It’s only fitting that I am getting ready to pull the plug as the renewal notice flickers in the mailbox. Our home-schooling website (freetothink.ca) will be merging, as a lovely memory, with this one. It’s been a while since our school adventure ended anyway, but I am finding it hard to part with some things and the boys’ growing up (too fast, if you ask me) is where I trip, you see.

I know the plot: they get born, they wobble as they learn to walk, call you mama and hug you tight so tight you feel them melting into your heart; they run and climb and do silly things; then they go to school, and you miss them like crazy. They get sillier yet and crazy you (and them) think… well, what better way to celebrate silly boys growing up too fast than by home-schooling for a couple of years. So, we did. For four years, to be precise.

And nostalgia comes when you least expect it. This is the first year that we have no elementary or high school students heading to their respective schools. University yes, but that’s another story. Early morning is different.

Grateful to have them around for a little while yet, but September has a different flavour. In 2017, it sounded like this…

“I feel a bit like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland these days; hurried, forgetting a few things, and just as often following my own steps until I realize I am running in circles. Adequately so, you could say. It’s the beginning of the school year, which means planning, more planning, sorting through books and ideas, sharpening handfuls of pencils and searching for erasers at the bottom of drawers. Jumping knee-deep in phone and in-person chats with our learning consultants, checking multiple mailboxes regularly… A word that does not exist in the summer dictionary other than to accurately describe our evenings spent on the riverbanks. Regularly showing up there, self-respecting river rats that we are.

We are to transition (in harmony, if possible,) from those long-drawn summer nights when you fill the time laughing, playing, chatting, hiding behind sandcastles you build on the riverbanks so the setting sun won’t find you, so you can keep going forever. 

Then the autumn chill starts swallowing the bright summer nights, cricket chirps and all… I noticed it a couple of weeks ago. A bit more silence when you want summer night sounds drowning your thoughts and mellowing the worries… How will this new year be? We’re homeschooling, and it’s wild… And yet, what’s one more?

You see, it’s this thing that time does. It flies, a bit faster each year (yeah, yeah, I know it’s not the time that changes its rhythm, I know that…). There is no running away from it, and in knowing that, I learn to hug the boys each day a bit tighter and take a deeper breath. We’re committed now.

It’s another stage in our growing to know more of the world and place ourselves with grace somewhere in it. Grace, gracefulness, gratefulness… It’s how I find my balance. Brackets of gratefulness opening and closing each day (most days?) and each season, each year. Forgetfulness, forgiveness, learning what being human means, that’s also on our curriculum.

Doubt pinches me, it does. Am I going to know how to do it all? Is our learning adventure good enough to feed their growing, curious minds? The whole picture is dazzling and nauseating at once. I won’t go there. Instead, I go the old way: one day at a time. Yes, many will ask me once again, and again, if the boys get enough socializing (yes, they do) and if this is really learning (yes, it is, just jump into a conversation with them,) and if they are missing out on life of any other kind (no but ask them?).

So it is then. We will put up our sails and ride the waves. Some will toss us every which way, some will downright maroon us on some forgotten shores from where we will find our way back to where we can see the stars again. And some will lift us all the way up from where we will gaze and see past the limitations. Learning is an adventure; a door that never closes.”

This past weekend our family reminded that life is precious and having each other is truly the gift that’s worth everything. My regular size nostalgia reached gargantuan dimensions, and my commitment to never take any day for granted got renewed. A mom’s heart doesn’t rest, but that’s a good thing. It’s the background to my boys’ stories unfolding. And sometimes the stories get wild and scary.

But not this September story. There may be a page turning – time does that, or a few, but now it reads … ‘to be continued’ and that’s all that matters.

How fortunate we are! To be learning, still, and to do so with a light heart that understands heaviness. Grateful, through and through.