All passages from NKJV.
Matthew 22:36-40
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?"
Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
Loving others as yourself does not mean surrendering all sense of self. It does not mean subjugating yourself entirely to the whims of others. It does not mean always putting your own needs and desires aside to care for others. It means giving people grace, believing in the best, leaving room for error and for growth. It means reserving judgement, listening, giving, receiving, and occasionally sacrificing. Sometimes it means tough love. Sometimes it means indulgence. Never does it mean emotional manipulation or abuse. Love God, love others. Everything else hangs on this, flows from this.
Matthew 24:23-28, 36
"Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There!' do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. Therefore, if they say to you, 'Look, He is in the desert!' do not go out; or 'Look, He is in the inner rooms!' do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be . . . But of that day and hour no one knows, no, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only."
Two words: Harold Camping.
Matthew 26:54, 27:3-5, 9-10
"How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?"
. . .
Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood." And they said, "What is that to us? You see to it!" Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself.
. . .
Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the value of Him who was priced, whom they of the children of Israel priced, and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me."
When i was in high school, i took a public speaking class. One of our assignments was to choose a villain, either historical or fictional, and write a speech defending them. We had to dress as the villain and defend ourselves to the class, explaining why our actions were right or excusable.
Most people chose Disney villains, like Captain Hook or Cruella DeVille. I chose Judas.
My argument boiled down to two points: in order for salvation to come and for the will of God to be done on Earth, Jesus had to die; in order for Jesus to die, someone had to hand Him in. This had been prophesied for generations, including a prophecy by Jesus Himself earlier that same night. It is pretty clear from the story that Jesus bears no ill will toward Judas, and that He understood what needed to happen.
The second point was this: Judas clearly showed remorse. In one version of the story, God removed His presence from Judas and allowed him to be influenced by Satan (Luke 22:3-6). In all versions, Judas tries to return the money and then kills himself. In "!Hero: the Rock Opera", Judas doesn't know he is handing Jesus over to death. He thinks he's just helping Jesus jump-start his career and gain the recognition and fame He deserves. I don't know what was going through Judas' mind when he went to the chief priests and asked how much money Jesus was worth to them. I don't know what he thought when he witnessed Jesus' arrest. But i do know these two things: Jesus had to be betrayed, and Judas suffered remorse.
At the conclusion of my speech, one of the homeschool moms who was co-teaching the class cornered me to talk about my speech. She asked if I really believed that what Judas did was okay, or if I just did this for the assignment. I don't think i really answered her, saying something like, "It's not up to me to judge," and "I'm not saying what he did was okay, but if he hadn't done it none of us would know Christ today, and he was obviously sorry about it." She didn't want to hear any of that. She just wanted to hear that Judas would burn in Hell. The conversation ended when she told me she would pray for my soul and then walked away.
Read the above passages. Go ahead and read them in context if you want. Read the other three Gospel accounts of this event (Mark 14:10-21, 43-50, Luke 22:3-23, 47-53, John 13:21-30, 18:1-11, Acts 1:16-19). I'm not saying that betrayal of ANYONE is EVER okay. I'm just saying it had to happen, and he was sorry, and you're not the one who gets to judge anyway, so cut him a break, okay?
Matthew 28:1-10
I just like to point out that the first people to see the empty tomb and the resurrected Christ, and the first people to be directly commissioned by Christ to preach the good news, were women. So suck on that, bigoted sexist church leaders who say women can't speak!
Showing posts with label homeschool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homeschool. Show all posts
Friday, July 27, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
So i guess the moral of the story is that my grandmother is a cougar. And i was a sexy, if somewhat androgynous, 14-year-old.
Gay guys always tell me i'm pretty. Like, lots of different gay guys in lots of different contexts at different times and places. And they are not always drunk in a dimly-lit room at the time.
I was always highly complimented by this. Like, "They don't even like girls and they still think i'm attractive!" But it recently occurred to me that maybe they just think i look like a hot guy. Which has been said of me before. By my grandmother.
When i was fourteen, i cut my own bangs. I had cut my own hair before, most notably my eyelashes (story for another day. Actually, no: one time, i cut my own eyelashes. End of story), but up until this point, most of my experience was with cutting Barbie hair. However, i did a decent job of it. They were a heavy, straight-across fringe that, according to my crazy friend Renee, made me look like a little like Anck Su Namun.
I was always highly complimented by this. Like, "They don't even like girls and they still think i'm attractive!" But it recently occurred to me that maybe they just think i look like a hot guy. Which has been said of me before. By my grandmother.
When i was fourteen, i cut my own bangs. I had cut my own hair before, most notably my eyelashes (story for another day. Actually, no: one time, i cut my own eyelashes. End of story), but up until this point, most of my experience was with cutting Barbie hair. However, i did a decent job of it. They were a heavy, straight-across fringe that, according to my crazy friend Renee, made me look like a little like Anck Su Namun.
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| Except my boobs were bigger. And usually covered by more than pasties and gold body paint. |
However, my mom hated them.
For about a year, i'd been toying with the idea of getting a pixie cut. My hair is very thick, and Maryland gets very humid in the summer (like, from late April through mid October). Also, i was lazy and self-conscious and didn't want to spend hours every day trying to get my hair to look good. That was time i could spend knitting or re-reading Harry Potter or talking to a cat. I figured a pixie cut would be cute, comfortable, easy to maintain, and would give me a hip, rock-and-roll edge over my much cooler friends. (I was homeschooled and fourteen. Shut up.)
My mom decided that this was the perfect opportunity to talk me into making the leap. I was nervous, but consoled myself with the thought that hair always grows back. We went to a salon and i picked out a style. I was completely thrilled with the look and comfort, although less than thrilled with the sticky styling waxes and clays the stylist recommended. Can't i just comb it and air-dry, like boys do? Have we invented metrosexuality already?
The next day, at Wednesday evening prayer service, i was wearing a slightly baggy t-shirt and my hair had that "I-got-a-new-haircut-yesterday-and-have-no-idea-how-to-style-it" look. My grandmother was sitting on the other side of the (very small) sanctuary. My mom was chatting with her before the service, and Mommom asked her who the good-looking young man was sitting next to my brother. My mom glanced over, and then looked back at Mommom and said, "That's Diana."
