The Life of Cycles

Apparently, God thought cycles to be a good plan. Day, night. Winter, spring, summer, fall. Evaporation, condensation. Life, death, rebirth. Mankind has taken God's concept of cycles and run with it. Bicycles. Chain saws. The calendar. Cycles are all around us, and as part of our everyday life as breathing. Yet sometimes we resist these cycles and cause ourselves pain. The cycle of homeschooling is not exempt from these natural laws, and acknowledging the many inherent cycles can give peace to an otherwise discouraged outlook.

I recently attended a talk at church given by an old friend whom I consider wise. I hadn't seen Diana in fourteen years, but we've been exchanging Christmas cards across the country all this time. As former head of catechetical ministry at my church, she was the first person I met there when I went searching for community. At our first meeting, she spoke to me in her confident Southern accent about the liturgical year. Diana showed me a colorful wheel with the seasons of Lent, Easter, ordinary time (the "long, hot summer"), Advent and Christmas. I will never forget how wide my eyes became as she explained the big picture of the cycle of the Church calendar, suddenly giving meaning and place for all the holidays and traditions that I so haphazardly celebrated. She gave me cycle.

In her recent talk, Diana focused on preparation for Lent, the Church's springtime. She spoke of our own seasons of generation and retreat. In looking through the viewfinder of an entire life, there are years when we are more generative, making children and making plans. Then there are later years when we may retreat to be closer to God, letting others make the children and the plans. Zooming in more closely to shorter periods of time, generation and retreat are built into our calendar. We generate during the day; we rest at night. We generate on the weekdays; we retreat on the weekends. We generate during the school year; we retreat during summer and holidays. As long as we follow these cycles without resistance, we are open to feelings of peace and contentment.

It is when we resist these generative and retreat cycles that problems arise. Too much work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Too much play and no work make Jack a jerk. Consistent generation without break causes burnout, depression, fatigue, and a desire to quit. Extended retreat without production causes chaos, guilt, shame, and resentment. Honoring our cycles and rising above our mood-driven nature allows us to stay balanced on the generation-retreat cycle, and remain balanced in our emotions and surroundings.

There are cycles that occur in the background of our lives that affect our outlook as well. Long ago I recognized a cycle of excellence that permeates my teaching. Sometimes I was spot-on with planning, preparation, execution, and results. Other times it is all I can do to produce the minimum required. It is at these minimalist times that I am tempted to feel discouraged, outraged at myself, guilty, and desirous of quitting. Fortunately, I have a free token that I am able to use at times like these. It is called, "This too shall pass." I was given this wisdom as a child, and it has served me well in my life, bringing a token of optimism when it is needed most.

Homeschooling as a form of education does not have a monopoly on this cycle of excellence. Every school child has good years and bad; good weeks and bad; good days and bad. Every teacher is subject to the same. The difference is that homeschooling can feel like running a marathon alone. If there is no support, or someone to validate you (including yourself), then it can be easy to fall into discouragement during the low ebbs in the cycle of excellence. A homeschooling teacher can feel so singular in the huge responsibility of raising up a child in the way he should go, that it can be overwhelming.

In the eight years that I have struggled and succeeded and struggled again, I have learned two things about the ups and downs: respect the generative-retreat cycle, and accept the ups and downs in the excellence cycle.

I recently spent two weeks staring at the wall. I had no motivation to do much of anything outside of my own interests. The laundry piled up; the schoolwork stacked; and dirty dishes appeared as food disappeared. I beat myself up for my apparent laziness, and I was as discouraged as I can get. I knew it would pass, but it sure was taking its sweet time. One day as I was writing to a friend about how busy my life had been the last four months, I realized the problem. I had run for months with too much going on, and had worked evenings and weekends to get it all done. Instead of using evening and weekends to regenerate, I was using them to generate more. As soon as my projects let up, I let down. I had burned myself out, and my body and mind were forcing me to take a long overdue break. Unfortunately, that break caused more chaos and it took much longer to pull out. I had not respected the generative-retreat cycle over a period of several months, and the outcome was burnout.

