Home Education Magazine

January-February 2001 - Articles

Notes from a Homeschooling Dad - Jeff Kelety

The Moon is Enough

I had to admit it was a somewhat obscure notation on the calendar: a hastily penciled-in sailboat whose rippling water line extended from Monday to Tuesday. But it served its intended purpose, to leave one with the distinct impression that the little vessel would be sailing from one day into the next.

"What's that?" Deborah inquired one morning over coffee with a somewhat startled and slightly miffed inflection in her voice. My wife is the undisputed keeper of the family calendar. No inscription placed thereupon, no matter how seemingly insignificant, escapes her attention.

"What's what?" I returned in mock surprise.

"That little..." she squinted and took a closer look. "That little whatever-it-is there on next Monday."

"Oh, that," I replied, maintaining a feigned insouciance. "It's a sailboat, I guess."

"A sailboat. OK. So what's it doing there?"

See what I mean? Augmenting the family calendar without Deb's approval is rather like adding a line to the original Declaration of Independence without first consulting Mr. Jefferson. It just isn't done. But I was prepared.

"Don't you remember, love? That's our overnight alone on the boat." To be perfectly honest, I wasn't entirely sure if I had actually mentioned the event to Deb previously, but I emphasized the word "alone" slowly and deliberately, letting it linger in the air for a few moments like the sweet scent of jasmine on a summer's night.

Then I threw in the clincher, "And I confirmed with Beth; she can come over and stay the night with the kids."

Beth is Myles, Josh and Emma's favorite sitter as well a fellow homeschooler. A bright, affable and eminently able young teen, Beth also possesses the extraordinary ability to have all my kids happily asleep in their beds by 8:30 p.m. In short, you'll never get her phone number from me.

With the mention of Beth, Deborah seemed mollified. Perhaps I even caught a hint of smile on her lips. Securing a sitter had the effect of reifying the event, giving it an air of credibility. The tenacious little squiggle of a sailboat had passed muster and remained on the calendar. Romance was penciled in, had found its place, safely tucked between acting classes and soccer practice.

I had been given leave from parental duties that day to make the necessary preparations. With quiet determination I went about the task of engineering nothing less than an evening of enchantment. This was no mean feat after ten years of raising and homeschooling a brood of three. Harboring no false sense of hubris, I labored to leave nothing to chance. The Nais, our little wooden sloop and venue for the evening's interlude, was polished from stem to stern. With her fresh white interior trimmed in reddish hues of mahogany, the smallish cabin glowed like a miniature Danish seaside cottage.

Fresh flowers were cut from the garden and placed in a vase on the simple, varnished pine mast-table. The brass oil lamps were filled. Sinatra was slid into the CD player. The champagne was chilled and set on ice in the aging copper pot that hung next to the galley. An old porcelain marmalade jar was ribboned with Deb's favorite jellybeans. Chocolate truffles were set to chill in the cooler along with the rest of the dinner meal. Even the fickle Puget Sound weather cooperated, almost as if it knew it might be at least another year before Deb and I could spend an overnight alone. A brilliantly clear afternoon sky sighed with a gentle southerly that could have carried us lazily about Admiralty Inlet. But I knew what Deb as yet did not, that the Nais would never leave the dock on this voyage.

It's been sixteen years since Deborah and I exchanged wedding vows on a grassy park knoll in San Francisco's Haight/Ashbury district. The odds for a life-long union in our present social milieu continue to be no better than even, despite the omnipresence of Dr. Laura. But the gods of love and decision have smiled upon us so far. With the exception of heated arguments regarding the most efficient method for loading the dishwasher (a matter upon which I hope to prevail one day), our marriage continues to be a richly rewarding affair.

Looking back, however, I can recall no substantive discussions during our courtship that pertained to children and their education; no spirited midnight talks of learning styles, the merits (or lack thereof) of public education, or the value of phonics in reading acquisition. In fact, for so monumental a decision as bringing one or more children into the world, we entertained alarmingly little dialog on the topic. Deb and I implicitly accepted the entirely untested premise that we stood on common ground when it came to raising children. I can honestly recount that the choice of fabric for our first sofa generated considerably more discourse than philosophies of child rearing. (Coincidentally, or perhaps not, our kids curl up to read on that same camel-backed couch, long since recovered though visibly suffering from overly prolonged, albeit valiant service.)

But somehow, by a stroke of luck or blind intuition, we discovered a kinship in family matters: attachment parenting, breast-feeding, family bed, jettisoning the TV, showering as much affection on the kids as possible and perhaps most importantly, homeschooling.

Deborah and I came to homeschooling quite by accident. A few John Holt books checked out from the library, a weekend at a frolicking homeschool conference and we were on our way. In contrast, however, I don't believe that the unity and satisfaction that we've experienced as a married couple has been at all accidental. Deb and I have homeschooled for most of the sixteen years that we have been together. I'm firmly convinced it is this aspect of our life as much as anything that has kept our marriage fresh, engaging and nurturing.

Homeschooling gave us the natural cohesion of the family. It allowed us to relax in one another's presence. There is nThe jarring morning exodus and early evening re-acclimation that accompanies contemporary school life. We spend more of our life together than we do apart, way more. Rather than this being a source of contention as presumed by many schooling families (e.g. "Doesn't it drive you crazy to spend so much time with your kids?"), it is, to the contrary, a source of great calm and deep, deep contentment. Homeschooling is, in fact, the perfect recipe for love and intimacy.

Sixteen years of marriage, then. We are older now, of course. Our lithe, young bodies are just memories; they exist merely as photographic renderings of another place and another time. But in the soft, golden light of an oil lamp, with a full moon rising to starboard, my wife is every bit the beauty who held me transfixed those many years ago.

To me, fair friend, you can never be old,

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still.

Perhaps Shakespeare didn't pen his 104th Sonnet with homeschooling parents expressly in mind, but it speaks for the beauty and youth of our spirits all the same.

And so, as the moon rose, we sipped champagne, reveling in those luxurious few moments of romantic solitude. It was sufficient; it was enough. We listened absentmindedly to the craggy call of a blue heron. We giggled and ate jellybeans and kissed, grateful for our homeschooling life together.

© 2000 Jeff Kelety

January-February 2001 Issue

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