Whatever, Mommom. That haircut landed me the Abercrombie model-lookalike who worked in the grocery store, okay? And he was totally hot and older and not even homeschooled and my sister saw him recently and said she thinks he's gay now and -- oh, fuuuuuuuuu . . .
Monday, July 16, 2012
playing house, part two
When someone bought the lot with the mountain on it, the dirt was carted away somewhere. There was a smaller mountain further down the street where we played, but it wasn't the same. One day, when i was eight or nine, i was at the smaller mountain and i made a strange discovery. There was a cedar log -- really almost a whole tree -- abandoned in the dirt. There were no large trees for miles around, and this was not fresh. The branches and roots had been stripped away long since, and the trunk was weathered and dry. It had not been there before, but it had appeared that day, quite inexplicably. I decided that i needed to have it, and i dragged it all the way back to our house, a good two or three blocks.
We had a dirt pile in our back yard (you know, until i wrote this all out, i had no idea how many large piles of dirt were integral parts of my childhood. I really was Tom Sawyer.), left over from when we had put in our pool. It was an above-ground pool, but it was necessary to dig out a small foundation to protect it from tornadoes and windstorms and vigorous swimming. Anyway, with the disappearance of the mountain, the dirt pile in the back yard became more important to us. Though it was nowhere near as large as the dirt pile down the street, it was a lot closer.
I brought the tree to this pile and set it up in the "house" i had carved into one side. Pieces of the aforementioned playhouse were sometimes integrated into this particular house. My mom hated the dirt pile and often wanted us to move the dirt to the garden, where it could be spread around and used and stop being an eyesore next to the deck. But we loved it and couldn't stand the thought of losing our favorite outside play space.
Somewhere around this same time, my grandparents had a rotting tree in their back yard. Afraid of it falling and breaking the swingset or the shed or the house, or even falling into the neighbor's yard, my grandfather cut it down preemptively. It was a big job and took some time to complete. Step one was piling the branches and logs into a huge stack, easily as tall as a house. While step two was formulating, i began examining the beaver dam-like pile in the yard and discovered that the branches had naturally formed a hollow space in the center. With some judicious rearranging of sticks and wriggling of my childish frame, i managed to crawl inside.
This was my house for what felt like weeks, but was probably no more than ten days. One day, i went to my grandparents' house to discover that my grandfather had fed all of the wood into a mulcher. My home was dissolved. There were other log homes from other fallen trees, but there was never another beaver dam.
Yesterday, my boyfriend asked me to tell him a story. I was bored at work and he was bored at home and we were on Facebook chat, and i started telling him stories about all of my childhood "houses". When i told him about my beaver dam and how sad i was at its loss, he said, "That's because it wasn't our house. If you still had your house there today, we wouldn't be able to live together. You would have had a happy little life by yourself in the beaver dam-esque abode, and never have come to Quincy to meet me . . . and we would never have loved each other."
"I would always love you," i replied. "I just wouldn't know that it was you."
I've been waiting a long time for him.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
playing house, part one
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| Like this, but slightly different colors. And slightly less creepy children. |
We would place some pieces on their sides, arranging them in a rough rectangle, and imagining the walls and ceiling between the gaps. I seem to recall that we had each claimed one storage space in the house; it had cupboards or drawers or something in the "kitchen" that we used to hide our favorite stones and our collections of the colored glass we used as currency. My childhood was so Tom Sawyer-esque.
We lived in a very new development. We were pretty much the only house for miles for the first few years. Even once people started moving in, there were no houses in our immediate vicinity. They were all a few blocks away.
Each time a new house was built, the dirt from the foundation was dumped into a pile across the street from our house. Before long, the pile was over twenty feet high. It was our mountain, and my siblings and cousins and i played on it nearly every day. We mounted expeditions to the peak, we played hide-and-seek in the foothills, we searched for special rocks and sticks and flowers, we claimed different sections as our own property, we dared each other to leap from the summit, we sledded down the steep side and almost into the road. It was more than our house -- it was our country, and we worked the land together.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Why I Don't Have Birthday Parties Anymore
When i reached my tenth birthday, my parents insisted on throwing me a huge, impromptu party. They made a big deal over me reaching double digits. I was excited, too, but got the distinct impression that they were more excited. I didn't understand why until several years later, when my mom was telling stories about what a weird child i had been.
Apparently, when i was very young (maybe two), i told my parents that i would not live past five. I don't remember this, nor do i have any idea where that notion might have come from.
You hear stories from time to time of a child with an "old soul", wise beyond their years, and not long for this world. The child is generally aware of their limited time on earth, and often drops hints or gives warnings to their family about this. The child's predictions generally turn out to be tragically spot-on.
So, understandably, my parents were nervous. They awaited my fifth birthday with fear and trepidation, and my sixth with inexpressible hope. By the time my tenth birthday rolled around, they were beside themselves. I guess they figured they were out of the woods.
Well, joke's on them. I'm still going to die one of these days. Probably.
Damn. No wonder they didn't want to homeschool me.
After that my parents pretty much gave up throwing me birthday parties. I guess they figured that the mere fact of my continued existence had been celebrated enough.
I would get together with the same group of friends for pizza and junk food every year, but it was never anything more elaborate than a sleepover with presents. I had one "real" party when i was fifteen. We ate flan and i got my first cell phone. I worked on my sixteenth birthday and then i went to New York for the weekend (with my mom, Agelseb, and Agelseb's mom). My seventeenth birthday came right before my big Europe trip, so i don't think i did anything. For my eighteenth birthday, i pierced my bellybutton. For my nineteenth, nothing. And for twenty, i got my first tattoo.
I had one more birthday party, when i turned twenty-one. I got together with Agelseb and our old friend "Fay", and we bought lots of alcohol and watched a movie and then took our drinks out to the hot tub. And then Fay got very drunk and began complaining, in a very bad fake British accent, about how much her life sucks. When Agelseb and i tried to comfort her, she told us she was tired of us treating her like she was dumb (we weren't) and that she knew more about the Real World and Life After College than we did (she doesn't), and that there was nothing she could do to fix her sucky life (bullshit). And then she went to bed, leaving the next morning before either of us woke up. And then she didn't speak to either of us for the next several months, until her boyfriend broke up with her and she needed someone to hang out with again.
So, yeah. This year i will be working on my birthday again. My boyfriend is supposed to cook me dinner or something. Whatever. As long as i can avoid either Jersey Shore-style drama, premature death, or awkward social interactions, i'm happy.
