Donald Hinderberger Aug 3, 1930 - Jan 23, 2009

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

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…

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

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?”

I follow the invisible line of Nisha’s pointing finger. There, protruding from several inches of snow, stands a lone oak leaf, its tip pointing straight skyward, its surfaces being blown by an unsteady wind.

First it wiggles, then undulates, then spins, then bends to one side, then reaches for the sky, like a robotic dancer. The variations in the wind create the choreography. We marvel at the frenetic shaking and turbulent twisting, are amazed that it has not blown away as we gaze.

All day long we watch the snow, the wind, and the dancing leaf. It is our constant in the changing winter wonderland. Between each board game, book, story and song we pause to check on the tiny brown dancer. We cheer each time we see it; urge it to stay strong in the force of the wind. It does not disappoint.

I feel privileged to be able to share this time with my children. We have no set schedule this day, and can follow our own inclinations, wherever our snow excitement takes us. Shall we grow a crystal? Sculpt some snow? Chart the temperature of the chamber as we melt some snow? Make some snow ice cream? Cut out paper snowflakes? The world of possibility lies before us…

Tags: snow, unschooling, winter, home schooling

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 he began to sob. I consoled him with a hug.

“Do you want to die?” queried his sister. “Don’t you know that tree is dead, and it might fall over and kill somebody if it doesn’t get cut down! It might even fall on you! Or on our house!”

Tears still flowed. I got the old photo cube off the top of the TV cabinet. One of the photos is of me as a college student. A campus tree, deemed diseased and an eyesore, had been cut down. My best friend snapped a photo of me sitting among the felled tree pieces, looking very sorrowful. I showed Ravi the photo, which he had never noticed before.

“So you know how I feel, Mom.”

“Maybe you can get a piece of the tree to keep, to remember it by!” suggested big sister. They jumped to their feet, threw on their coats and shoes, ran out to the edge of the yard and helped themselves to a small branch. They came running back victoriously.

Ravi’s desk now has a section of that branch gracing its hutch shelf. We watched the tree cutters at work all afternoon. We sadly said goodbye to three trees.

Tags: trees

“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. I hear Alice talking quietly to Mim, “Or how many children like homeschool?” but Mim does not raise her hand.

The magician reveals one trick and the children are amazed at his special prop, an egg with a hole in it where a scarf is stuffed secretly. For his second trick, he pulls the rabbit card out of a dictionary, and reminds the children how important that book is to their education. Can’t argue with that!

For his last trick he pulls out an envelope and slides it upright into a wooden holder. “What word is written on this envelope?” he asks the crowd. “SCHOOL!” shouts the audience. My eyes roll again. Alice sighs. At the culmination of the trick he flips the envelope over to reveal the phrase “STAY IN SCHOOL.”

I doubt he has any idea there are four children in his audience who learn at home in an atmosphere so different than school that the children don’t recognize it as any type of school. How refreshing it would have been to have had him talk about ‘learning’ instead of ‘schooling.’ His envelope could have had the word “LEARN” on it, and the flip side could have read, “KEEP LEARNING!”

Tags: home schooling, unschooling