…And that has made all the difference.

This past Mothers Day I called my mom and got her voice mail. I was doing the “Happy Mothers Day” routine when I stopped. I then said, “Thanks for homeschooling me. Or… un-schooling me. Thanks for being interested in life and curious and always learning…..you are what I want to be like.”

Of course I was never homeschooled but my Mom was always an inspiration to me. My mom never was much of a house cleaner, but she had an impressive bug collection. I remember taking trips to find the bugs she needed for the collection.

And there must be a lot of folks somewhere that have pictures of me as a kid, as I was the only child present at my mom’s college photography class and was a frequent model for their picture taking.

She was a farmer and naturalist and horticulturist. She showed me how to travel and learn all about an area. We did nature journaling before it was popular, and neither of us can draw worth beans, but we love to observe nature. We cooked over a fire with a cast iron pan while on week long exploring trips in the mountains (just us 2 because that was our interest!). My dad was a great learner too. In his 70s he took up Spanish and the piano! He always looked up words in the dictionary and my prize possession is his huge old dictionary. He’s gone, but now Mom lives with us and I am always learning from her as she teaches me by example how to garden and preserve foods and live a cheerful life.

Did I think that way about my parents when I was a kid or teen?

Surely not the same way I do now, but I did realize that my parents were a bit “different” then other kid’s parents. I cherished it and learned it was natural - not weird - to be different! I went through a stage after I was married when I was exposed to more families that viewed what we did as not only different… but weird too.

For a while I tried really hard to figure out what I was suppose to be like.

Thankfully I’m over that now and, yes, I do hear that I am “different” quite often, but now I am happy to expose others to the joys of “being different”!

A while back I was teaching at a church youth camp. I volunteered to do a lesson on nature watching and journaling. I knew this would be a new concept to most of the kids. Some of the adults involved where pretty skeptical that the kids would respond well. It seemed pretty “different” to them to get kids to draw nature when these public schooled city kids are mostly interested in skateboarding, Dr. Pepper and computer games.

As it ended up I had some boys try to light fires with the magnifying glasses and others who thought it was too dumb to participate at all. I guess it takes time and freedom for kids to not be so influenced by peers and be open to adults’ joy, interests and expertise let alone the teaching of nature.

So, in our own homeschool I am working more on my interests. Once I realized, from my own experience, how much my parents’ positive role modeling influenced my own life I relaxed even more. All this takes time. Relax. Enjoy this great world we live in and get really curious.