Apparently, when i was very young (maybe two), i told my parents that i would not live past five. I don't remember this, nor do i have any idea where that notion might have come from.
You hear stories from time to time of a child with an "old soul", wise beyond their years, and not long for this world. The child is generally aware of their limited time on earth, and often drops hints or gives warnings to their family about this. The child's predictions generally turn out to be tragically spot-on.
So, understandably, my parents were nervous. They awaited my fifth birthday with fear and trepidation, and my sixth with inexpressible hope. By the time my tenth birthday rolled around, they were beside themselves. I guess they figured they were out of the woods.
Well, joke's on them. I'm still going to die one of these days. Probably.
Damn. No wonder they didn't want to homeschool me.
After that my parents pretty much gave up throwing me birthday parties. I guess they figured that the mere fact of my continued existence had been celebrated enough.
I would get together with the same group of friends for pizza and junk food every year, but it was never anything more elaborate than a sleepover with presents. I had one "real" party when i was fifteen. We ate flan and i got my first cell phone. I worked on my sixteenth birthday and then i went to New York for the weekend (with my mom, Agelseb, and Agelseb's mom). My seventeenth birthday came right before my big Europe trip, so i don't think i did anything. For my eighteenth birthday, i pierced my bellybutton. For my nineteenth, nothing. And for twenty, i got my first tattoo.
I had one more birthday party, when i turned twenty-one. I got together with Agelseb and our old friend "Fay", and we bought lots of alcohol and watched a movie and then took our drinks out to the hot tub. And then Fay got very drunk and began complaining, in a very bad fake British accent, about how much her life sucks. When Agelseb and i tried to comfort her, she told us she was tired of us treating her like she was dumb (we weren't) and that she knew more about the Real World and Life After College than we did (she doesn't), and that there was nothing she could do to fix her sucky life (bullshit). And then she went to bed, leaving the next morning before either of us woke up. And then she didn't speak to either of us for the next several months, until her boyfriend broke up with her and she needed someone to hang out with again.
So, yeah. This year i will be working on my birthday again. My boyfriend is supposed to cook me dinner or something. Whatever. As long as i can avoid either Jersey Shore-style drama, premature death, or awkward social interactions, i'm happy.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Agelseb, part 2
When we were fourteen, Agelseb's parents decided to sell everything and live on a sailboat. True story.
They sold their house, quit their jobs, and drastically downsized their furniture, books, and knick-knacks. The really important and sentimental stuff was put in storage in a shed in my back yard, and a surprising amount of stuff was put on the boat. A 41-foot sailboat has a shocking amount of storage space.
And then they were off.
It was really hard on Agelseb, and she fought it as long and as hard as she could. Imagine being fourteen and taken away from all your friends and family. And it wasn't even like she was moving to a new town, where she could settle in and make new friends and call or email us regularly. They'd be living on a boat, moving around all over the place for three years. And electricity would be both expensive and hard to obtain, so electronic communication would be scarce, and even postcards could only be sent when they were docked somewhere.
Plus, Agelseb and her parents all three suffer from some degree of sea-sickness. So all in all, not a totally awesome plan.
41 feet is not a whole lot of space. It's less when an angry teenager is sharing it with her parents and a dog. It's even less than that when it's a boat, because there's no yard or cars to store extra stuff, and no way to leave the house and get away when you need some space. Your entire world is those 41 feet. On the bright side, they spent a lot of time in warmer climates, like Trinidad and Puerto Rico, so they could be out on the deck or in the water most days. But everything gets damp when you live on a boat, so there's always a faint mildew smell and sometimes your stuff gets ruined and what if you just want to have a milkshake or something? You know that you can't really freeze stuff on a little sailboat? You can't take long showers, either. And in addition to spending your time on schoolwork all alone, you can't go to the mall afterwards and you have to get up late at night to take your turn on watch. Yeah, that's real. It's not just something you have to do in the movies. There are still pirates in the world, not to mention storms and other boats and so forth. Someone has to be on watch at all times. Even if all three of you are puking your guts out.
I visited once, along with Aunt Sis. We stayed for about a month. The boat got even smaller, and our misery was added to by the fact that Aunt Sis is mentally handicapped and didn't really understand why we couldn't turn on the air conditioning. She complained a lot, but we all love her so we did our best to 1) accommodate her requests and make her comfortable and 2) ignore her whining.
Eventually, they decided to cut their trip short. Money was running low, Agelseb had come back for an extended visit and was resisting the return to the sea, and the call of the ocean can eventually be tuned out. They plan to write a book one day, but in the meantime, they pretty much have the monopoly on cool icebreaker stories. Not to mention that Agelseb, while still partly wishing she'd never gone, did appreciate the opportunity to live on a boat and sail the coast of North, South, and Central America. Plus she rarely takes things like hot running water and high speed internet for granted.
They sold their house, quit their jobs, and drastically downsized their furniture, books, and knick-knacks. The really important and sentimental stuff was put in storage in a shed in my back yard, and a surprising amount of stuff was put on the boat. A 41-foot sailboat has a shocking amount of storage space.
And then they were off.
It was really hard on Agelseb, and she fought it as long and as hard as she could. Imagine being fourteen and taken away from all your friends and family. And it wasn't even like she was moving to a new town, where she could settle in and make new friends and call or email us regularly. They'd be living on a boat, moving around all over the place for three years. And electricity would be both expensive and hard to obtain, so electronic communication would be scarce, and even postcards could only be sent when they were docked somewhere.
Plus, Agelseb and her parents all three suffer from some degree of sea-sickness. So all in all, not a totally awesome plan.
41 feet is not a whole lot of space. It's less when an angry teenager is sharing it with her parents and a dog. It's even less than that when it's a boat, because there's no yard or cars to store extra stuff, and no way to leave the house and get away when you need some space. Your entire world is those 41 feet. On the bright side, they spent a lot of time in warmer climates, like Trinidad and Puerto Rico, so they could be out on the deck or in the water most days. But everything gets damp when you live on a boat, so there's always a faint mildew smell and sometimes your stuff gets ruined and what if you just want to have a milkshake or something? You know that you can't really freeze stuff on a little sailboat? You can't take long showers, either. And in addition to spending your time on schoolwork all alone, you can't go to the mall afterwards and you have to get up late at night to take your turn on watch. Yeah, that's real. It's not just something you have to do in the movies. There are still pirates in the world, not to mention storms and other boats and so forth. Someone has to be on watch at all times. Even if all three of you are puking your guts out.
