Ugly Mummified Togetherness
“Mom! Wipe my butt!” The tot screamed from the open bathroom door. I was midway through chanting linking verbs with the boy in the dining room. It was sometime around then that I remembered how incredibly ugly life can be.
Looking through my writing over the past year and a half, a lot of it paints a pretty picture. Life can look so picture perfect, and sometimes it even feels that way too. But then there was today.
“Where were we?” I began clapping again as we chanted. “Am, is, are was were, be, being…”
The tot entered the room, picked up a handful of pencils that were in a can nearby, and dropped them one at a time, like sprinkling colored sugar atop cookies.
“When is it time to do my school?” She whined, which was proceeded by two more questions that distracted the boy. He then began poking her, who started poking him back, and then they started laughing very loudly and running circles around the table.
The dogs heard, or thought they heard, a stranger somewhere within five miles of my house, and they began to bark ferociously at the dining room windows.
I sat my face in my hands, kind of wanting to plug my ears while the thoughts swirled around in my head. Why do I homeschool? I could shuffle these wild animals off to the schoolhouse and be eating donuts in the nude on the couch.
Maybe It Has To Do With The Local Public School Textbooks I Acquired
My son can kick those textbooks’ butts. Not only is the content dumbed down, it is written in a way that provides tidbits of information without anything interesting to spark enthusiasm. It is just boilerplate facts, with really unattractive pictures of kids dressed in styles that were popular ten years ago. But let’s not talk about all the educational reasons to homeschool—those can be looked up elsewhere.
I always feel a little disgusted when I see the memes around back-to-school time. So many people are so glad to get rid of their children. There are moms I know that celebrate the silence of their homes on that first day back to school. They can’t wait to relinquish that responsibility onto someone else for six to eight hours a day. I like to think that it is because they wholeheartedly believe that the school system is doing an excellent job of semi-raising their children.
I look down on those lazy mothers, but then I think back to this morning and the ugliness. The tot asked fifty questions about nonsensical things that were impossible to answer. The boy drained the water out of my glass because he was too lazy to get up and refill his own. And then the squabbling. Kids are undeniably annoying.
And, conveniently, really lovely too.
Homeschooling can be a formula for a very impressive education…and an intense lesson in ugly togetherness.
Togetherness, Mummified Togetherness
“This looks like the one,” I said as I picked out the smallest plastic wrapped chicken sitting in a puddle of salmonella slime in the meat cooler. “This, son, is going to be your mummy.”
The boy looked nonchalantly at it, like it was all a matter of destiny, and he really had no say in which chicken would be the one sacrificed for science.
“Now we are going to need a few bottles of salt, a few bottles of baking powder, and some alcohol. It says any alcohol will do—the Egyptians used wine.”
The boy had no preference as to the alcohol, being only a boy of six. So instead he stood in position at the front of the cart, feet set on the rack beneath for a proper cruise through the grocery store like a person clinging onto the back of a streetcar. The tot was peacefully swinging her feet from her place in the child seat at the front of the cart. It was a picture perfect scene.
Looking at that pretty picture before me, I thought how most kids would be at school at that hour instead of spending the day with family. Most kids would not be able to learn about Egypt’s Old Kingdom by making a mummy out of a chicken.
I let out a slow breath as I felt that knot in my throat begin to release as I remembered. This is why I homeschool.
But Picture Perfect Isn’t Sustainable
Downtown this evening the streets were empty because of all those puddles on them. Tourists flee from puddles, and locals flock to them for the same reason.
The children, hyped up from the chocolate alligators that were half eaten in their hands, were running about in a boisterous way. I was a bit relieved by it at first. I had just been asked my five hundredth question for the day, and was growing irritable from feeling as though I never have a thought without some little question interrupting it.
But the boisterousness followed me into the pizza place, which then brought on the squinted-eyed look of mom rage that most children recognize. That was followed by a stern talk of how we are not wild animals, and therefore cannot act like them. Lacking manners is being disrespectful toward all the people around us, etc.
We walked through wind that blasted hair into my face, and with a pizza box in my hands, I was powerless to move it. We found an outdoor table beneath an ancient live oak. The ambiance was gorgeous, the children had tempered their wild animal behavior to something semi-domesticated, and I let out that huff of air again.
Life is just one big school, and I am headmistress. It’s an ugly job.
I watched the children chase each other around a fountain, laughing joyfully.
But the benefits are wonderful.
Livin' the dream. :)
I think I will be, once the tot figures the butt wiping out. It's always that one thing on the horizon...once they sleep through the night...once they are potty trained...once they wipe their own butts...maybe I already am living the dream :)
It's a big commitment I guess. Having kids I mean. Still, one day they'll be old enough to send out to work in the salt mines, or as part of a pick-pocketing ring, and then all that hard work will be vindicated! 😊😂
A joke of course. Hope you're well.