Of course, my excellence was impacted hard by this burnout. But even with a balance of output and rest, the cycle of excellence goes on with a mind of its own. As a teacher, I know that when I accept the times that I do not shine, I more quickly get back in my game. Accepting a student's ups and downs presents more challenges. It is so difficult to accept a mediocre paper from an outstanding student. But sometimes mediocre papers happen, and pushing for perfection each and every time is going to impact the psyche of the student. Conversely from the student's perspective, expecting perfection from himself can also cause problems. When a 98% is failing according to the child, it is time for a good chat. Teaching acceptance of cyclical excellence and mediocrity (i.e., not every test will be 100%) will do more for the perfectionist child than the extra effort to keep the wind in their idealistic sails.

Respect and acceptance. Works for more than cycles. It reminds me of a homily that I heard at a friend's wedding. The priest said, "All you must do is treat each other with love and patience. Love and patience. Nothing more is required, and nothing less works." Respecting your natural cycles is a form of loving yourself. Accepting your natural ups and downs is a form of patience with yourself. The system seems to work when I follow it. Apparently, God thought cycles to be a good plan.

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Just Amazing

I am used to the comments by now. When people hear that I homeschool, the response is either "I could never do that. I don't have the patience." Or "How do you find the time? I don't know how you do it all." I reply humbly to the comments describing me as "amazing" or "awesome" and hide the truth as best I can. I hide it because I enjoy the momentary bliss of being thought "amazing" by someone, despite the hypocrisy of the compliment. I want to shout at the top of my lungs, "Stop! I'm a loser just like you!

Sometimes I retort, "You should see my toilets." That gets a laugh, but they don't believe me. They go on complimenting, needing to believe that I am the Martha Stewart of prepositions, clean toilets and all. I remember my father introducing me one time to an associate. I was in college, and he introduced me as his "4-oh daughter." I gave him a strange look, and started to protest, but he cut me off and continued talking. He may have remembered that I only had a 4.0 my freshman year when I was barely taking a full load in anthropology, with no job and no boyfriend. As soon as I switched to engineering, and got a job and a boyfriend, my GPA went the direction of mercury on a cold winter's day. It did not seem to matter to his urban legend. He needed to believe I was amazing.

Maybe I deserved the title when I first started homeschooling. I was full of enthusiasm, idealistic dreams, and my own abilities. No one hated math, and I had only two small Kindergarten students, my daughter and her friend. I painted the classroom butter yellow, and collected books and games and memories. I changed the bulletin board every five weeks, painstakingly creating a vision of what we would learn the following weeks. I took pictures of our day, and pasted them into a log that I wrote each afternoon. I spent evenings planning the details of the next day, complete with full-color worksheets often created by me, and lots of hands-on manipulatives. I actually planned what we would have for snack, and stocked it beforehand. We had story time and calendar time and said the Pledge of Allegiance, God and all. We had one day each week that we called field-trip day, and we fully took advantage of them. There was a period of time when we had passes to every conceivable park within an hour's drive. Considering we live in Southern California, that is no easy feat.

I'm not sure when things changed. The friend went public, but my son graduated from his crib, so there was no net change in enrollment. My son had a good Kindergarten experience, but then something happened. Maybe it was coincident with bringing in DVD teachers. Maybe I burned myself out the first four years. Initially, the DVD teachers were there to allow me a break at times, but then my children were watching television more than I taught. The bulletin board stayed the same all year, just a U.S. map and a multiplication table. I stopped taking pictures. The park passes began to expire. Math was exposed as the enemy.

I kept having dreams that my purse was being stolen, after I had left it in a vulnerable place. The only thing I had inside was my wallet and my camera. I read somewhere that repeated dreams should be interpreted by determining what the objects mean to you. My wallet and my camera. My identity and my memories. I was giving my identity away to DVD teachers, and cheating myself of memories. The day I figured that out was the day that I stopped relying on women with large shoulder pads to teach my children.

With that phase over, I was renewed. I began taking advantage of parent classes at our charter school. I was always the one in the room with my arm up the longest as they asked, "Who's been homeschooling over three years? Four? Five? Six? Seven?" But as an old dog, I was surprised to be learning new tricks. The best one was the "lap book" which is like unit-study-meets-scrapbook. It was the adrenaline that I needed to revitalize our schooling. We made amazing lap books, and enjoyed ourselves immensely that year. The more classes I attended, the more I started sharing my own discoveries, and I found that pretty soon I earned a reputation of being amazing even among my peers who were teaching too. But I was behind the mask of longevity and beautiful lap books. You should see my toilets, I would say, to the utter relief of the other moms to whom I was speaking.

