Reading is medicine and other summer discoveries

“I feel so much better,” Rose tells me after a midday slump, in which she was certain we’d already spent our whole summer at home, isolated and lonely, wringing feeble drops of fun out of a motley assortment of neglected playthings.

I didn’t mention that we had just returned from a mother-daughter backpacking trip with friends, or that she had declined a tubing invite for the sake of rest and regrouping after skinny-dipping in mountain lakes and “feeling so responsible” hefting her pack through the mountains. I hugged her, listened, murmured my understanding and led her to the couch to read to her. Because reading is medicine.

Alternative reading positions.

Everything else is so July-familiar: the way I’m waiting for the monsoons without an ounce of equanimity – the clouds aggregating and posturing like teenagers while I feel only greed; the way Rose cruises through the buffet of our garden nabbing peas, raspberries, serviceberries, and cherry tomatoes – and how I pretend to care that she gets first crack, but secretly love her foraging ways; the way I return euphorically sweaty from early morning runs, Col greeting me at the door with a hug that he retracts when he sees how damp I am and then overrides it, falling into my arms; the way I tell Dan that I’ve got a good idea and he says, “really?!?” eyeing the bedroom.

I think summer is halfway over, if school starting up is the benchmark. This may or may not be the time to announce that after six years of homeschooling, the kids are going to (a project-based) public school this fall. I know. What is this: 6512 and growing institutionalized learners?

The metaphor here, Dan says, is that for so long we fed our babies in the nest and now they’re ready to fly. And there’s so much more to it, like the part about how I never exactly loved being my child’s teacher. I loved snuggling on the couch while we read another chapter of Harry Potter (language arts?), loved lounging around making cookie balls in our pajamas (fractions?), loved that they had time to play, so much time to play.

But also, honestly? I feel a huge sense of relief in handing over this responsibility to someone else. I have ambitions that don’t involve selecting and overseeing another semester of curriculum. I don’t want to be the enforcer of sentence capitalization.

And I will miss them like crazy. I will worry about the pressures of school, popular culture and fitting in. I will secretly wonder if much of institutionalized learning is a time- and soul-suck. And I will remind myself that Col and Rose are emotionally intelligent and self-aware, cooperative yet empowered, and that they love to read; and if that’s what came from our past six years of homeschooling (plus an encyclopedic knowledge of airplanes and excellent gymnastics skills), then I’ll celebrate that.

What we’re reading:

The kids and I are reading Land of Stories, about which I feel the same way I do when the kids ask to play at a park – like some wholesome, innocent nub of their childhood still remains. Also because Col is reading books in which children are starving and parentless and pitted against each other, this series seems really tame, despite all the (predictable) villains. And I’m not even talking about Hunger Games, though he loved that series too.

Col is devouring this and this series.

I read and loved:

The Leavers (novel – about immigration and adoption, China and NYC, and the most gorgeous, wrenching, arresting writing).

Unsettlers (non-fiction – about people breaking up with consumerism and forging their own way in America).

All These Wonders (delightful, illuminating and surprising true stories from the Moth live storytelling event)

And the Dark and Sacred Night (fiction so believable you forget you’re reading about people that don’t exist).

The Bright Hour: a memoir of living and dying (memoir – painfully beautiful and heartbreaking).

Love,

Rachel

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