Get All The Cups In The House! into a math game? P.E.?

This is why I try to keep most indoor learning to this monster.

No matter how hectic things get around here, I know if I clear it, spray it, wipe it, and sweep under it, someone can use it for something.

That sounds like so little to hope for, but just you wait until you forgot why you came in the room, and two people are talking to you, and holy cow, how is it already 3 pm?  Having a clean spot where someone could do a maze, or play Mancala is a lot.

Feel the Beat of the Rhythm of the Day

This one is fill-in-the-blank. You have to ask yourself, what are my beats?

What am I motivated to make sure happens all regular and on time like? Waking, sleeping, eating, grooming, tidying up, outside time, music, exercise, games, pets, reading, watching movies/videos. Even if you do it all in stretchy pants, dividing the day's hours among the things that matter most to you can make a difference in the long run.

Do you have to play all the beats every day? Of course not, but some are part of the daily song. Who among us has not tested their kids' ability to remember a little ditty called, "When's Lunch?" Seriously, how does it get to be 3 pm so fast?

It takes intention to pry apart the daily needs, making space for activities that we need in a less immediate way. For us, music is one of those activities.

As soon as I knew we were staring down the barrel of an undetermined break from school, I made these coupons to hide from the kids.

It felt so dorky, to react to a global pandemic by cutting and gluing. It felt so important at the same time. The week's concerns threatened to overshadow all frivolous family time, unless it was fiercely defended. With homemade coupons. Sure.

When the kids discovered them throughout the week, we made a plan for that day to stop everything and play music together for an hour. Three hours, intentionally carved out of a week which had us mostly focused on survival. Priorities prioritized. Memories made. And a way to go forward, like tapping out a rhythm.

Hokey Pokegogy

Look, even if you're an actual licensed teacher, you may not be qualified to teach every subject to every kid in your house. Got a teen who loved robotics? Well, sorry kid. I can sort of DO the robot, but that's not helping anyone.

How can a well-meaning stay-at-home parent, especially one inexperienced at educating young people, cover all the standards and teach all of the things? Lemme just let you right off the hook with that one: you can't. And if you try, everyone will be miserable. So give up right now.

Instead, think of what your specific gaggle of students have in common. Here, ages range from 11 to 17. We have a variety of interests, personalities, and needs in the BU bunch.

Erryday, I'm differentiatin', so when planning, I like to implement a philosophy that groups the kids' commonalities, wherever I can find them.

I want them all to put their right hand in...

Let's get schooly! Sit down, pick up a stamp, or a paint brush, or a marker, and write or create something visual.

I want them to put their right hand out...

Next, do something that is NOT focused on using hand-eye skills. Like go outside, throw, kick, climb. Scramble about in general, while grunting, perhaps.

Left hand in...

Did you help in the kitchen today? What should we make to eat? Apples on the sandwich? Well, why not! What a great idea!

Left hand out...

I'm just going to ignore you yelling "CHEESE" at a spider under the piano right now. It looks totally ridiculous, but you were just behaving like a little grown-up, making apple sandwiches in the kitchen. Maybe this has to happen after that.

Oops, I forgot to shake it all about. I always forget that.

But really, across the board, kids are Deviators. They usually need to do something different from the thing they just did. If they were just up, offer them something down next. Or vice versa. We all had fun. That was cool. On to something completely different. Shake it all about.

Wild Card! 
When teaching, confusion can be your friend. Seriously, disequilibrium is the beginning of cognitive dissonance, which is basically the first step any of us takes in learning something new. A home can be an enriching environment, without being overly didactic, if you respect the power of huh?schooling.

Picture it, you want to do a fun, hands-on learning activity, involving dirt and water and seeds. Try this: Instead of arranging everything on your kitchen table and formally inviting everyone to listen and follow and ignore your instructions, just set everything up in a space you don't mind leaving a mess for a bit and SAY NOTHING ABOUT IT.

Let the assembled items, and the weirdness of it just sitting there do half the job of teaching, by confusing your children. Trust me, it's good for them.

It's called an Invitation, and it's an excellent way to present the unpredictable. When you're confined to your little home space, with the same little tribe, disequilibrium is harder to come by.

Plus, it's fun to see what kids do as they begin to interact with items not expressly described to them. I get ideas for what to do next, by watching what they do next.

Ignore This Blog:
The educational resources and connection to be found on the internet make it well worth the trouble, in my view; but the onlines can also easily contribute to an overwhelmed feeling of inferiority in a new-to-home-schooler.

