The Unschooling Continues

"Who is the man singing?" I ask.

The boys listen and then each tries to call it first, "Louis Armstrong!"

"Yep," I tell them. "And now, the woman?"

They listen. "Billie Holiday?" asks Trinidad, doubtfully.

"Listen to her voice. Is it Billie?"

"No!" he says definitively. "But I don't know who."

"Ella Fitzgerald," I say. "You haven't heard much of her, but isn't her voice lovely?"

"Wow!" says Sam. "How do they make it so his voice stops and her voice starts like that, so smooth? Do they stand next to each other?"

And so goes the conversation about choices made in recording music, about the lives and personalities of the artists, about history.

We are making cookies together. Both boys can now read and double the recipe with reminders from me about what to look for. Both boys know the terminology around doughs and batters: creaming, folding, mixing, and whipping. They still need some support around turn taking when they are both hot to create.

"Ant treats!" says Trinidad. He is reading the permanent marker I put on our sugar jar long ago.

"Yeah. I like to laugh at things that bother me when I'm tired of being bothered," I said. "I get to laugh a lot more that way." He looks at me and nods, knowingly. I wouldn't mind passing that on.

Trinidad peeks into the oven. "They're still pretty wet," he says. "What makes them wet?" He thinks for a minute. "Oh -- the butter!" He gauges the best time to pull them based on the dryness and slightly brown edges of the outer cookies.

I am still the one to take the baking stones from the oven. Sam leans over the stove top to grab a cookie while I pull the oven door down. "Don't fall in, Hansel," I tell him.

"Hmm-hm! Hanthel!" he says, spewing crumbs through his giggle.

"Yeah, now you get these literary allusions since we've been boning up on our fairy tales," I say.

Sam leans over the cookie press, trying to push out a perfect wreath. The last one got caught in the ring at the bottom. This one, too, sticks. "Oh, come on! What the hell?" he asks, incredulous, as he picks the dough from the metal tool.

I turn away, smirking. He has learned to cuss appropriately. It's the first time I've heard a four-letter word from him in awhile, and the timing, by my own standard, was impeccable. As if echoing my logic, he says it again for good measure under his breath. Then, pleased with his own affect, he laughs and tells me he's going to try a new shaped disc. Better luck with that, maybe.

I am so grateful for our conversations, our learning and growing together. I am honored to see their wheels turning and to be invited into the very gears of their clockwork. I am humble in my joy to be a parent, a mentor, a model, and a companion. So very lucky that they are my boys.

The Web We Weave

I needed a sled, and ours is deep in the pile that I crammed into our tiny storage unit last May. I turned to a neighbor for help. Walking 4 doors up the street bearing bagels rescued from a local baker's dumpster, I presented my dilemma and was aptly rewarded.

On the return, sled in hand, I passed my next door neighbor and another neighbor hoisting either side of a jug of mead on its way to be bottled. This mead contained a good deal of honey from our bees and will grace our Christmas eve table for the next several years. I waved them a hello and stopped off at the neighbor's house across the street to pick up one more sled. A stack of plates and jars were ready for my pickup, too, on their return from transporting soups and baked goods to our "extended family" across the way.

Inhale, exhale.

Another Family School parent who lives nearby became interested in buying goat milk to turn into yoghurt. I called my goat milk connection. She said she'd love the support, but being 70 miles from town, she is unable to supply the milk on her Saturday drop. If only I could come get it on Wednesday, she wished. I'll take the Wednesday milk, I told her, to make my yoghurt from. It will stay fresh for weeks once cultured. My drinking milk I will take from the Friday batch.

The farmer was delighted. She has more financial support now, and even more openings for her Saturday milk list. She's offering me bits of winter squash, chicken feet (for stock) and other bonus goodies to show her appreciation. I am making yoghurt for my new mom-friend, and when I have a sick kid, she picks up the other in her minivan to carpool to school.

I like it.

Gender Inconclusions IV

"Did you hear a knock at the door?" Seda asked when she noticed I had left the dinner table.

"Yes!" I called from the living room where I was giving another mom her share of the wholesale pickup I'd received on her behalf earlier that day.

"It's nice to live in community, so much easier, really," I said, returning to the table. "I think of all the little things I have to keep track of as a homemaker -- fermenting the oatmeal for tomorrow's breakfast, stacking the firewood before it rains, picking up our order from Hummingbird Wholesale, handling our loan application at the bank -- all of these time sensitive things to do. But in community, so many of these tasks can be shared or picked up by one another when we simply cannot fit it in. It would be so lonely to make a home in isolation."

"Yeah," said Seda. "And so many people do! No wonder they're unhappy homemakers."

"Mmm," I said. "It's part of our consumer culture -- we buy this and that prepackaged thing, a dishwasher to do our dishes, a washing machine to wash our clothes (I'm not complaining on that one, mind you)...."

"And still, with all these modern conveniences, homemakers now spend more time doing housework than ever before," said Seda.

"Well, they now have bigger houses."

"True! In the fifties, people lived in little houses, like ours, and that was the norm."

"Did you know," I asked the boys, "that when we bought this 750 square foot house, our realtor almost refused to show it to us because it 'wasn't big enough' for our needs. If Maddy and I were still together romantically, it still would be."

"Wow," said Trinidad.

"Yep. We should get some old episodes of 'Leave It To Beaver,'" I said. "That would be a real social studies education."

"Women were expected to vaccuum the floors in high heels and dresses, Trinidad," said Seda. Trinidad's eyes widened. "You know, I wonder if that's why the feminist movement turned their back on homemaking?"

"Oh, Seda, you're right!" I said. "The homemakers in those days switched on television and turned to the bottle to keep them company. So much for sisters sharing resources and power in the world. So much for community and sustainability!"

Can you imagine? A T.V. dinner marauding as ease, so seductive... if bland. All that time to play Bridge! But what about meaningful shared efforts to feed the family, feed the world? The recipes and nourishing wisdom of generations, lost to plastic and paperboard.

And then a generation of young women who looked back and said, "I will not stay home."

Herein lies the epidemic of homelessness.