Lessons of the Day

We are homeschool weirdos. Quirkier still, now that our home is ever-moving, we are roadschool weirdos. How do you fit a classroom into a five-foot by eight-foot box barreling down the road at seventy miles per hour? Just like the contours of the land we are bumping along, it has its ups and downs, a predictable unpredictability.

One day of self-induced sleep deprivation will stymie the will to be students of anything but frustration, while another offers serendipitous discoveries to catch us up on learning in the most surprising ways.

On Tuesday, we woke in Estes Park, Colorado three hours before dawn to catch a flight (the cheap flights are never at convenient times, are they?). I don’t want to say that the rest of the day was kind of shot for school but… the rest of the day was kind of shot for school. We drove through the fog and gloom looking for wild animals, both for the joy of spotting them and the terror of hitting them with our mobile classroom. We were the last five people to board the flight and, with no seat reservations, were scattered across the plane in middle seats. They were friendly, though. One man stood up to let our youngest into his place and announced that he was a “certified grandfather,” and he would take care of our boy. Our eldest taught his neighbor how to play chess, and when not passed out with our necks uncomfortably outstretched, we parents chatted up our blog. We eventually made it back to our car and drove for another six hours, stopping in the middle to visit a friend and eat dinner. The main lesson that happened that day was how to sleep in a seated position and not to snap at people when you are tired—an essential skill, to be sure.

The next day we woke in Madison, Wisconsin to find that weather predictions are just that—predictions—and don’t always correspond to reality. Holly made me join her for a jog even though no one was chasing us and we were in no way legally obligated to do so. The wind and rain were bitter and miserable, but we didn’t die, so that’s good. We stubbornly set out to explore downtown Madison with a thought that if the adverse weather continued we could pop into the State Capitol building as a last resort. Well, sometimes things work out better than expected. We stumbled into—and invited ourselves to join—a guided tour that culminated in a talk from a State Representative. Unsolicited, a nice man encouraged us to check out the observation deck that—weather notwithstanding—offered a terrific panorama of the ever-so-cute downtown area. Another gentleman guided us to the mini-museum on the sixth floor where we learned about the construction of the building and were able to step out onto the trumpeter’s balcony to admire the symbolism of the mural set inside the tallest capitol dome in the country like an enormous gemstone. Then we broke for lunch, visiting a local favorite on the advice of yet another kind gentleman, where we ate local fare—cheese, bratwurst, fish-fry, and beer (parents only)—and then headed back to our cozy rental for the traditional menu of school: textbook and literature reading.

We only fail to learn when we have given up trying. It’s like everything else we have ever done, right? Somedays we feel like we are sprinting ahead and other days we feel like we are straining into a headwind. What roadschool is teaching us is that lessons, like those briefly illuminated wild creatures in the pre-dawn dark, and like the shining gold lady of justice prominently displayed atop the capital rotunda, can both be challenging or a breeze to see. They are always there if we only have our eyes trained to spot them. What we hope, more than anything else, is that the more significant lessons stick: when you are tired and hungry you should still treat your family well, when you are sandwiched for hours between two strangers you should try to make friends, and that today is precious and we should make the very best of it.

What lessons did your childhood teach you?