8:26 amSweet Defeat
I’ve been dying to sit down and write this and tell all (6) of you readers about what’s been going on. And now I have a 2 1/2 hour block of quiet to do it.
Last Friday I called Jon at work and posed the question: “What do you think about me sending Jachin back to school?” Because — as you may remember me ranting on numerous occasions – I’ve been losing my mind homeschooling. So what brought me to the point of thinking about public school again, when just a few short months ago I thought state-run education was of the devil? A number of things, my friends.
I’ve gotten haggard. My husband said so… followed by a quick back-peddling remark about how it was just a bad joke and he didn’t mean it. But dude, if you know me and have seen me, well, he meant it. My kids have told me how I don’t look great. And kids don’t know how to tell bad jokes; if they say something, it’s because that’s exactly what is going through their mind at that exact second. “Wow, mom, you look bad today”, when said by a child means “Wow, mom, you seriously look bad today”. Just three short months ago, I never would have thought of going half of the day without a shower and make-up. And although make-up probably shouldn’t be a huge issue, most women can attest that it is. And when you are struggling through the day and on the verge of tears with frustration for your dear child, and then you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror in sweats, sporting bad, crazy hair, a hideous complexion, and no make-up, that single thought of: “Wow, I look just as haggard and horrible as I feel” is just the kick you need when you’re down to put you over the “verge of tears” and into a full on cry-fest. And while crying about looking hideous, I would no doubt begin to feel some maternal guilt because maybe loving moms shouldn’t care about that kind of stuff. I mean come on, my goal here was to make my son brilliant and well-adjusted and I’m crying because my chin is broken out and I have huge bags under my eyes and my gnarly toes haven’t seen a pedicure since the night Heidi told me she was pregnant… and she’s almost 8 months along. Yes, they probably should be trivial things, but somehow they are not. They are things vital to a woman’s psyche. It seems ridiculous and petty, but if my toes are cute and my heels have been exfoliated recently, or if I know that my hair is looking dang hot, the world is a much brighter place. That is the cold, honest, ridiculous truth. Call me petty and spank me with a wet noodle.
Also, my house has been falling apart. Everything is disorganized. I have tried so very hard since I got married and had kids to fight against my very nature of loving to be carefree and unorganized. And I’m finally to the point where… holy crap, I can not stand the clutter. It makes me feel disoriented and unfocused. For the life of me, I can not write when I feel that way. Clutter is a creativity squasher, I am sure of that. And clutter perpetuates that feeling of walking into a room and looking around at disorganized piles of mail and homework and school papers and unpaid bills and thinking “Wow, I really need to go through that mail, and make sure Zoe hands in all of that back homework, and draw some smiley faces on Jachin’s history project and hang it somewhere prominent, and pay the bills before they start shutting off stuff… and what the hell did I walk into this room for??” And then I will inevitably walk out of that room empty handed and (even more)mentally frazzled. And poor Jon, who has always been a neat freak, keeps quiet and suffers silently and occasionally throws out some of that “important” (hello, Crate and Barrel catalogs used to be my friend) unsorted mail when I am not looking. Bless him.
I have responsibilities at church in which I feel like I am lagging far behind. I skip meetings, forget phone calls, put off lessons until 10pm the night before (and by the way, a room of 40 children can tell when you’ve made a lame, last minute effort to put together a crappy lesson… they lose interest in record speed). We had the Primary Sacrament Meeting Program last week (if you aren’t LDS, you won’t know what this is, but it’s kind of a big deal and requires months of planning and practice with 60 kids and teachers), and it somehow went off without a hitch. Even the parts I did. Somehow. God helped with that one.
So after all of these things had been happening for a few months – after months of juggling too many balls and somehow managing to keep them all up, but the juggling sure as hell didn’t look good — I finally called Jon at work with the question: “What do you think about school?” I had called other moms and inquired about different teachers at the public elementary school. I got the low down on who is cool, who is pleasantly strict, and who is a crotchety old hag who doesn’t even like children and needs to retire. I called the school and inquired about the schedule and learned that Jachin could start in the 9:15am time slot (as opposed to last year’s 8:00am time slot that kept him grouchy and sleep deprived for a year). And he would be in the pleasantly strict teacher’s class. So Jon and I talked on the phone. He told me that he was fine either way. Homeschool had been my project, my baby that I had contemplated and hashed over for several years before finally getting up the nerve to try it. I would be the one living with the decision. Would I feel like I had failed? Probably at least a little. My attempts to take my grand ideas and ideals and align them with reality just hadn’t happened. Jachin wasn’t four years (or even one year) ahead in his work. He would not be ready for medical school by 15 at the rate we were going. In my crazy attempts to get him interested in classic literature (sure, we read the watered down versions of Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn, but is he any smarter or more enlightened?), he still picks his Bionicle chapter books to read when it comes to quiet reading time. He takes piano lessons, but he has yet to write a genius composition (he is, however, still trying to pick out the Super Mario Brother’s theme song on the ivories). It would be one thing if all of my haggard disorganization was yielding amazing fruit… but it wasn’t. He is smart, but doesn’t possess a weird, brooding genius. He is just 8. And for him, his mom had turned into a unkempt woman who hounded him to stay on task all day long, and he missed his friends. He missed eating lunch with his friends. He missed hanging out in PE where, sure he probably wasn’t learning anything fantastic, but he got to be with boys who “got” him and loved hearing his endless stories about Lego StarWars. When Jon and I finished talking through all of this he said, “Ok, so it’s a no brainer. Just put him back in.” So I filled out a paper and handed it into the school on Friday afternoon.
