Graduation

June 5, 2010

For many years we homeschooled and even unschooled. For months at a time it was as though he was totally unteachable, unreachable except for moments that were as transient as the weather. Sometimes he'd surprise me and want to do something utterly worldly, like go to camp, go to "real" school, join a theater group and so I'd take deep breaths and switch gears, not ever sure how smoothly any of those gears might turn nor knowing just how to grease them.

He was fourteen when he decided that he wanted to go to school but in a way that was like praying for rain only on the green beans but never on Sunday and please, be careful how much water falls on the corn -- wanting the world on his terms.

Parenthetical Interlude --Yes, lots happened between that paragraph and the next, but all of that will happen here in dribs and drabs and probably not in chronological order.

He wanted to be a part of the world --on his terms--and we moved clumsily from unschooling into school. During and after two years of crises, sleepless nights, joys, explorations, and head banging (literally- you should see my refrigerator door) we discovered and analysed the trade-offs. It's hard to explain to anyone that he lost ground academically because here he was, almost sixteen and ready to graduate, but he learned nothing new academically and fell behind in the fluency he'd managed to grasp in fits and starts at home.

He cried, as we talked, that he'd not been allowed to take AP classes because of his writing problems. That kept him away from his intellectual peers. Paradoxically, he'd been to school for two years and had little to no writing instruction.

We laughed, however, that with graduation a week away he was finally learning to stand in line and march!

At home the books once again migrated from the shelves and pages flicked by to the music of Queen. (THAT gets old!!) The television busied itself with video lecture series constantly replayed until son 'gets' all of the words.

"Back to the business of life," said he as he slammed pliers and wire and a few choice pieces of onyx on the table next to his books.

"Yes. This was more like it," I thought, "perhaps."

"We have to have important stuff to fight about, Mom. This week it's gonna be white holes and black holes and whether or not Hawking is better at narrating his own sputterings than anyone else."

As we return to the familiar freedoms we embrace, we move forward. We don't know where we're going....college?? Let's see....I have less than three months to figure that one out.

I thought that I'd feel triumphant. But I felt tired, and I felt cheated....

Oh, let's just not finish THAT list. Not yet.