The first homeschooling friend I ever made, I've never actually met. She's from England. And she lived her life to its full way before I was even born. Her name is Charlotte Mason.
You see, about eight years ago, I had a two and half year old child and was pregnant with a second. A good friend announced that he was getting married and would be moving away. He invited us to lunch to meet his then fiancee. This was no chance meeting. This was one of those moments in life that you never know the weight of and can never fully count the blessings from. I was mesmerized by the description of this school principal's guiding philosophy and by her plan to build a school that fully espoused this philosophy and to one day build a network of such schools. A few days later, a package containing this arrived in the mail from Mary Ellen. It was a gift that has never quit giving. I drank up its ideas and chewed its content as a most satisfying feast. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I started searching online for information about homeschoolers using this philosophy. And I found this. Okay, not really that but its ancestor. We've been at this for a while now, some things have changed.
As a young mom, still in the preschool years, I gleaned so much encouragement from the conversations there, from women I grew to respect and admire in so many ways. And I gained a circle of support. Just as my oldest was approaching kindergarten and I was finally ready to embark on our homeschooling journey, God sent us a surprise. First, we embraced a call to foreign mission service, sold our home and our possessions, and moved, first to a mission base and then to a little island in the Southern Caribbean. And, we welcomed our third son into the world just seven weeks before we left the country. September found us not at the library gathering up armfuls of living books as I had expected, but far away from home in a new world, with only what would fit in five suitcases. And yet, my conviction that this was the best way to educate my child stayed firm, and the support of those online friends remained.
And so I spent my evenings in the Caribbean devouring this book that had just been released and cheering for joy that Elizabeth had done such a wonderful job taking what was a perfect philosophy for me and letting me see a very real picture of it. And of convincing me that my life as a missionary was not mutually exclusive with a Charlotte Mason education for my child. And so we began to spend our mornings in the Caribbean praying and learning: devouring the few books we were able to bring along, working out of our Math workbooks (Singapore Math from Singapore because that's how little I knew what I was doing : ) and learning to read. We worked hard at life, and we rewarded ourselves with frequent trips to the incredible beaches, where we wrote letters in the sand, counted waves, and spotted some of God's most beautiful creation. At Christmas, when Granny and Pops came to visit, we asked for more books. They brought some of these.
The next few years led us to two more mission posts, another in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and one in Costa Rica: those trips included a fourth pregnancy, a stint teaching and learning in a bilingual school, and trips back and forth to the States. Then, just before the birth of that fourth baby, we decided to return to life in the States. We rented a house, and not knowing what our income situation would be, enrolled our oldest in the local Catholic school. A week later, Katrina devastated the lives of most of our family members and we spent a month living it with them. Then Hurricane Rita took its toll on our neck of the woods and by the time its aftermath had cleared, we were welcoming a baby into the world. And then four months later moving into the home we purchased, and four months after that, another baby on the way. And then the decision to bring the boys back home for school followed shortly after.
In the midst of all these changes, the aforementioned book list was our constant friend. Wherever life took us, we referred to it often for inspiration and found it. It was our constant, as were the ladies at 4real.
In August, I geared up for the school year by manipulating an in-person meeting with my long-time online friend Cay. I brought Alice in on the action, and the next you know I was planning a weekend get-together. And that was where I shared these thoughts about learning in a Charlotte Mason lifestyle. I've reread them a lot lately. I've thought about the ideas we embraced and the changes we made when we fell head over heels into Serendipidity. I have thanked God over and over for the fact that Virginia lies between Louisiana and Pennsylvania, and a dinner stop and a face-to-face meeting were the beginning of a blessed friendship. And, as I promised, I prayed a lot. And I realized that while I took some invaluable gifts from all the experimentation and discovery this year, I missed my old friend a bit. She has still been around, but the learning room has been a bit crowded, I think. She is my oldest friend on this homeschooling adventure, Miss Mason. I know her best and she suits me most. And I wanted to sit with her over a cup of tea--like old times. Then conversations about plans for next year began in earnest with Elizabeth and some very inspiring friends. And without any prompting from me, this happened.
As it turns out, I think we were all ready for a visit with our old friend Miss Mason--ready to soak up her wisdom once again, ready to put habit and character training in the foremost position in our homes, and ready to drink deeply of living ideas and fresh air. And so I have found that the Spirit has led me back to my homeschooling roots, not to a wider picture of what education in my home can be, but to the original picture, the one that stayed the course with us through what has been a very wild ride. As I reread my own thoughts in those earlier posts, I hear my own voice, tried and true, firm with conviction and enflamed with excitement. It sounds good to me. It feels comfortable.
In years past, life has carried us far away from what we knew well, and I have held onto a little golden nugget the whole way, guarding it safely, because I wanted my children to have it no matter where life took us. And then this year, the first year where we were in our own home, in our own country, without any major upheaval, that little nugget was placed safely on the learning room table while we sorted through new gems. We didn't have the need to choose only one thing to take along on our journey. We weren't limited in the amount of bags we could fill. And fill them we did. And some of our new finds were wonderful. But in all honesty, it's time for a little decluttering--in our philosophy, that is. And when I begin to pare down and decide what I really can't part with, it's that well-traveled treasure I choose, the wisdom of my first teacher, Miss Mason.
I have been planning up a storm. And reading. And having tea. And I have loved every minute of it. I feel like I've traveled farther this year when I had nowhere to go than I did in all those other years when I was so far away. And while I enjoyed all the new faces and places, it feels good to come home, and to find an old friend and a cup of tea waiting.