Every year has a theme. There is a flow not unlike the ups and downs of a child in public school. One thing has stayed the same however, and that is the reason that I am amazing and the reason that I have time to do it all.

My toilets are truly cleaned about once a school year, if my husband is up to it. (Hey, he's the one who does not want to pay a housecleaner. Whatever.) The upstairs is usually off-limits to all but the most indiscriminating friends. Beds are made on a whim. There are stacks of clutter, some of it waiting to be unpacked from trips that were taken two seasons before. We used to have an agreement that the kitchen would always be clean, but that has fallen by the wayside too. There is usually an archaeological dig by the phone, getting deeper by the month.

I rarely wear makeup, except to church. My hair has been wash and wear for years, despite my sister begging me to do something with it. I don't iron except on holidays. I do shower every day, however; even I have my limits.

I go through phases with making dinner. One night on, two months off. Dinner is usually Jimbo's hot deli and salad bar (hey, it's organic). My son is great at making pasta (and messes). My daughter is great at begging me to go to Jimbo's to get food. The other night we had sweet potato shepherd's pie from the deli. It was yummy. We're not suffering.

My car has been washed once in the last year, by my neighbor who claimed to be thanking me for some forgotten kindness. I still wonder if they were just getting embarassed by the layer of filth on it. When we carpool, we have to throw everything into the trunk and cover it. I still have something back there that I hear rolling around when I turn corners. I've even been known to spread a towel on the seat for these poor unsuspecting carpool children. Oh, and gas only happens when the car beeps at me.

Clean underwear needs the same alarm. When more than one person is complaining about needing clean underpants, then something happens. Usually that something is that a third person starts complaining. After everyone has gone through their swimsuits and borrowed underwear (same gender, please), there's usually a trip to Target to buy more. And the dry cleaning bin is uni-directional. I'm not even sure where there is a dry cleaners nearby since we moved (eleven years ago). We keep getting new clothes, but no one is cleaning out the old clothes. Every once in awhile my son comes out wearing pants that are four inches too short. Everyone thinks he's "growing so fast," but it's just time to do laundry.

We recently added fish and rabbits to the equation. I don't know what we were thinking. The fish gave us false security that we could handle the bunnies. Let me tell you, fish poop stays in the tank. Sometimes if you don't clean out the tank often enough, the fish eat the poop and it kills them. But you don't step in fish urine in your own kitchen in stocking feet. Fish don't make little yellow circles on the same carpet that you once asked people to remove their shoes for. Now we warn people to keep their shoes on their feet when entering our home.

I think what is amazing about me is that I have not been committed or arrested yet. Committed because of the insanity within my home, just this side of chaos, moving from one urgency to the next--no time to do it all, or even half of it, or even a tenth. Arrested because of the yelling that has to be heard from our open windows on a breezy day--yelling from the frustration and impatience and insanity and chaos and urgency. Stubbed toes. Left open mayonnaise. Bunnies running amok. Chaos and impatience and not enough time. Just like any other suburban American home. Only we homeschool. But I wouldn't trade it for the world. I guess that truly is amazing.

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First Place!

We would be remiss as parents if we did not toot this one really loudly. Our daughter has won First Place in the school science fair. Her project is entitled, "Microwave Radiation from Wireless Devices in our Homes." Out of 106 entrants, there were 10 finalists. Among those ten were chosen one 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for each of the grades (7th and 8th). We attended the reception for the winners. The ten finalists also presented their projects as mentors to the 4th, 5th and 6th grade classrooms.

She received a score of 26 out of 24 (2 bonus points). The judge's comments included, "Wow! Fabulous board and notebook. Articulate and knowledgeable presentation. Great experimental design. Important timely topic of great interest to the public. Just sorry I couldn't give more points." Our daughter has become very interested in educating others about wireless radiation, and will continue on a related topic for next year. (They encourage continuing with similar topics.)

This has been an incredible confidence boost for her, and as our dear friend says, we need to help our children "manifest the passion for learning and excellence."

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