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I'm not going to lie, I have had the thought of me being old and crotchety, and thought I'd better raise these children to have good jobs so that they can take good care of me. :)
Smart girl. Alas, I don't have any so won't have any old-age slaves to run about after me.
Well, there is also the high probability they will throw me in a nursing home for all those times I made them eat their vegetables. Life is always a crap shoot.
Payback is the mother of all biatches! :)
This brings back memories of a friend's daughter mummifying the hamster babies...
Oh lord. Now that is gross.
Yes. They studied Egypt in school...
Those poor little desecrated hamsters. Well, let's hope they are hanging out with Cleopatra and Hatshepsut in the Egyptian afterlife.
Does the mummified chicken go inside a pyramid coop?
That is giving me so many ideas right now. And it is so close to Halloween and the boy is supposed to build a miniature pyramid. Maybe I should set it up on the front porch with a recording of a chicken clucking. Eh, who am I kidding, I homeschool, I don't even have time to cut my fingernails. I'm typing with them instead of my fingertips right now.
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I think Wiping butts always deserves a reward doughnut
Absolutely! Immediately after a very good hand-wash :)
...but wash your hands first.
snicker
You have been visited by @minismallholding one behalf of @HomeEdders.
That opening line brought back memories! 😆 It was actually my friend's son who was the best at that. We were three mums outside with kids playing and he'd gone in to the toilet. We hear his voice yelling out to the whole street, "Mummy, come wipe my bottom!"
I never used to understand myself why parents always seemed to dread school holidays and were eager to have them back in school again. It was a relief to feel I wasn't alone when another mother one day confessed that she looked forward to having her children home. Homeschooling was obviously always on the books for me at some point, I just needed to realise it.
Please feel free to join in and meet other home educators on discord
I think it is something like one out of five kids has the vocal cords to really advertise their butt problems to the whole neighborhood. My son used to have no problem leaving the toilet, no matter who was visiting, butt naked to tell me he needed his butt wiped. Ah, the memories. :)
It is a relief to me to find those like-minded moms as well. We are few and far between it seems.
Thanks for stopping by.
Wow, pretty amazing to mummify a chicken! You'll have to post the process/results. Pretty great that you're teaching them so much. I try to get my 11th grader to stay home and he tells me he knows that homeschool will be too difficult ;)
After reading it in full, I have decided that my husband is going to help mummify the chicken. I'm not too good with meat. I get grossed out easily, but I will be observing the process :)
Ha, yes. Some homeschoolers unschool, but we do classical education, so we are on the difficult end of the spectrum.
Splendid writing =) I am deeply engaged.
The textbooks you report using are ill suited to your undertaking, being contrived to the driving out of children their intensity of desire to learn, as you may discover for yourself. I avoided this entirely, as I taught my kids not from books, but from practical undertakings like building forts, and doing construction work. Later, when they had specific interests they wanted to learn more about, like indians, or astronomy, when I was called upon to help them discover how to learn such things, the price they paid for my assistance was one page written reports, and then I critiqued grammar.
However, such details are of little importance. What is important is that you are fulfilling your role as their teacher.
I hope the mistakes you make are of less import to your students than the mistakes I made were to mine.
Thanks!
Yes, those textbooks do seem as though they have been made intentionally to be boring. I have found a few literature textbooks at yard sales that weren't half bad, but the science ones are terrible. It is so fun to see the spark in their eyes when specific subjects, like Indians and astronomy as you mentioned, are discovered.
Fulfilling the role as teacher seems to be an ever changing experience. Which is chaotic and exciting all at once.
I hope my mistakes aren't too bad, but I know they will exist. It is just unavoidable.
Thanks for stopping by.
I had to giggle..... honestly.... the way you tell things.
100 bad moments make 100 good stories. :) 100 good stories makes you interesting at parties.... LOL
I borrow from the song and made it fit.
That is a great way to look at life, and since I have been writing regularly for the past year and a half or so, I find that I look at life increasingly that way. Life is just one story with a plot that is very hard to keep up with :)
The story makes itself up as we go along I think.
The story makes itself up as we go along I think.
I can just see someone in the sky typing away as he looks down through the clouds. She wants to take a walk, does she? I'm in the mood for drama. Rain!
LOL !
It is tough being a mum but tougher being a teacher mum. I admire you greatly and absolutely understand your reasons for homeschooling. It is really good for me to understand homeschooling as I have always worked in the education system striving to make a difference along with my many caring fellow teachers, deputies and principals. And for the ones who didn't care enough they had me to contend with as I relentlessly advocated for them.
It must be hard working in a school and seeing things that cannot be changed, whether in homes or at school. You certainly sound like a great person for the job.