I visited once, along with Aunt Sis. We stayed for about a month. The boat got even smaller, and our misery was added to by the fact that Aunt Sis is mentally handicapped and didn't really understand why we couldn't turn on the air conditioning. She complained a lot, but we all love her so we did our best to 1) accommodate her requests and make her comfortable and 2) ignore her whining.
Eventually, they decided to cut their trip short. Money was running low, Agelseb had come back for an extended visit and was resisting the return to the sea, and the call of the ocean can eventually be tuned out. They plan to write a book one day, but in the meantime, they pretty much have the monopoly on cool icebreaker stories. Not to mention that Agelseb, while still partly wishing she'd never gone, did appreciate the opportunity to live on a boat and sail the coast of North, South, and Central America. Plus she rarely takes things like hot running water and high speed internet for granted.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
normalcy is relative
The thing about having been homeschooled is that you're not necessarily more sheltered than everyone else. But you always think that you are. You live in a constant state of anxiety, convinced that there is a whole list of normative experiences that everyone else in the world is having and that you are not, and that this lack of normative experiences will seriously impede your development.
Here's the truth: there are certain universal normative experiences. Things like being nervous about your first kiss, or realizing for the first time that your parents have the capacity to embarrass you, or passing an exam. And there are some people (even non-homeschoolers) who miss out on some of these normative experiences. Yes, socialization is different for homeschooled kids.
But i'm beginning to think that missing out on normative experiences is, in and of itself, a normative experience.
Here's the truth: there are certain universal normative experiences. Things like being nervous about your first kiss, or realizing for the first time that your parents have the capacity to embarrass you, or passing an exam. And there are some people (even non-homeschoolers) who miss out on some of these normative experiences. Yes, socialization is different for homeschooled kids.
But i'm beginning to think that missing out on normative experiences is, in and of itself, a normative experience.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
where i was on 9/11
It was something about Leif Eriksson
. I don't remember whether we were writing essays or taking an exam, but i remember that it was about Leif Eriksson.
Our schoolroom in the old house was in the basement. This must have been during the time that my dad was self-employed, because he was home during the middle of the day. He was in the living room, watching the news. He called us upstairs.
We all sat in the living room floor, eyes glued to the TV. I was eleven and my arms were wrapped around my knees as i silently prayed, "God, don't take my dad."
I knew this meant war. I knew enough about the draft to worry that my dad would be taken away to fight. I didn't know enough about the draft to know that my dad would probably never be accepted as a soldier (nearsighted, chronic foot cramps, high cholesterol, history of heart attacks, occasional migraines, bad back, depression, and overweight). I was scared for him.
I knew that i lived in a tiny little town in farm country. I also knew that my house was close enough to Aberdeen Proving Grounds that we could hear the testing on a clear day. I knew that we were not far from D.C. or the Pentagon, that the Annapolis Naval Academy and the Dover Air Force Base were also nearby. I became paranoid, seeing my house as the epicenter of military operations in the U.S. I distinctly remember glancing out of the windows and expecting to see armed jihadists in my front yard. In my wildest, most terrified dreams, my family was held captive in our basement while al-Queda set up headquarters in the rest of our house. I was enough of an optimist that it never crossed my mind how much simpler it would be for them to kill us outright.
All of this flashed through my brain in the first few minutes and hours of that day. At some point, i went back downstairs and finished my essay, because i was eleven and the war hadn't started yet, and if the jihadists were going to hold us prisoner in the basement i wanted to make sure i finished my schoolwork first. It's funny how you prioritize things even in the midst of the unthinkable.
. I don't remember whether we were writing essays or taking an exam, but i remember that it was about Leif Eriksson.Our schoolroom in the old house was in the basement. This must have been during the time that my dad was self-employed, because he was home during the middle of the day. He was in the living room, watching the news. He called us upstairs.
We all sat in the living room floor, eyes glued to the TV. I was eleven and my arms were wrapped around my knees as i silently prayed, "God, don't take my dad."
I knew this meant war. I knew enough about the draft to worry that my dad would be taken away to fight. I didn't know enough about the draft to know that my dad would probably never be accepted as a soldier (nearsighted, chronic foot cramps, high cholesterol, history of heart attacks, occasional migraines, bad back, depression, and overweight). I was scared for him.
I knew that i lived in a tiny little town in farm country. I also knew that my house was close enough to Aberdeen Proving Grounds that we could hear the testing on a clear day. I knew that we were not far from D.C. or the Pentagon, that the Annapolis Naval Academy and the Dover Air Force Base were also nearby. I became paranoid, seeing my house as the epicenter of military operations in the U.S. I distinctly remember glancing out of the windows and expecting to see armed jihadists in my front yard. In my wildest, most terrified dreams, my family was held captive in our basement while al-Queda set up headquarters in the rest of our house. I was enough of an optimist that it never crossed my mind how much simpler it would be for them to kill us outright.
All of this flashed through my brain in the first few minutes and hours of that day. At some point, i went back downstairs and finished my essay, because i was eleven and the war hadn't started yet, and if the jihadists were going to hold us prisoner in the basement i wanted to make sure i finished my schoolwork first. It's funny how you prioritize things even in the midst of the unthinkable.
Monday, September 5, 2011
homeschooled
First things first: No, that title is not a typo, despite what Microsoft Word tries to tell you. Everyone outside of the homeschooling community thinks that it should be two words (home schooling), but we're the ones doing it so we get to decide how it should be spelled.As i mentioned here, my relationship with public school is not a happy one. It's a long story, and i have to start with a lot of history.
Maryland used to have a law (though it has since been changed) regulating the age of admission into kindergarten. It used to be that if you were going to be five by the time school started, you would start school that year (which is the same as in most states). But there was a clause saying that if you were not going to be five by the time school started, but would be five by December 31st, you could start this year or wait until next year. It was your call. (Or more realistically, your parents' call.)
I was born on December 20th, 1989. I therefore turned five on December 20th of 1994. I was one of the privileged few who got to choose what year i wanted to start school.
I taught myself to read at the tender age of two and a half. By the time i started kindergarten, i was reading at a 6th grade level. (Technically, my reading level was a little higher than that, but since i was only four, a lot of material written for higher grade levels was emotionally and psychologically beyond me. But i still understood all the words and followed the stories, even when reading Sherlock Holmes).
