In Memory of Kate

It is hard being away from Oregon on a good day, but especially hard when dear friends pass away.  I am sad that I could not travel to say goodbye to Kate, to tell her I loved her, to thank her for enriching my life. Here is a sweet video made by her brother.

In Honor of My Parents

Donald Hinderberger Aug 3, 1930 - Jan 23, 2009

Phyllis Joan Hinderberger nee Meyer Feb 20, 1935 - Sept 29, 2005

Home School Author Recommended: Grace Llewellyn

When I first met Grace Llewellyn, I was her down-the-street neighbor in Eugene, Oregon, and she was banging out her book The Teenage Liberation Handbook on the typewriter her grandmother had given her. It is the book I had always wanted to write myself, and I am glad it got written. I highly recommend this book for all teen homeschoolers and their teenage friends in school. And check out some of Grace Llewellyn’s newer books as well…

Grace hosts a summer camp for homeschool teens in Oregon and Vermont, called the Not Back To School Camp, which allows teens from all around the country to network to form their own opinions and decisions about their own educational choices or the educational choices their parents have made for them.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Packing Up St. Patrick’s Day

She gathers the shiny plastic shamrock necklace, the felt shamrock bow tie, the whimsical bobbing shamrock head bands, and places them carefully in the green storage box decorated with pot-o-golds. “Will they still believe in leprechauns the next time I open this box?” she wonders.

The enormity of the question astounds her. The real question is whether her two children, aged 6 and 8, will still be captive by the magic of childhood, still believers in the impossible. The leprechauns visited last night, and the morning magic was good.

She remembers Cory, another lab technician at the last lab she worked at in Oregon. He was still bitter. Bitter at his parents for fabricating the story of Santa Claus. He was barely past twenty, and very vocal about his bitterness whenever the topic materialized. “I will never forgive my parents for that,” he stated. “They lied to me. Plain and simple.”

She had never met anyone bitter like that over such childhood fantasies, created by adults to keep the imaginations of children alive. She began to worry. What will the reaction of her own children be? How will they find out? When?

She remembers the moment when she learned the truth about Santa. It was an accident. It was July, 1960, and she was sitting on her bed next to her mother. “You are growing up so fast, Dede,” her mother said. “And you are so smart, too! How did you figure out that Mom and Dad buy all the Santa presents every year?”

Dede’s mouth dropped open and tears immediately welled in both eyes. “What! There is no Santa Claus? I didn’t know, Mom! Why did you tell me? You ruined my Christmas! I want to believe, I want to believe! But it is too late. The magic is gone now! I could have had one more good Christmas!”

She remembers falling on the bed and crying. Mom apologized, but there was no consoling Dede. She cried herself to sleep that night.

When her children ask her such things as, “Mom, is Santa Claus real?” she has not wavered in her response. “What do you think?” is the standard reply, and the children always answer, “Yes!” and return to whatever they were doing before the doubts crept in.

“They’ll never hear it from me,” she thinks to herself. They will have to figure it out on their own. She seals the St. Patrick’s Day box and places it high up on the shelf in a garage cabinet.

Tags: leprechaun, St. Patrick’s Day, Santa, Santa Claus, crying, bitter, magic, childhood, shamrock

The Dancing Leaf

“Look, Mom! Come quick!” Ravi exclaims excitedly.

Mom is cooking breakfast and usually responds at a snail’s pace. “What is it, Rav?”

“Hurry, come see the dancing leaf!”

This sounds intriguing so I put down the spatula and join he and Nisha at the front picture window. We have been blessed with some snow overnight and I am one of the lucky ones who has maintained a childlike wonder at and appreciation of it. Nisha and Ravi make room for me to kneel on the couch with them for some quality snow gazing.

“Where is it?”

Tears for the Locust

I had seen the contractor with clipboard examining the neighbor’s locust tree a few weeks back but had forgotten all about it. Today the trucks, chainsaws and chippers arrived to take the tree down.

At first the children enjoyed the spectacle, setting up chairs at the back patio door to watch the show. Then the first words of discontent surfaced. “But Mom, I always used to play hide and seek in that tree. I love that tree!” Ravi cried. His eyes welled with tears and

“School-Centric”

“Welcome to my magic show!” exclaimed the presenter, dressed in a vest of playing card pattern. He looked out over the crowd below him, the pre-schoolers and after-schoolers on the carpet of the library meeting room, the middle school students in the chairs in the back. The excitement in the room was electrifying as the children anticipated his first trick.

“How many of you children out there like school?” his first question came. All hands but those of the middle school students and Nisha, Ravi, Mim, and Viv reached in the air. I roll my eyes. “Oh, I see some of you don’t like school. Well, we will see if we cannot change your mind about that today.” I bite my tongue and roll my eyes again.