“The matter is taken out of my hands. And that means liberation. A great anxiety is lifted, the greatest of all.” –Karl Barth
Last week, the boys and I hit a wall. We actually hit several smaller walls on the way to this one but had somehow either pushed through those or found a way around them, but this wall…it was no joke. This wall had homeschooling written all over it and after hitting it, we were done.
I was tired, as previously mentioned, and this facet of tiredness had to do with juggling my mom and teacher roles, and feeling I was failing at both. Cracking the whip of learning while also trying to be their comforter and refuge. And for their part, the boys had turned into major assholes, defying my every instruction and groaning endlessly about the smallest amount of work. Things began to grind to a halt when Little Brother screamed out for help only for me to look up and see that he was…watching a video? And needed help with it? (See also: when he asked me the opposite of hot. They were done with the “thinking” portion of homeschool, is what I’m saying.)
So on Sunday night, after half-assedly brainstorming ways to make learning fun (gag), I came up with a plan. It should be noted, at this point, that I am great at plans. I’m fab with ideas. It’s the execution part at which I do not excel.
I emailed both The Kid’s and LB’s teachers and told them we’d be bowing out of online learning for the most part. That I was going to pursue more outdoor experiences, more on-the-ground-as-we-go lessons, more guided-by-their-interests projects. And after waiting nervously for responses that I ostensibly hoped would be positive but inwardly really hoped would acknowledge me as The Mother of the Universe for making this call, I heard back from the teachers. Their responses were affirming and lovely and, most practically, were green lights to my plan.
So Monday morning, I sat the boys on the couch with our whiteboard, which typically lists all of their assignments for the day and is the scourge of their, particularly TK’s, existence. And in dramatic fashion, I took the eraser and wiped the damn thing clean.
They didn’t get it at first. Then they tried to quantify what was happening: how many things did they actually have to do, then? Was spelling still on the table? What time would we finish this new kind of learning? But they were overall on board, as it sounded like less work than they’d been having to do, so we settled in to our new routine. I was chipper about it. This is always a bad sign: me being chipper.
After a bit of time at the table doing reading and maths, then on the floor doing English (conjunctions are like trains connecting sentences together and my children do not care), we headed out for the Field Study component of our lesson plan: a walk to the Aboriginal drawings in the nearby bushland. The last time I was near these drawings was during my twelve-hour hike and it was nighttime and I wanted to kill the world, so my approach had been a bit different.
This time, we parked at a nearby overlook and set out on the path I thought would take us quickly to the drawings. Surrounded by complaints about everything from my choice of parking to the existence of the sun, I felt my temper fraying. TK stopped to do a bush wee then complain some more. I may have whispered the words shut up. I may have muttered the words the fuck between them. There may have been tears and desperation. And we (I) may have finally given up and returned to the green oval to throw a football around then head home.
On our way to the car, though, something happened. TK, who is in that stage of Protesting Everything We Do and who is also a control freak like his mother, looked left and pointed out a rainbow. We have been positively rife with rainbows here lately, short rains giving way to sunlight and the spectrum of colours inhabiting the space between them. In this moment, the three of us looked across the water to that smattering of hues in the distant-but-not-too distant sky. And right there, the lesson plan changed.
On the way home, as they argued with me over which route to take, I told the boys how lucky we were: we had planned to see drawings that we can go back and view anytime, but instead we saw a rainbow that we could only catch in that moment. They argued this, telling me that we see lots of rainbows, but I told them how each rainbow is different from all others, just like each person is different from everyone else. Yes, I polished that turd up good, to a lovely sheen, but even I started to believe what I was saying. We went in with one plan, I told them, and got a rainbow instead. (And a blog post. Though I didn’t tell them that.)
And once we were home and they’d eaten the gourmet lunch I’d prepared (PB&J) and we had all retired to books/screens, I thought about how much I suck at execution, at how I always seem to have a plan but never seem to know the way. And how in the end–at the end of homeschooling, or saving myself and/or my children, or anything really–how that doesn’t matter, because grace has both a plan and a way. And they’re both so much better than mine.