If you see another school-homie doing something cool, it's because they took a picture and told you all about it, myself included. Enjoy the inspiration, make it your own, but don't compare your whole life to another person's prettiest display window. You don't even want to know how bad I smell right now, showing off my cute little music coupons and seed packets.

In the end, your home student is in the same boat as mine, and all of their school peers. Life just took a crazy turn and we're all riding this learning curve together. As we careen into who-knows-what -schooling, decide what matters and try to make it happen, but go easy on yourself when your kid's number one accomplishment for the day was nailing. that. ponytail.

Ignore pressure to hold together a system that just came apart. Instead, turn up your senses, trust your kids, and strive for quality, as you define it.
Modeling healthy habits during stressful times is a life lesson crash-coursing us all, like it or not.
We are all homeschoolers now. 

TIONDS: Part II: The Utter Collapse of Everything

The first thing I noticed, Monday morning, was the dirt under my nails. It's not an uncommon sight in March, but I tend to do a better job scrubbing the farmwork off of myself before starting the week of workwork, at a schoolschool.

Except Monday was not a workday, nor was it a school day, though it was a weekday.

I heard the husband downstairs in the kitchen and started to fire up the mental list of expectations: The kids, me, home all day. Garden, animals, books, online stuff, music, lunch in there somewhere. Usually. The days are a blur of laundry and Miyazaki films. Yesterday, it was the towels and Totoro. Today, kid clothes and, maybe Kiki?

Did the last six years even happen?

Am I just imagining it, or did we all spend a whole lot of a long while getting up early, putting on regular pants, and leaving the house everyday? Backpacks. I seem to remember backpacks, and living life with almost no straw in my hair.

Well, the Importance of Not Doing Something turns out to have have implications reaching way way beyond this dinky little backyard blog. Learning to curb, to self-regulate, to see the value in saying "No," to the eternally soggy-bottomed desire to sink into a habit and ignore its inherent dangers: that's what I was going after when trying to get my kids to spend less time on their screens.

But now, we all have to tell ourselves no, when it comes to just about everything. No school, no work, no public places. Stay home, stay well, and stay out of the traffic stream helping COVID-19 romp around on a global spring break.

And all the screens say,

 Okay, so maybe they are  keeping people employed, connected, informed, and literally fed.

For sure online technology is making it possible for the primary breadwinner in this house to continue working, for the aspiring teachermom to keep studying, and it will be heavily involved in our kids enjoying resources provided to them by the school district.

So, what's the point of even continuing this New Year's Resolution? Is it too late to change it to Spend MORE Time on Screens?

Last week feels like forever ago, but I have a foggy recollection of life back then. I remember wanting the kids to take a bigger role in limiting their screen time. I wanted them to learn to live better by practicing self-regulation. And they did.

 And it was awesome. The end. HAHAHAHA.

Those were quaint times, when we could concern ourselves with such frivolities. Right now, we need to flex our apocalypse readiness and turn this BU out.

I type these words with grubby fingers that spread straw like it was a Thursday morning, 2013. The news came the other day: we're in for a six week hiatus. Six weeks of a life we lived for six years.

 We might just learn something.

The Importance of Not Doing Something: Part I: The Resolution

Writing is hard sometimes. I mean, not right now. Right now, my keyboarding skills can barely keep up with my usual verbosity, and writing is like uninterrupted talking. That's blogging, I guess: Think something, try not to oversay it, mash it all out on the laptop keyboard, publish, and wait to see if it made sense to anyone but me. Easy.

But when the prompt is official and external, writing is like trying to do origami, using nothing but my elbows and big toes. The result is an excruciatingly clumsy facsimile of something other people seem able to do with ease, or fingers.

That's how it was when I had to write a teaching philosophy for one of the classes I took last year. Working on my Elementary Education degree, I was zooming through an assignment until I got to "What is your teaching philosophy?"

I could have done a better job if I had taken the 15 most frequently-used words in my courses thus far, put them on magnetic refrigerator poetry tiles, donned a blindfold, picked words off my fridge randomly, thrown them on the floor, removed my blindfold, and read them aloud. The first draft was something like, MY TEACHING PHILOSOPHY IS MEANINGFUL SUPPORT STUDENT LEARNING ENGAGEMENT HUNDRED PERCENT PIAGET ACCURACY VERY LONG TIME.

