When I was a kid, I was the girl chasing my little friends with a toad. I was fascinated by the little amphibians’ bumpy skin and soulful faces. Baby toads amazed me with their tiny details. My kids have a similar interest in natural science, although unfortunately, no toads live in our yard that I know of.
One of the things I love as much or more than toads is finding a book that either presents a new perspective of a historical event, or one that introduces a new person from history. When I discovered The Bug Girl: Maria Merian’s Scientific Vision, by Sarah Glenn Marsh, illustrated by Filippo Vanzo, it had me with the first pages inside the cover of Merian’s drawings of plants and insects.
Between the Chaplain, myself, and One’s bio dad, we are one 400 level course short of 9 college degrees (and One is the reason I didn’t finish that course), including three Masters and an assortment of undergraduate degrees.
I always figured my kids would go to college. Both the Chaplain and I are readers and we both place a high value on education.
But for One, the shoe never really fit.
Something magical happened today. I slept in. When I got up, the Chaplain left with the five middle kids for the strawberry fields. Our oldest was already at school taking a test, and I was left with the baby.
The baby and I read a story over and over (Tickle, Tickle, by Helen Oxenbury), then he described the pictures to me. (He pointed to one baby’s butt and said the longest string of intelligible words I’ve ever heard from him: “Poop diaper yuck sorry.”) After storytime, he played happily by himself and stayed out of trouble so I could sew.
When the truck pulled in later in the morning and everyone poured out of it, arms full of clementine boxes brimming with strawberries, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to set aside my sewing to start jam.
It turns out I didn’t have to.
The image shows the paperback version of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, but I actually ended up listening to the audiobook. The Chaplain recommended this book to me a little while ago. He didn’t say much about it. I just remember him telling me, “you should read it.” Since he doesn’t recommend many books to me and our reading interests don’t intersect much, I took him seriously.
When I was a young mom (I mean, when I had only three kids), One took an Aikido class. He was in first grade, and he hated it.
Through that class, we met and got to know a group of unschoolers. I was new to the homeschool community at that time and hadn’t really found where we fit.
I knew we didn’t fit with the unschoolers. Some of their life choices made my hair stand on end. Maybe it’s because they weren’t doing unschooling right, but their kids were poor readers. The families seemed to live lives of chaos where they didn’t potty train or wean until the kids were uncomfortably big, and there were no rules.
I sat next to one of the other moms as we watched our kids in the class. I mentioned we’d been making strawberry jam at our house. She looked over with interest and asked me about the recipe we used. It’s pretty easy to remember, and I related it to her.
