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.