Maybe not quite that bad, but none of it meant anything to me. And it was supposed to be why I do what I do for the foreseeable future of my career as an educator.

Hm, maybe I could do this thing better. I tried a trick I use sometimes, when hitting a writing block. I imagined the statement I wanted to write, in this case my teaching philosophy, as something that already existed, pre-defined. It didn't have to be a lofty goal. It could be what I've already been doing, or why I've already been doing it. The trick worked. All the jargon faded away and my real intentions stood there, clear as they always are.

My teaching philosophy is based on the assumption that the student is always my best partner in the endeavor to educate them.

Yes, it's basically "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make 'em drink." in school form. You can compel, cajole, threaten, and bribe a child to sit, and hold a pencil and paper or book, but you can't make 'em think.  They have to be down wit it, to some degree. We go together, or not at all.

Many who tried our hand at huh?-schooling our own kids read John Holt at some point in our studies. (Or, unstudies, as the case may be.) He was no fan of school, insisting that the expectations imposed by a formal learning environment destroy a kid's natural tendency to be voracious learn-o-matics. Kind of a downer if you plan to work in public education, but a real punk rocker if you've declared your home a hands-on exploration zone of anything goes.

Holtism may have gotten a little out of hand, here at the BU, during the years the kids and critters were trashing the place. I mean "discovering knowledge."

My li'l "partners" in "education," were free range freight trains at times.

 But I guess that was kind of the point.

Pro Tip: If pseudo-feral un-raising kids in a backyard petting zoo is your idea of school, prepare to live in a world of undone housework and a bramble of untamed habits. Watch out, because behaviors that soothe, in absence of other obligations, can get out of hand. Like our raging case of invasive backyard bindweed.

You know if it's true if there's a garden metaphor for it.

Maybe we had to figure it out for ourselves to really get it, but all of that unfettered freedom taught us to love limits. Seeking balance actually makes us happier than seeking happiness, but balance is a moment-by-moment accomplishment. One year, thirty minute increments of screen time are exchanged for chores, followed by an afternoon of tree-climbing. Before you know it, it's a year later and you're taking all day to write a teaching philosophy while your tree-climber spends way too much of her morning in headphones, mouth-breathing over her Kitty Kats RPG.

After an informal formative assessment, I decided to propose a New Year's Resolution.

But, but, resolutions, man. Who cares? Live your best now now, man. You don't need some stupid white man's holiday, right? Do chickens wait for an arbitrary date on the calendar to start being better chickens, man? No, they just peck the calendar to pieces. Maybe eat some of it.

Be like chickens, man.

Okay, so what if saying, On ___ Day, I'll Stop Shoulding and Start Doing is just a human construct? Man? I do happen to be a human, and kind of a constructivst, I have discovered. If we build our own reason for doing, or not doing something, then we really might do or not do it.

In that spirit, four weeks ago, we began a concerted effort to limit everyone's screen time. It has been surprisingly popular among the alums, as was the idea that I Shall Be The Enforcer Of It. For now.

Since beginning, we have had a rough aim, accomplished through my rough act of putting everybody's cell phones in a shoe box and declaring how long the break will be each week.

And sure, I can keep doing that. But, as usual, I have ulterior motives, I mean "learning objectives." Pesky ole' John Holt won't let me rest at merely training them to do less phone-staring.

      A life worth living, and work worth doing: that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called 'a better education.' 
         -John Holt Instead of Education:Ways to Help People Do Things Better

We can toss the cell phones in a box, do origami with our fingers for a rainy Sunday afternoon, and blog about it later. But, by the power of Bloom's Taxonomy, how can I really make this engagement more meaningful? Holt help us, how can we all learn to do life better? And then blog about that? Stay tuned.

How to Make Pie, No Matter What

It's that time of year, again!

Which is, technically, always a true statement. Whatever time of year it is, it's that time. But what time of year is it, specifically?

Pie time.

Aww yeah.

If you ask me, the holidays are just luscious reason after reason to have slice after slice of flaky, fruity, creamy, just one more bite-worthy pie. Only thing is, someone has to make one. I mean, it's not that hard. Especially if someone who has made a dizzying variety of pies over decades, decided to write a big long blog pie-prep post, explaining it all, step by step.

Wait, this is starting to seem like a recipe. Should I be writing this down?

Indeed I should, because the recipe I'm about to share for this year's most featured pie, is my original creation, though it was refined thanks to lots of helpful input from friends, and good ole' fashioned, messing up. The recipe I'm about to share with you should last the test of time, and hopefully delight some long dark winterers, for generations to come.

