I was looking through our March/April issue last night, as we get ready to send our May/June issue to the printer this week, and I came across my publisher’s note in the HEM Notebook section. I thought some of my blog readers, who may not all be subscribers, might enjoy reading this short essay on my ‘non-retirement’:
After nearly a quarter of a century of publishing this magazine and homeschooling our five children, our youngest, Michael, the baby whose birth was reported in these pages in early 1986, turned 21 last December. If there’s really a point at which a family stops homeschooling, I guess we’ve passed that point by now.
The five kids whose names and activities were featured in countless editorials over the years have grown up, and their learning takes a different form these days, and, except for having taught them how to learn, we’re usually not a part of it any longer.
And yet I don’t feel like a retired homeschooler at all. There are two small desks next to my large one, and the walls above my desk are covered with works of art from my three young granddaughters, Nikki, Ally, and Cammy. My bookshelves bulge with titles for younger readers, and the videos still laying beside my DVD player are from Disney & Co. There are oatmeal cookies on the counter downstairs from last night’s baking adventures, and mittens and hats still in the dryer from yesterday’s big snowball fight.
When the girls come over to visit, which thankfully is almost daily, they aren’t visitors per se, but part of a large extended family that’s frequently here long into the evenings, sipping coffee and cocoa and working on projects, watching movies, playing games or just talking. Just last night my Dad held the attention of four generations as he told of flying into Italy in a small plane with damaged landing gear and putting down within sight of the Leaning Tower of Pisa…
I think this is the best part of homeschooling. Nothing much has changed, really, but everything has changed, and in my book it’s all good.