If you can read, no door is closed to you. Math may not be your strong point, but you can still attain a certain degree of competency if you are literate, even if you don't have a teacher. If you can read, the sky is the limit.
So i started kindergarten in 1994, because my parents figured that there was no reason to keep me at home any longer. Kindergarten was fine, because you're not really learning things. You're really just learning how to be at school: how to listen to people who are not your parents, how to get along with your peers and do your work quietly, how to follow a schedule and do assignments.
But when i started first grade, it was clear that i needed more challenge and stimulation in the classroom. I began doing some of my classes with other grades, because my teacher had allowed me to work at my own pace and i had finished all of my first grade work. By Christmas, i had finished all computer class work through fifth grade. My math was at a third or fourth grade level and my reading skills were too high to test. The administrators met with my parents to recommend moving me up to third or fourth grade.
Remember that, by Christmas, i had just turned six. I was the youngest kid in my class. I was also extremely introverted and had very few friends. I was not socially or psychologically capable of advancing that many grades all at once. For one or two classes a few times a week, sure. But not full time.
There was a family in our church who homeschooled their daughter. Think of every stereotype you've ever heard about homeschoolers being socially awkward and just plain weird. This was that girl.
When my parents told me about the proposal to move me forward, i flipped my shit. I regressed and began wetting my pants at school every day. I would cry uncontrollably and not be able to say why. My moods and physical health were steadily declining. I began begging my parents to homeschool me. But, thinking of the family in our church and fearing that i would turn out the same (since i already showed a strong tendency toward introversion and general weirdness), they at first refused. But as the situation deteriorated it became clear that things could not continue as they were.
My parents agreed to homeschool me, thinking privately that they would do so only for the rest of the year, after which they would figure out a permanent solution for my education. But the homeschooling worked so well for me, and was such a pleasure for my mom, that we decided to continue with it.
I graduated from high school when i was sixteen, one year earlier than the rest of my class. Valentine's day of 1996 was my last day of public school. Everything else was homeschooling.
And look how i turned out.
Friday, August 26, 2011
I Don't Want To Be A Teacher
Here's the thing: I am passionately interested in education. I've mentioned before that i was homeschooled, but i haven't said much about it before. That's a subject for another post. For now, i'll just say that public schools were ill-equipped to handle me appropriately.
I have two BAs, one in English creative writing and one in the psychology of child and adolescent development. I wanted to work as a counselor with high school students. Not a school counselor or a guidance counselor, but a psychologist who worked with troubled children and teenagers.
But once i got to college, my focus shifted. More and more, i saw students who were unprepared for academic success. I saw that students on the extremes of the spectrum (gifted or struggling) felt that their needs were not being met, and that average students were bored and frustrated by teachers who "teach the (standardized) tests".
After my sophomore year, i got a summer job in the admissions department of my college. One of the things i was working on was a spreadsheet for a particular academic review committee. This committee made final decisions about students on the low end of the spectrum. Sometimes it was clear that the student worked hard and wanted to learn, but that a learning disability or family situation had gotten in the way of their academic achievements. Sometimes it was clear that a student simply wasn't able to handle higher education.
Managing this spreadsheet was deeply and profoundly depressing. In many cases, it was simply too late for us to do anything. If a student has reached the 12th grade without attaining at least a 9th grade competency in the three R's, what can a college do to bring them up to speed? This child should have been helped far earlier. But now they have somehow graduated, and there is nothing we can do.
But this wasn't only depressing. It also made me angry, and i couldn't quite put my finger on why. One day, i was asked to write a brief description for the catalogue of our academic support program. As i researched this program, i found something that explained my anger. According to our website, the purpose of this support program was to help students who had graduated from high school without being academically prepared for college.
Boom.
The whole point of high school is to prepare you (academically, socially, psychologically, etc) for whatever comes next. If that is college, great. Your SAT scores may not be off the charts, but you should be able to take that next step. Maybe you need a little extra support. But you should be able to graduate from high school and make a fairly seamless transition to college. And if college is not in your future, it should be because you don't want to go to college, and you should still be intellectually, socially, and psychologically prepared to go out into the workforce. It makes absolutely no sense to me that any person can graduate from high school and not be prepared for that next step. What are the graduation requirements that you have fulfilled?
More and more, this issue worked its way under my skin and itched. My head swirled with the names on the spreadsheet, the experiences of my friends, my own memories of public school. I resolved to take my degree in child and adolescent development, get some advanced degrees in human development (and cognitive processes, research, public policy, etc), and take on public education. I wanted to fix the system.
In my junior year, i made friends with an education professor. He had taught high school English for nearly ten years before returning to his alma mater to train the next generation. He began telling me that i should be a teacher. I resisted this. I didn't want to teach; i only wanted to work in education from the outside. While i conceded that a teaching background might give me credibility and valuable experience in my quest, i also thought it would be good for me to do this research without being biased by my own students. I wanted to look at hard data and make my decisions with an open mind.
In my senior year, i had decided to defer grad school for a time. I wanted to narrow my focus a little more so that i could select an appropriate graduate program. I wanted to pay off my student loans. I wanted a break from school. I had prayed about it and felt that it was right to take some time off before pursuing advanced degrees in psychology. But this friend, Ben, wouldn't let the whole teacher thing go.
More and more, i thought about teaching, and more and more i resisted the idea. I don't like talking to people. Teaching is all about talking to people; and not just students, but also parents and administrators. I'd have to do SAT prep, which would go against the grain of everything i wanted to accomplish. I'd have to make lesson plans, which would be boring. I'd have to do the same thing year after year after year, and i'd be doing it for very little pay. I felt no attraction to that path in life.
People began telling me that i would be a good teacher. People who had no idea that i was thinking about this. People began asking me how my student teaching was going because after four years, they had forgotten that i was double majoring in English and psych and just assumed that i was an education major. I was working in a private school and seeing the things done well and things done badly, and i couldn't stop myself from making mental notes about how i would do things.
Finally, i realized that God was definitely calling me to teach. I was pissed. I tried to argue the point with Him, but He wouldn't cave. He kept making counter-arguments, and although He totally could have, He never resorted to the cheap, "Because I said so," rebuttal. But we both knew that that sentence was between us, the unspoken ultimate ultimatum.