First, I'll tease ya, with a photo.

MMMMMMMMM, RIGHT

And it smells? Dry Erasable.

How to start? Where to begin? It starts with a goal. What difference do you feel like making in your life? It can be anything. Maybe you want to write a novel, read a novel, run a marathon, quit watching 5-minute Craft videos, start a business. Dream big. Aim high. Whatever. Just get a dream in your heart and then draw a big circle. Mouth watering yet? Just wait.

 My ambition. My goal. My fantastical pie in the ethereal sky happens to be transforming myself from a DIY blogschooler, to Certified Educator of Other People's Children.

Part of that journey included being all up in several classrooms, for months, observing masters in their field at work, and trying to take notes, provide support, and even teach a little bit of science. They call it Pre-Clinical Experiences. And so do I. Because that's what it's called. PCE for short. That's right, one letter off from PIE.

It's all connected.

Since my goal  involved 75 little slices of time, all organized to meet a variety of shifting and interlocking requirements, I divvied it up into bigger wedges, categories into which to sort those littler nibbles of ambition. It probably took a good hour to make the chart on my wall accurately reflect the dream in mind, to make sure it would provide me a good visual measure of my progress toward my goal.

Next step to making this one-of-a-kind treat?  Nothing to do but do it. Get started. Take that first jog, write that first chapter, put down the phone at flashing font promising five great ideas involving cement and bubble wrap. Do the work. Then, reward yourself everyday by coming back to the white board and coloring in that day's slice.

Once the pie reflects that day's progress, and this is very important, be sure to stare at the board for a little bit. Don't skip this step. Squint, tilt your head, and focus on where you are going, never doubting for a second that someday every inch of your pie will be encrusted in old dry erase scrawls.

Really let your belief sit and congeal for a minute. You'll thank me later.
Later, when cars (that's right, more than one now) come out of the night and smash you and your kid to pieces.
Later, when there's no more family car and the bus doesn't go where you need it to go, anytime you need it to go there.
And even later, when what was billed as a simple out-patient surgery becomes a surprise staycation of convalescence that sucks up sick time and many earnest intentions.

These, plus minor trifles like head colds, defunct appliances, and ailing pets, will try to trash your tart. They can ruin its form, rendering it incomplete, only full of doubt, which tastes just awful.

They can make you wonder if that gap-toothed  set  of uncolored spaces will mock you forever. Then it wouldn't even be a circle. It wouldn't even be pi. Unthinkable. How to avoid this result? Well, like most prized recipes, it's going to take something you might not have known you had.

How's that for a secret ingredient? Sorry to be cryptic, but how was I supposed to know that, as I progressed through my PCE, every time it seemed the fates were conspiring against my bedroom whiteboard being adorned with a full radius of scribbled slices, someone close to me would step in and close the gap? How could I have gone shopping for a warm uprise of love and generosity?

That doesn't even start out on my list. I tend to think I'm supposed to plan my pies without reliance on others that way. We are supposed to devise our goals, set our circles and make our hash marks, assuming we will get there without help, right? Yet in effect, if it had been up to me alone, the complete circle you see before you would look the pizza box under a college freshman's futon: couple of piddly dry slices that smell bad.

You probably think I'm suggesting a hefty helping of helpful friends. Well, sure, but local heroes were not in short supply during these hard months. Rather, what I found hardest to scrounge from the ole' spice rack:
Asking for Help (1 heaping cup, almost every day)
Accepting Help Without Feeling Like a Failure (2 heaping cups, daily, and hourly sometimes)
Doing Whatever Imperfect Version of  Imagined Ideal Anyway (Keep Handy and Sprinkle As Needed.)

The surgery I mentioned above, happened to me, in the face. It helped me, but also rendered me bedfast for weeks.

My pie chart, looking more like this, watched me doze under a bag of frozen peas, and I watched it back, through a bleary Vicoden-induced haze.

This is when all the staring I had already done to it before came in handy. Thanks to all that squinting, head-tilting, and the simmering self-deluding,  it didn't look unfulfilled. I could see something in it that I needed to see. What I saw in each and every filled inch of that pie, was already a result of my friends who believed there would be a complete and final product.

They delivered me to testing, work, home, and sites of observation. They rescued our pets, comforted our kids, asked if we were okay and if they could do anything. A lot. Their willingness to help and their conviction that we were worth helping, bolstered me on cold hard mornings and late dark afternoons.

