Routine comforts

After several amorphous months of aimless drifting, we have settled into a bit of a routine.

To be honest, those months did not seem aimless to me personally. They were full of anxious activity, frantic travel, and getting things done. But because the things getting done were largely on behalf of someone else -- my mother -- I spent a few of those months with the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that my own life was coming apart at the seams.

It wasn't, really. It was just that, while I was preoccupied, my husband went about his necessary business, as our children drifted around the house in pj's, or whatever clothes they had gone to bed in the night before, resorting far more often than I would like to the computer for learning and entertainment, erecting elaborate playhouses of books, legos, and odd pieces of bedding and furniture throughout the house. They subsisted seemingly on breakfast cereals, mac & cheese and ice cream, which they consumed whenever fancy struck, half-sitting, half-standing in the kitchen, or by the computer in our bedroom, or crouching on the basement floor.

Meanwhile, rehearsals for the play they were in demanded more and more time, and soon were virtually the only obligation we managed to keep. At the same time, the performance became for us the culmination, the turning point, after which, free from this monumental responsibility, we would resume a normal, ordered life.

Ahhh, the happy, unfettered life of unschoolers! How uneasy you made me feel during those months! How I longed for the comfort of some sort of predictability, some routine!...

I started dropping broad hints, that after the play was over, it would be time to put our noses to the grindstone, to get back on a schedule, to get things done, once and for all. My children glanced at me with doubt and mistrust, and slunk away to their own pursuits when they knew I wasn't looking.

But when the day finally arrived, to my infinite surprise and relief, the routine was warmly embraced. No, I didn't really make them put their noses to the grindstone. But I did insist on dedicating our mornings to more structured or planned activities. It seemed downright refreshing to wake up in the morning knowing that there will be something concrete to do.

That I was relieved came as absolutely no surprise. I craved some kind of ordered comfort after months of the ground slipping out from under me. The new routine energized and motivated me, and within a few short days the chaos that had begun to overwhelm my house was gradually pushed out as I cleaned, organized, sorted and mercilessly purged every corner, until I could gaze upon a surface and see not another project, but a place to rest my eyes.

What was surprising, was that my kids also appeared to welcome the new routine. And, although I involved them to some extent in planning what we were going to do, it was definitely a mom-led process. But instead of the expected protests, procrastination and downright avoidance, I got... cooperation. Math lessons were dispensed with in a matter of minutes. Handwriting, as long as satire was tolerated in the margins, was completed with relish. Writing, not the most popular subject with my son who prefers to express himself through visual arts, suddenly engrossed him, and he spent long periods covering the page with his elbow, and scribbling furiously, and, in the end, decided to start writing a family newsletter. Art and science never required much encouragement, and now began to be the juicy points of the day that we look forward to.

So, what happened?

I haven't the faintest idea. Let me just say that the follow-through on my part, and the cooperation on the part of my children, are far from perfect. They cannot be. We are fundamentally flawed, spontaneous, easily distracted free spirits, who abandon the comforts of a routine at the slightest provocation. But the thing is, that I think we all, my kids and I, deep down, need to know that the safety net exists. It's one thing to be going, Alice-like, down, down, down, with no predictable end in sight, and quite another to take delight in falling freely, knowing exactly where you're going to land.

Comments

[kim]

Yup, that sounds about right. I know the feeling about when you realize it is futile, they are following their inspiration and coming up with something more exciting than you could have anticipated. I've had talks on memorizing the planets get happily side-tracked in to discussing the origins of the universe and the meaning of the root word and Latin and its effect on English and the reason our language is so diverse and why spelling is so irregular...etc...