If pressed, i'd have to say that my decision to teach was made reluctantly, even irritably, because everyone else has fucked it up and now i have to go in there and fix it. I want it to be done well, and i realize that the best way to ensure that it is done well is to do it myself. But that doesn't make me any less pissed about it. I still plan to get my advanced degrees in psych and to work in research and administrative positions in the general field of public education. But for now, all of that is being deferred in favor of an M.Ed. I'm going to teach high school English, and i'm going to do it well, and i'm going to be pissed about it.
But i'm going to do it well. Ben insists that, once i get started, i'll love it. I think i probably won't hate all of it. This was never what i wanted to be doing, but life hits you that way sometimes. It's a means to an end, and when all is said and done, there are worse ways to fix public education than simply going in there and teaching. And since we've already tried pretty much all of the worse ways, it may be time to admit that we've run out of options.
I don't want to be a teacher. But i do want there to be more literate people in the world. I do want those who want to go to college to have that opportunity. I do want people to speak and write clearly and correctly. And i have enough self-awareness to know that i can't keep my hands out of this effort. I have to be involved. So i'll teach.
I have two BAs, one in English creative writing and one in the psychology of child and adolescent development. I wanted to work as a counselor with high school students. Not a school counselor or a guidance counselor, but a psychologist who worked with troubled children and teenagers.
But once i got to college, my focus shifted. More and more, i saw students who were unprepared for academic success. I saw that students on the extremes of the spectrum (gifted or struggling) felt that their needs were not being met, and that average students were bored and frustrated by teachers who "teach the (standardized) tests".
After my sophomore year, i got a summer job in the admissions department of my college. One of the things i was working on was a spreadsheet for a particular academic review committee. This committee made final decisions about students on the low end of the spectrum. Sometimes it was clear that the student worked hard and wanted to learn, but that a learning disability or family situation had gotten in the way of their academic achievements. Sometimes it was clear that a student simply wasn't able to handle higher education.
Managing this spreadsheet was deeply and profoundly depressing. In many cases, it was simply too late for us to do anything. If a student has reached the 12th grade without attaining at least a 9th grade competency in the three R's, what can a college do to bring them up to speed? This child should have been helped far earlier. But now they have somehow graduated, and there is nothing we can do.
But this wasn't only depressing. It also made me angry, and i couldn't quite put my finger on why. One day, i was asked to write a brief description for the catalogue of our academic support program. As i researched this program, i found something that explained my anger. According to our website, the purpose of this support program was to help students who had graduated from high school without being academically prepared for college.
Boom.
The whole point of high school is to prepare you (academically, socially, psychologically, etc) for whatever comes next. If that is college, great. Your SAT scores may not be off the charts, but you should be able to take that next step. Maybe you need a little extra support. But you should be able to graduate from high school and make a fairly seamless transition to college. And if college is not in your future, it should be because you don't want to go to college, and you should still be intellectually, socially, and psychologically prepared to go out into the workforce. It makes absolutely no sense to me that any person can graduate from high school and not be prepared for that next step. What are the graduation requirements that you have fulfilled?
More and more, this issue worked its way under my skin and itched. My head swirled with the names on the spreadsheet, the experiences of my friends, my own memories of public school. I resolved to take my degree in child and adolescent development, get some advanced degrees in human development (and cognitive processes, research, public policy, etc), and take on public education. I wanted to fix the system.
In my junior year, i made friends with an education professor. He had taught high school English for nearly ten years before returning to his alma mater to train the next generation. He began telling me that i should be a teacher. I resisted this. I didn't want to teach; i only wanted to work in education from the outside. While i conceded that a teaching background might give me credibility and valuable experience in my quest, i also thought it would be good for me to do this research without being biased by my own students. I wanted to look at hard data and make my decisions with an open mind.
In my senior year, i had decided to defer grad school for a time. I wanted to narrow my focus a little more so that i could select an appropriate graduate program. I wanted to pay off my student loans. I wanted a break from school. I had prayed about it and felt that it was right to take some time off before pursuing advanced degrees in psychology. But this friend, Ben, wouldn't let the whole teacher thing go.
More and more, i thought about teaching, and more and more i resisted the idea. I don't like talking to people. Teaching is all about talking to people; and not just students, but also parents and administrators. I'd have to do SAT prep, which would go against the grain of everything i wanted to accomplish. I'd have to make lesson plans, which would be boring. I'd have to do the same thing year after year after year, and i'd be doing it for very little pay. I felt no attraction to that path in life.
People began telling me that i would be a good teacher. People who had no idea that i was thinking about this. People began asking me how my student teaching was going because after four years, they had forgotten that i was double majoring in English and psych and just assumed that i was an education major. I was working in a private school and seeing the things done well and things done badly, and i couldn't stop myself from making mental notes about how i would do things.
Finally, i realized that God was definitely calling me to teach. I was pissed. I tried to argue the point with Him, but He wouldn't cave. He kept making counter-arguments, and although He totally could have, He never resorted to the cheap, "Because I said so," rebuttal. But we both knew that that sentence was between us, the unspoken ultimate ultimatum.
If pressed, i'd have to say that my decision to teach was made reluctantly, even irritably, because everyone else has fucked it up and now i have to go in there and fix it. I want it to be done well, and i realize that the best way to ensure that it is done well is to do it myself. But that doesn't make me any less pissed about it. I still plan to get my advanced degrees in psych and to work in research and administrative positions in the general field of public education. But for now, all of that is being deferred in favor of an M.Ed. I'm going to teach high school English, and i'm going to do it well, and i'm going to be pissed about it.
But i'm going to do it well. Ben insists that, once i get started, i'll love it. I think i probably won't hate all of it. This was never what i wanted to be doing, but life hits you that way sometimes. It's a means to an end, and when all is said and done, there are worse ways to fix public education than simply going in there and teaching. And since we've already tried pretty much all of the worse ways, it may be time to admit that we've run out of options.
I don't want to be a teacher. But i do want there to be more literate people in the world. I do want those who want to go to college to have that opportunity. I do want people to speak and write clearly and correctly. And i have enough self-awareness to know that i can't keep my hands out of this effort. I have to be involved. So i'll teach.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Trapped in a Video Game
I have always had an overactive imagination. I'm not sure whether my imagination grew from restricted TV/computer privileges or whether the pre-existing imagination made the restrictions bearable, but the fact remains that as a child, i was only allowed one hour of TV or computer time each day. For those of you who think you may have read that sentence wrong, allow me to reiterate: in a given day, i could watch one hour of TV, or i could use the computer for one hour. When i was in middle school, the growing prevalence of longer films such as The Fellowship of the Ring
convinced my parents to extend our priveleges to three hours a day. But by then, i had already spent much of my childhood outdoors.
