Finding Joy

One of the main reasons I chose to home school was to be able to spend time with my kids; for us to have time as a family instead of being cast to the wind like so many different seeds. There would be enough hours in the day for everything, I figured, and we could enjoy a peaceful, sane life. We’d have fun, and I could manage to write while the children played, or do my work while they did theirs. Instead, while I wasn’t looking, all my children have stripped naked and are loudly reconstructing the plot of “Star Wars” entirely in the buff, and I’ve misplaced my son’s math workbook while yelling at him to put his underwear back on.

But what has truly surprised me about our home-schooling reality is just how hard it is to find moments of peace and grace even when we’re supposedly “at home” all the time. We still spend so much time rushing, or getting ready to do something else, or just tending to basic input and output needs. I never seem to have enough time to myself, and there are piles of laundry on the guest bed yet at the moment all of our pants and socks seem to be missing. There seem to be very few moments where we are perfectly at rest, and enjoying the moment, and when that happens it usually means that someone is about to whack their head on something or the dog will need to pee. In any event, I’ve found these moments only tend to happen when we’re home all morning—not running out to lessons or play dates, not doing errands or, oddly, deliberately trying to get school work done.

I have spent a good few years now trying to cultivate joy, to plan, and poke, and prod us all into some kind of harmony that will leave us at the end of the day with more than just exhaustion and frustration. If we have eggs for lunch then they’ll be able to hold out for a hike; if we go on a hike, then everyone should be settled down enough to work or to play nicely; if we get our work done soon then we can eat lunch before the toddler crashes, and so on. Most parents know how dealing with the logistics of daily life can tire you out. Being home with three kids means a lot of daily logistics, day after day. It’s truly humbling to see how much work it takes to get just a few moments of grace, and how quickly they end when someone yells “Who wrote “butt” in this math notebook?!”

But I’ve finally realized that joy can’t be manufactured, and sometimes the way to make music is just to shut up first and listen for the tune. The best moments we have are often when I’m just doing something else (like writing this column) and my kids are free to be themselves. The little one picks out “Pepperoni Pizza” on the piano, then decides to pull out a workbook and trace his letters (unfortunately, “p” also stands for “poop”), and my daughter helps him with the big O’s. We all get distracted by the dusky red bird on the bird feeder, then spot the female cardinal with her beautiful orange beak. Now they’re talking about various forms of dismemberment and how mechanical limbs are far superior to peg legs.

So I try to remind myself: do less. Listen. Be quiet and just watch. The best part of home schooling is getting to hoard all these moments, the big and the small, against the day everyone’s gone. I’m very grateful that I get to enjoy these bittersweet moments as they fly by; singing John Denver songs together in the car, realizing that I’m not allowed to kiss my son in front of his friends anymore. More and more of our special moments are tinged with the obviousness that the kids are growing up. Last week my son was snuggling in a sleeping bag with my daughter, his arms around her and his nose nuzzling her neck. I snapped a picture with the digital camera, and he quickly instructed me “Don’t show that to my friends or any of their mothers.” (I presume I still have print rights.)

This morning I am lying in bed, sandwiched between my two youngest children and desperately trying to write in my journal as the school bus rumbles by. My daughter was up during the night vomiting, and bits of her hair are stuck together. My son smells Real Bad, having come in to snuggle with a full diaper. This is not how I pictured things, but I figure this proves that joy is a lot more accessible if you can overlook a lot. We may have no pants, but we have each other.