Alison Hodgson

Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.

Archives for August 2007

You Can’t Have It All

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But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood

-Barbara Ras

from You Can’t Have It All

I posted this poem not quite a year ago, in November. This morning, reading it again it struck me that today I have an eleven-year-old, a black dog and August. The eleven-year-old I only have for another month, the black dog, only God knows and August, just this one day until another year.

Oh, and I have love.

Today I want to have all that I have and abundantly so.

May you as well.

The Electric Slide

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It’s not in the curriculum I purchased, but it’s on the agenda this year for the homeschoolers. I have never learned it, although I have gotten really close at the back of many a dance floor during wedding receptions throughout the years. Just when I am starting to get the hang of it, the song ends and another couple years pass before I am able to have another go.

No more. The whole family is going to learn it, Paul on down to Eden. I mentioned this in passing to my brother, Nathan, and the phone went silent “You shouldn’t tease people, Alison,” he said after a moment.

I assured him I was dead serious.

Now I just need to find an instructor.

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School’s out for the day and we are heading to a toy store to look around (the kids) and to make some surrepetitious purchases (me). Christopher and Lydia both have September birthdays. It finally occurred to me this year that I could buy the presents ahead of time.

I know. I know. I’ve only been doing this thing for (almost) twelve years. Still learning. For those of you who always have presents bought months ahead, alphabetize your pantry and do your laundry go ahead and puff up with pride, sneer, pat yourselves on the back, whatever! I’m glad to help you feel better about yourselves.

So I hope to make some purchases on the sly, get them wrapped up this weekend and then gloat, gloat, gloat for two weeks in Lydia’s case and a month in Christopher’s.

https://alisonhodgson.com/2007/08/655/

Online-ish

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Paul is wireless as he has a PC and was able to follow the online tutorial. I didn’t have the call to India in me yesterday so I am sitting attached to the modem. I heart wireless! Why won’t it heart me too?

Saturday Paul and I attended his 20 year high school reunion. It was a reunion for me too as we went to school together and I was a grade behind.

We had a great time. After the majority of people left, around 1 a.m. a small group of us sat down in the lobby and talked for hours until Paul and I got up at 6:00 because I needed to be at church at 7:30. If I hadn’t had to go, we might all still be there.

We’re done with school for the day. This is our fourth week of school. After two years of getting August blues and then starting the week after Labor Day, exhausted from a busy summer with the entire school year looming before me, I decided to change it up. We took June and July off and then started the first full week of August. That Monday I had the “Oh yeah we’re starting school, I better get my act together!” moment and then did what I could with what I had prepared.

Almost every homeschooling parent has the low level dread that his or her kids aren’t getting enough, that he or she isn’t doing enough. Starting early, or rather, shifting our year is my antidote to those poisionous thoughts. We hit walls around here, as most readers of this blog know, and that isn’t just a metaphor. (Eden will happily point to the dent in the door where I whacked it with a ladle on a dark – again not just figurative, it was a winter in Michigan – day when Paul was out of the country.)

It has been going really well. I feel like I’m cheating. Out and about I hear everyone checking in about back to school, “Are you ready?” and I breathe a sigh of relief, counting the weeks we already have under our belts. Putting in this time allowed me to start slowly and establish a routine without guilt and dread. It also frees us to take frequent breaks throughout the year and to end by Memorial Day. Cue the Hallelujiah chorus.

For now, we are focusing on Science and History, doing all the projects and every stinking experiment. And, amazingly enough, we are all having fun.

I am learning to shoulder the weight as well as enjoy the freedom that carrying the full responsibility of my children’s education brings.

But now I need to go cuddle with a four year old and read some books.