Keep in mind that one hour of computer time was hardly restrictive to a seven-year-old in the pre-Facebook era. I mostly used my computer time to play computer games
, and i was perfectly happy to invent my own games when not reading or watching "The Magic Schoolbus". In fact, my siblings and i often invented games together. We'd play slaves or pirates or war (or some combination of the three) on the dirt pile by the deck. We'd climb to the top of the swingset and inch our way across. I'm not sure what the point of this was, but it was fun. We'd deconstruct our plastic play house and rearrange the parts into castles and businesses. We'd make whirlpools in the swimming pool, we'd prepare for an apocalypse-level natural disaster in the corner by the peach trees, and we'd build houses out of discarded tree limbs and bricks found in our grandmother's back yard. But our favorite game of all was "Trapped in a Video Game".
The fact that none of us had ever played a video game until 2000 or so did not deter us one whit. We played this game for several years, often adding sequels to the original game that had started us on this crazy adventure.
I'm not sure where the idea came from. I know we were aware of video games, and i know we'd seen Jumanji
, so it's possible that it was some combination of the two.
Basically, a highly-anticipated video game was released on the black market. The reason it was only available illegally is that every single person who had played it during the testing phase had mysteriously disappeared. No one knew what had happened to them, but since this epidemic was only affecting players, it was assumed that there was some kind of link. Of course, since this story was written by Hollywood -- i mean, a bunch of homeschooled children who had never played video games -- the game continued through all the testing phases despite the ill-defined danger that threatened all players and was released, albeit illegally.
My siblings and i got our hands on a copy of the game and began playing. It was prefaced by a disclaimer, warning us of the danger that awaited all players. We ignored it, chose our characters, and began to play. Suddenly, we were pulled into the TV screen! We dissolved into pixels and found ourselves inside of a strange, digital world. We realized (because we were psychic, i suppose) that we had to play through the game and defeat it in order to escape and rescue the other players. None of them had been able to finish playing yet because none of them had our intelligence, strength of character, physical fitness, or resilience. (Also, though we didn't know enough about video games to think of this, because most of them were testers who were stuck in a beta test version full of bugs and half-written story lines.)
We were eventually victorious, of course. The game involved a number of dangerous challenges, such as climbing on top of swingsets and jumping around on dirt piles and battling fierce (imaginary) foes. The sequels that i mentioned before all happened as a result of our cunning and courage. After everyone had been freed (and made up some more plausible excuse for their disappearance than "sucked into a TV screen and trapped in the video game"), the makers decided that their game wasn't so dangerous after all. And since we had "defeated" it, ordinary citizens could now play without danger of entrapment. So the weird rumors died out, the game became immensely popular, and the makers decided to capitalize on their success by creating a sequel. Whose testers all mysteriously disappeared.
By the time we got to the third or fourth sequel, the world had pretty much figured out the pattern: testers all disappear, game somehow gets finished anyway, banned because of disappearances, sold on the black market, and then somehow everyone shows up again and the game is fine. So legally, of course, the games couldn't be sold, but no one in our imaginary universe really cared if the games continued to be made and sold. And so my siblings and i were able to buy all the sequels as soon as they were released, and save the world over and over again for many years. You're welcome, world.
And if you're thinking that this all sounds a lot like Spy Kids 3, i'd remind you that these games had pretty much ended by 1998 or 1999, while the first Spy Kids movie didn't come out until 2001. And also that we didn't use any lame 3D special effects.
convinced my parents to extend our priveleges to three hours a day. But by then, i had already spent much of my childhood outdoors.Keep in mind that one hour of computer time was hardly restrictive to a seven-year-old in the pre-Facebook era. I mostly used my computer time to play computer games
, and i was perfectly happy to invent my own games when not reading or watching "The Magic Schoolbus". In fact, my siblings and i often invented games together. We'd play slaves or pirates or war (or some combination of the three) on the dirt pile by the deck. We'd climb to the top of the swingset and inch our way across. I'm not sure what the point of this was, but it was fun. We'd deconstruct our plastic play house and rearrange the parts into castles and businesses. We'd make whirlpools in the swimming pool, we'd prepare for an apocalypse-level natural disaster in the corner by the peach trees, and we'd build houses out of discarded tree limbs and bricks found in our grandmother's back yard. But our favorite game of all was "Trapped in a Video Game".The fact that none of us had ever played a video game until 2000 or so did not deter us one whit. We played this game for several years, often adding sequels to the original game that had started us on this crazy adventure.
I'm not sure where the idea came from. I know we were aware of video games, and i know we'd seen Jumanji
, so it's possible that it was some combination of the two.Basically, a highly-anticipated video game was released on the black market. The reason it was only available illegally is that every single person who had played it during the testing phase had mysteriously disappeared. No one knew what had happened to them, but since this epidemic was only affecting players, it was assumed that there was some kind of link. Of course, since this story was written by Hollywood -- i mean, a bunch of homeschooled children who had never played video games -- the game continued through all the testing phases despite the ill-defined danger that threatened all players and was released, albeit illegally.
My siblings and i got our hands on a copy of the game and began playing. It was prefaced by a disclaimer, warning us of the danger that awaited all players. We ignored it, chose our characters, and began to play. Suddenly, we were pulled into the TV screen! We dissolved into pixels and found ourselves inside of a strange, digital world. We realized (because we were psychic, i suppose) that we had to play through the game and defeat it in order to escape and rescue the other players. None of them had been able to finish playing yet because none of them had our intelligence, strength of character, physical fitness, or resilience. (Also, though we didn't know enough about video games to think of this, because most of them were testers who were stuck in a beta test version full of bugs and half-written story lines.)
We were eventually victorious, of course. The game involved a number of dangerous challenges, such as climbing on top of swingsets and jumping around on dirt piles and battling fierce (imaginary) foes. The sequels that i mentioned before all happened as a result of our cunning and courage. After everyone had been freed (and made up some more plausible excuse for their disappearance than "sucked into a TV screen and trapped in the video game"), the makers decided that their game wasn't so dangerous after all. And since we had "defeated" it, ordinary citizens could now play without danger of entrapment. So the weird rumors died out, the game became immensely popular, and the makers decided to capitalize on their success by creating a sequel. Whose testers all mysteriously disappeared.