My friends are mostly smart and lovely people. They could know what they are doing, believing in this pie in sky. Or, on the wall, as the case may be. When all I could do was mouth-breathe and click a mouse, that's what I did. I studied, wrote, and planned for stronger more capable days. I figured they all knew something I was still unsure about, and that they might be right.

Yesterday, I got word that I may wipe the whiteboard clean. Pre-clinical experiences have successfully been experienced, and I passed. As pie is the perfect dessert for sharing, it'd be better to say, "We passed." This is a pie I never could have made on my own. Humbly, I will wipe it away, to make room for a new realization; but not before posting a pic, sharing its secrets, and thanking those who helped make it so sweet.
Serves every 1.

Broken Moment

One week ago, everything shattered, exactly one millisecond after I knew it would.

"There's a ca..."
 <floating brief eternity>
BLAM! went the front of the oncoming car into ours.
"...r."

What followed was basic small town post-auto accident protocol:
People rolling vehicles over crunchy glass bits, to move them off of the road and make room for the traffic flow.
A lady in her bathrobe. She lives nearby, heard the crash, and came outside. She says accidents happen all the time at this corner.
Numbly answering "ARE YOU OKAY?" a million times.
Not having air in my lungs to say, "Yes."
So am I okay? Where are my glasses? At my feet. Okay, now I can see.
I'm not bleeding and neither is my husband.
Yes, we're okay.
.
.
.
I want to get out of the car. I need to call my son. Is the other driver okay? How long has it been? 20 minutes?

"More like five! The police are on the way!"

Just writing all of that makes me shake a little. One week later, my mind stays, not in the moment of collision with that quiet dark grill, but in the moment before: when life did not feel like it was careening out of control. Instead, it was floating inexorably toward a smashing outcome. I am surprised at how afraid I didn't feel, as harrowing an experience as it was.

How close I actually came to my close that night, I don't know. Stuff really hurts now. If pain is proof of being alive, my thoracic cavity is a ring of pink-cheeked maidens skipping around the maypole. That may be the case for a month or more, but it could be worse. It could always be so much worse.

The kids were not in the car, and so, were blessedly over this traumatic event the day after it happened. Life shrugs and goes on, expecting dinner every night. Melancholy is mine alone, already looping in my head like a Cure playlist, thanks to autumn. Slather some near-death experience on it, and you have yourself a real reveling in the crispy old sadness that is life after its heyday.

A walk around my long-neglected yard today was a stroll through a gallery of embarrassment. Kids don't play here much anymore. They don't throw as many homemade weapons, dodged by a mom, pushing a full wheelbarrow, tending to unsightly sights and making whimsical planting arrangements.

Bindweed romps through the overgrown grass more than little legs, and the chickens are watched primarily by dogs, who wish there were still four small running shouters, playing hooky from September to June.

What's done is done, and over, and gone. Done well, but over. Good, and gone.

Funny, at this time, to think of seeds, right? Yet, for those who grow, autumn is when our choices and actions imply that we are not going to crash into oblivion on a highway in the night, but oversee another bright green dewy uprising in just six short months.

What made me think of life, springing back in spring, at a time like this? A chance encounter with some lettuce plants.

I saw their light frilly leaves while walking around what is left of the garden at the school where I work, and flashed back to a wet day in late spring, years ago, when we first met. How many years ago? I don't remember. That's how many.

I was helping the late, great, Shelly Bowe quickly home way too many lettuce seedlings in a raised bed. Warm rain was starting to fall on the school garden where we had been working together all afternoon.

She scurried around, picking up tools and brought me one of  many over-crowded seedling flats. "We just need to get these in the ground somewhere! We can thin them out and move them later!"

She taught elementary school kids to grow and sell their own lettuce from the school garden. Her Lettuce Grow program was a crucial model for my Food of the Future project. Not only were kids learning to grow and appreciate eating their own lettuce, she was intent on showing them their entrepreneurial potential, as full participants in a food system: food producers for their community.

With muddy fingers, we laughed about something, I'm sure, and tucked little roots into the dark soil, nearly too late, but just in time.

A day and a lady long gone.

Her lettuce, however, endures. Not the exact plants we smiled over that day, but their great great grandplants, tall and putting on the last of late summer blooms, as one season fades into what's next. Most of the flowers, spent, surely hold seeds now. Curled brown petals hug durable shuttles of code. Tiny ovoid-shaped instructions. How to Be Lettuce. just add spring, or a long mild autumn.

