The Home Front

Think back to the activities and passions you loved as a child and do them again...and other musings.

Earlier this month, my son and his wife started to teach their eldest child at home. He is five and a half and has a three-year-old brother with another brother coming into the world in about 8 weeks. 

They’ve been talking about home education for years and even though this would have been a normal or expected decision on my son’s part because he’d been taught at home until the end of high school, his wife hadn’t. So, he didn’t want to push - but he didn’t have to. My daughter-in-law is one of the best advocates for home education I’ve ever met, even though she doubts her own ability. I get exhausted just thinking about how much effort she’s putting into educating both her boys. Not to mention the creativity she thinks she doesn’t have, or her enthusiasm for encouraging her friends to put some thought and prayer into their educational decisions.

And now I’m back to teaching again. I go over to their place about 3 mornings a week to give my grandson reading lessons and his mum goes over what we’ve done on the days I don’t go.

On the home front, our youngest son left home this week to live and work interstate. We think it’s a good move for him, but we’ll miss him, his piano playing, and his lame jokes. 😥

Our youngest daughter is the only child living with us now. The day her brother moved out she took over his room, which is larger than the one she inherited when another sibling flew the coop. She started her Visual Arts & Design Degree yesterday and it will be interesting to see how she juggles study, orchestra, work, youth leadership, church band…and her burgeoning social life now she has her own car - a cheap deal from her older sister & her husband who are expecting their third child any day now and needed a larger vehicle. The photo above was a beach trip my daughter took me on when she took possession of her own car.

About a year ago I listened to a Podcast that popped up in my playlist on How to Let Go of Hard Stuff from Your Past. I still think about some of what was said now, even though I didn’t agree with all of it. 

At the end of the Podcast there were three Takeaways. This one stuck:

Think back to the activities and passions you loved as a child and do them again.

I loved writing and hand sewing (usually making doll’s clothes). I don’t really know how to describe this other passion, but it was sort of making beauty out of ugliness. Whether that was cleaning, rearranging a room, bringing in some flowers from outside or re-purposing or mending something that might have otherwise been thrown out.  

Once a week I go to an elderly couple’s home to help with domestics for four hours. I do laundry, ironing, make beds, clean out cupboards and declutter and cook so they have meals for a few days at least. They have been in their huge, old, 120-year-old home for over 60 years and their family are trying to make life easier for them so they can stay put for as long as possible.

I work solidly during the four hours I’m there and by the time I’m finished my feet are killing me. With our weather being so hot and humid right now I look like the Wreck of the Hesperus by the time I get home but I’ve made a bit of beauty, brought some order, made life a little easier for someone else. I’m doing what I loved when I was a child, just in a different way.

What I’m Reading

War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy 

This is one of those ‘books to read before you die.’ It’s long, it’s epic, and unbelievably, for a Russian novel, it was in many places a compelling page turner. I’ve almost finished. Tolstoy does get sidetracked at times with scathing remarks about Napoleon and ramblings about military tactics, philosophy, and history in general. I only have 35 pages to read and I’ll be finished.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

I’ve had this book for a long time and although I’m not very far in yet, her writing makes me think of those cooking blogs where they rave on for a page about why, what, when, how etc. before you come anywhere near the actual recipe. 

‘I propose to keep here what Thoreau called “a meteorological journal of the mind,” telling some tales and describing some of the sights of this rather tamed valley, and exploring, in fear and trembling, some of the unmapped dim reaches and unholy fastnesses to which those tales and sights so dizzyingly lead.’

I enjoy natural history/nature books and especially like Helen Macdonald’s writing. (I wrote about H is for Hawk and Vesper Flights and found her writing exquisite and personable.) I’m hoping that Dillard’s book, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975, grows on me.

Here’s an interview I did recently with Rachael @ A Window in the Country:

Find what refreshes your mind and soul.

What I’m making

Doll quilts with 3/4-inch hexagons. It’s slow work but very portable & I can listen to a podcast or audiobook while I’m stitching. I only recently found out that with a Spotify account you get 15 hours of audiobook listening per month. 

Sin is unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness.

Ignatius of Loyola