By the time we got to the third or fourth sequel, the world had pretty much figured out the pattern: testers all disappear, game somehow gets finished anyway, banned because of disappearances, sold on the black market, and then somehow everyone shows up again and the game is fine. So legally, of course, the games couldn't be sold, but no one in our imaginary universe really cared if the games continued to be made and sold. And so my siblings and i were able to buy all the sequels as soon as they were released, and save the world over and over again for many years. You're welcome, world.
And if you're thinking that this all sounds a lot like Spy Kids 3, i'd remind you that these games had pretty much ended by 1998 or 1999, while the first Spy Kids movie didn't come out until 2001. And also that we didn't use any lame 3D special effects.
Monday, July 18, 2011
the old house
From the age of four to the age of thirteen, i lived in a new house, built in a new development. It used to be farmland, and our property still bordered a soybean field. When we moved in, we were the only house in the development. By the time we moved out, there were four or five distinct neighborhoods and no more empty lots.
I had my own room. When we moved in, my brother was two and my mom was pregnant with one of my sisters. I lived in a tiny room downstairs while the upstairs was being finished. In the nine years we lived there, both of my sisters were born, and Aunt Sis moved in. It was the first place that my whole family all lived in together. My sisters shared an upstairs room, and i had another upstairs room to myself.
Nostalgia has a way of making everything rose-colored. The house was not great. It was not very pretty, the upkeep was expensive, we had occasional problems with mice and spiders, the openness of our surroundings left us vulnerable to some very damaging storms (including tornadoes and wind storms), and we lived outside of the delivery zone of all of the restaurants.
But it was home.
What i remember most about that house was its seemingly endless capacity. There were only four of us when we moved in, but the house often sheltered up to ten people at a time, and seven of us lived there full-time. I had cousins who were homeschooled with us and therefore practically lived with us, we had several exchange students, and of course there was Aunt Sis. Whenever we had a need, the house met it. When Aunt Sis moved in, we added on a garage with an apartment over it for her. When we got our first exchange student, he took my room and i moved into an alcove in my sisters' room, which was curtained off into a tiny but servicable space that belonged just to me. When we began homeschooling, we fixed up one part of the basement into a school room, complete with a huge dry erase board and lots of bookshelves. When my dad decided to start his own business, another part of the basement was set aside for his office. Yet another basement space became my brother's bedroom a few years later. And there was still space in the basement for storage, laundry, and a play-space under the stairs.
There was a secret room in my closet, under the eaves. There were apple trees whose fruit was always bitter, though whether this was due to the youth of the trees or the impatience of the harvesters (my siblings and i) was never satisfactorily determined. There were blueberry trees whose fruit was always sweet and plentiful. There was a swingset, a pool, and a plastic playhouse that we happily deconstructed and rebuilt into several exciting new configurations over the years.
I've lived in houses that i liked better, but none with quite the same magical ability to expand to meet our needs. I've lived in houses with better memories, but none with more nostalgia. I've lived in houses where more significant life changes took place, but none with untarnished memories of my whole family together. We moved to a new house a few years before the divorce took place. That old house is the first and last one where we all lived together.
One day, i will have a new home. My husband and i will argue over paint samples, and will hang new light fixtures, and will mow our lawn. We'll install a doggy door, and fix up rooms for our kids, and decide where to put the swimming pool and the swingset. But there is a part of me that will always know that my home is in the old house. I can only hope that my future home will have half the welcomingness of that one, will have half the willingness to expand. I can only hope that my future children will know that there is at least one place in the world that is limited only by their imaginations.
I had my own room. When we moved in, my brother was two and my mom was pregnant with one of my sisters. I lived in a tiny room downstairs while the upstairs was being finished. In the nine years we lived there, both of my sisters were born, and Aunt Sis moved in. It was the first place that my whole family all lived in together. My sisters shared an upstairs room, and i had another upstairs room to myself.
Nostalgia has a way of making everything rose-colored. The house was not great. It was not very pretty, the upkeep was expensive, we had occasional problems with mice and spiders, the openness of our surroundings left us vulnerable to some very damaging storms (including tornadoes and wind storms), and we lived outside of the delivery zone of all of the restaurants.
But it was home.
What i remember most about that house was its seemingly endless capacity. There were only four of us when we moved in, but the house often sheltered up to ten people at a time, and seven of us lived there full-time. I had cousins who were homeschooled with us and therefore practically lived with us, we had several exchange students, and of course there was Aunt Sis. Whenever we had a need, the house met it. When Aunt Sis moved in, we added on a garage with an apartment over it for her. When we got our first exchange student, he took my room and i moved into an alcove in my sisters' room, which was curtained off into a tiny but servicable space that belonged just to me. When we began homeschooling, we fixed up one part of the basement into a school room, complete with a huge dry erase board and lots of bookshelves. When my dad decided to start his own business, another part of the basement was set aside for his office. Yet another basement space became my brother's bedroom a few years later. And there was still space in the basement for storage, laundry, and a play-space under the stairs.
There was a secret room in my closet, under the eaves. There were apple trees whose fruit was always bitter, though whether this was due to the youth of the trees or the impatience of the harvesters (my siblings and i) was never satisfactorily determined. There were blueberry trees whose fruit was always sweet and plentiful. There was a swingset, a pool, and a plastic playhouse that we happily deconstructed and rebuilt into several exciting new configurations over the years.
I've lived in houses that i liked better, but none with quite the same magical ability to expand to meet our needs. I've lived in houses with better memories, but none with more nostalgia. I've lived in houses where more significant life changes took place, but none with untarnished memories of my whole family together. We moved to a new house a few years before the divorce took place. That old house is the first and last one where we all lived together.
One day, i will have a new home. My husband and i will argue over paint samples, and will hang new light fixtures, and will mow our lawn. We'll install a doggy door, and fix up rooms for our kids, and decide where to put the swimming pool and the swingset. But there is a part of me that will always know that my home is in the old house. I can only hope that my future home will have half the welcomingness of that one, will have half the willingness to expand. I can only hope that my future children will know that there is at least one place in the world that is limited only by their imaginations.
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