I might have to invite some of them come grow in my hoop house.

You know, after I clean it out. You know, after I can move without wincing.

Weeks ago, before the crash, the bolting lettuce presented its own lesson on perspective. Who knows what life is about?  But being alive? Well, that's obvious. It is an eventual end and shattered start. The dynamic balance between opposing forces. Youth, surging at the expense of exquisite structures, leaving cracked hulls and aching chests. The duality of it means you may see it how you like, whatever brings you back to the dirt. Maybe it's just about feeding everyone dinner.

For Teen

I pushed the cart down the thrift store aisle, absentmindedly engaging its passenger while perusing used kitchen goods."And what's 8 + 8?"
"16!" the husky little voice answered.
Having asked him to double everything from zero to that point, I kept on. "What's 9 + 9?"
"18!"
"What's 10 +10?"
You can probably guess what George said, and that he kept answering, quickly and correctly, for several minutes more, as I turned over second-hand coffee cups and looked at utensils that once sat in someone else's countertop utensil container. Tongs for the memories, whoever you were.

It was somewhere around, "What's 49 + 49?" ("98!") when a surprised-looking older gentleman came around the corner, to have a look at the little mathematician he had been listening to from the neighboring aisle. That's when surprise turned into a stunned gasp, because the boy who could add any number to itself was three years and a half years old.

Now double that. 3.5 + 3.5 = 7, the age George was singing about in a video coughed up into my newsfeed by Facebook memories, early the other morning. With shaggy blonde hair and a short-sleeved shirt, he shuffle-stomped a beat, back and forth, among way too much front porch clutter, while singing, "Somebody's going to turn seven soon. Somebody's going to turn seven soon. Somebody's going to turn seven soon, and the correct answer is George!"finishing with the biggest, sweetest smile.

Lingering before getting out of bed, I watched it over and over, listening to how young he sounded, and noticing things. His long hair, his short sleeves, the messy porch: all of these could have just coincidentally been, but I knew better. Back then, haircuts frightened him, long sleeves bothered him, and the porch was his self-made classroom and art studio.

Although batteries of assessments conducted during his first, completely silent, foray into preschool had not decisively concluded that he was "on the spectrum," we knew better. We knew that he was his best when he decided things for himself. So his hair grew long, his sleeves stayed short, his time was his, and he smiled, sang, painted, wrote, invented, and connected, all on his own terms.

Now, double that. 7 + 7 = right now, and right here. Here? Is Mexico, at the end of a long trip he once announced he'd never take. Six years ago, when I started to take off for other lands, and eventually take kids with me, he disabused me of that notion in no uncertain terms.

"Mae can have my trip. I don't want to leave the country."

So she came with me before he did, to Mexico, last summer. Fond of familiarity, and rooted in routines; the world outside of the house where he was born, the yard in which he frolicked, and even the school he ventured to attend, was not enticing to George in the least.

Or so I thought, but he knew better.

Because he revealed something to me two months ago, when were just about to board our first flight out of the country. He had his support system, in the form of his father and sister, besides his wanderlusty mom. He had his laptop, some Spanish instruction, and repeated assurances from his sister that life in a different country could and would feature many of the creature comforts he feared leaving behind. The secret deep inside him, always covered by fear and denial, always allowed to stay there because until then, nobody had dared frivolously impose upon him something he always said he didn't want, surfaced as we stood in line in the airport.

"You know, it's good that I'm doing this. It's good that I'm traveling now, even though I didn't want to come. Because, I'd like to go to Japan someday. You know, have new experiences."

Like that guy in the thrift store, I was stunned.

Of course, besides being relieved that he was able to approach an adventure for which I so desperately wanted his company, I found this revelation almost heart-breaking. That he held out hope that the rest of the world might be exciting to him, and that he could almost see himself stepping out into it, was news to me. Shuddering, I imagined what would have been, had I stuck, single-mindedly, to the policy of never crossing his stated preferences for himself.

It was almost an act of faith, ignoring his decree, booking a ticket anyway, and even planning a trip so long, his birthday happened while were still on it. Tonight, as he inserted his, much lower, voice into the Happy Birthday song, adding "ME!" in place of each "YOU" sung by the rest of us, before blowing out the flaming 14 atop his cake, I was warmed by his resilient sense of humor. It shines on, in spite of this unexpected excursion, which I hope is only the beginning for him.