On Monday, Jachin and I had one more fun day together. We went to the Dinosaur Museum with my grandma. We had one last leisurely day of going somewhere fun and encountering absolutely no crowds because everyone is in school (I honestly will miss that). We laughed, we ate dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets and hotdogs called “dino-dogs”. We meandered around the gift shop and dug in the sand, uncovering dinosaur skeletons. It was a good day.
Tuesday morning I walked Jachin through the front doors of the school. He told me that he was a little nervous and squeezed my hand. My heart felt a tiny twinge of sadness that our few months of mom and Jachin time were coming to a close. As we walked down the hall a line of kids passed. “Hey, Jachin!” his one friend called. “What? Jachin?” another kid said. “Hey look, it’s Jachin!” Kids were waving all excitedly and Jachin waved back and flashed a big smile, his two little silver caps gleamed in the florescent lighting of the hallway (his silver caps are yet another way I have failed him horribly as a mom, by not being the floss-Nazi that I should be… but that’s for another post). Make no mistake, he felt like a rockstar walking down the hall having kids calling to him and waving. He walked into his classroom to more kids recognizing him and calling his name. He ran in to meet them and didn’t look back at me. And that’s exactly how it should have been.
I came home and felt a little sad. Time. I had quiet time all to myself for the first time since school let out in May. And how did I start out my time alone? By wondering if I had failed. I got in the shower and stood there washing my hair and — oh my gosh — there wasn’t a kid standing outside of my shower, pressing a math sheet up against the glass shower door, asking me to check his math problems while suds ran into my stinging eyes. There was no kid standing outside the shower door holding the phone out to me because kids don’t know that it IS possible to let a phone ring and not answer it when your mom is showering. I had a peaceful shower with no interruptions and no one calling me by my “mom” name. Any guilt I had at that point completely melted away. Because I was showering in quiet.
I think I may, indeed, be coming back to life. And my son and I are both happier. Sometimes it’s kind of funny how things work out. So here I sit typing in the quiet, getting ready to take another quiet shower. Today I may even sing.
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Suz, I admire you for your effort with Jachin and even more so for knowing it just wasn’t working. It’s so easy, when it comes to your children, to fool yourself into thinking you’re doing them good when you sacrifice yourself. But you’re a good mother, and you know to maintain that, you’ve got to take care of yourself. It was a huge act of courage to homeschool your son and an even greater one to send him back. You didn’t fail. Not at all.
No go get yourself that pedicure! You deserve it.
Comment by Leslie — October 26, 2007 @ 10:25 am
I hope you find some peace in your decision. I love the idea of homeschooling. The theory. I pondered it from the time I was pregant with Lexi, it’s just that I didn’t think I was cut out for it. I think I would do a fine job, it’s just that I thought I would become so grouchy, so overwhelmed because I crave being alone. I always have. Thankfully, the kids love school, love their friends so I don’t fret too much. We’re in a decent school. But I still think about it from time to time.
So, here’s to hot showers and peace of mind. I think you are a fabulous mom who knows her kiddos, and took a risk. I think you rock.
Have a great weekend.
Comment by Mama Milton — October 26, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
Or perhaps I was *pregnant*…
Comment by Mama Milton — October 26, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
Everyone asked me when I was pregnant (and pregant, too :)) if I was going to homeschool because I’m a teacher. I always thought it was such a funny question - being a teacher means I generally accept that school is a good place for people to go. Then I started wondering if I should be the one to teach my kids. I had the same blissful dreams of going places without crowds, taking our time examining the cultural richness around, reading classic books all afternoon…
But you’ve found the golden ticket - Moms without time to be quiet, calm, introspective and ALONE occasionally become unhelpful to their children. Those who homeschool successfully (meaning they are well-adjusted women with well-adjusted kids) are a fantastic mystery to me; God bless them. I do any extra teaching and cultural learning and classic-reading I feel needs to happen when we have time after school and during vacations.
You haven’t been defeated. You’ve discovered a better answer, and no one can do that without some kind of research and experimentation
Comment by stephanie — October 27, 2007 @ 3:47 pm
Time alone is one of the most important things in life! I don’t know how you Moms do it. Living with an adult man is hard enough sometimes. But also, isn’t it important that good, smart, involved families still believe in public schools? For the sake of children growing up in less than ideal homes, for whom going to school is their only, best shot at doing better, shouldn’t we all try to make the system work, make sure enough money is going toward education and demand better teachers and curriculums? If everyone with the means and ability home schools or puts their kids in private schools, what happens to the public schools? What happens to the kids left behind whose parents aren’t bugging the board of education to make things better?
Comment by kerri — October 28, 2007 @ 5:43 am
i think you’re a rock star for trying, and a great mom for understanding when to say when. we’ve just had a week of no school and no work thanks to the san diego wildfires, and i can’t wait to see the back of my kids tuesday morning as they walk through the doors of the public school. bad mom? maybe. but…i’m a better mom when i’ve had some non-mom time. congrats on your showers.
Comment by kate — October 28, 2007 @ 10:30 am