August 1981, twenty-seven years ago, I was preparing to send my then four year old to Kindergarten. The excitement of new pencils. The cuteness in the new clothes and fresh face - growing up, ready for school. She would turn 5 in October, so she was ready, right?
I was not one bit prepared for how it would feel when the day came to "let her go." I saw the bus coming. I saw it stop. Somehow, it felt like time should stop, because putting her onto that bus definitely did not feel like the right thing to do. Where was the slow mo that you see in the movies? When is the part where the child turns around, smiles and waves, and what should be a split second turns into three minutes in slow motion? No, it didn't happen like that. She didn't even look back. She stepped onto the bus, the doors closed, and she was gone. The bus started up the road and I waited for it to pass so I could cross back over to our house. So abrupt. Gone.
I walked into the house, feeling like someone had just stolen my child. It was not supposed to feel like this. I was totally unprepared. I literally fell onto my bed and cried. I cried, and cried, and cried. I pulled myself together to go to work. I'd get used to it, right? People do, don't they? They must. But I didn't.
Neither did my daughter. She cried at school. She did not want to be there. I did not want her at school. I didn't want to be at work. I wanted us both to be home. I could not articulate that at the time though. It wasn't what people did. I just thought I needed to get used to this, and so did she. This was life. This was normal. This was what people did.
Then, a woman in our church did something really, really radical. She pulled her daughter out of school. She said that SHE felt she could do a better job teaching her at home, than the education she was getting in school. "What??" I thought? You can do that? The idea was way out there for me at the time. WAAAYYYY out there. The next thing I knew, a few more women in church were choosing homeschool. I was intrigued. I picked their brains. What? How? Are you sure? Aren't you afraid?
I was a single parent, and I didn't see the possibility at the time - I would think differently today - but at the time, I felt I had to work outside the home, and my daughter had to go to school. Five years went by, and if we got used to the set up, I'd have to say that neither one of us ever did like it. I ached to be home with her, and she did not want to be in school.
Along came the man I would marry, and it was a whirlwind meeting, engagement and marriage. We passed dating right by. Before he proposed, we went to a homeschool convention, and he was convinced right off the bat that homeschooling was the right way. I had been given four or five years to pick the brains of the women in our church who had jumped on the homeschooling bandwagon. I was already convinced. Besides, I saw the fruit in their own children.
Well, we got married, and immediately began homeschooling. We came home!
Now, 21 years later, I understand why the "bus" felt so wrong. Society told me this was normal. Normal to put my child in a vehicle with a group of strangers, where she would exit with strangers and walk into a strange building, sit in a strange classroom, and learn from a teacher she did not know. Everything inside of me told me this was wrong, but my mind tried to convince myself that it was OK, normal, "life" as it was meant to be. Today I can articulate it, and it makes so much sense.
Everything that felt so wrong that first day of school in 1981 felt equally right when we came home. We came home - home where we belonged - and it felt so right. It was so right.
I'm down to two now. Five children altogether, only two more left to homeschool. I've never put them on the bus. They've only known homeschooling - they know nothing of government schooling. Every school morning the bus passes our house. We ease into our day, and learn in the comfortable, natural setting of home. It feels so right.
TOS Items of Interest
Sep. 1, 2008
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