Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.

There are times in this life that I can stand on the ground with my two feet planted firmly, looking to the skies, and I will swear I can feel the spin of this Earth. I am but a speck and this life is but a blip in the whole history, pre- and since, and I am all too aware of my failures and accomplishments. It is late and sleep beckons and yet I am drawn to my blog to put the noise out with the garbage for the night.

I have been pondering what it would be like to let Avery go back to public school. I love the child, but in the words of my hair dresser, Avery is most like me. While I am wonderful, I can be a royal pain in the ass. If there is a system to be bucked, I will buck. With all my might. If there is an opinion shared by too many, I find it's faults. Devil's advocate? perhaps. Open eyes. for sure. Avery is too smart and his eyes a bit too wide for a 9 year old and as his mother the same attributes that bring me pride have me wanting to send the child away to an orphanage in Timbuktu... or somewhere equally as far flung. But just as I had my mind wrapped around throwing in the towel for both our sakes and re-enrolling him at the Riv... the kid says he doesn't want to go back. Huh? Every day for the last month, I have heard how he wants to go back to "regular school", how he misses his friends, how he doesn't like home schooling for a zillion different reasons and only likes it for maybe two, tops - he can sleep in and do his work in his underwear.

I think I was feeling relief at the thought of having one less child to teach and in Ave's case, argue with through the day. And now, he says he'll think about it. Whose idea was giving children choice anyway? Uh hmmmm. Adam is still happy to be home and does his assignments and I guide him where needed. We have a good working relationship... nothing like the quarrelsome attitude I receive from his younger brother. Taluelah runs amok tearing up everything she touches and Dustin comes home to an empty house that looks as if a tornado has run it's course right through the middle of the most traveled areas because by the time he arrives I am sitting at a football field trying to entertain a nearly 18 month old while keeping an eye on my wandering 9 year old so that the 11 year old can play football with his friends who he will be leaving much too shortly.

Times like these I feel my wings stretching against the pins that hold them back. As I attempt to escape, even for a bit, Dustin's insecurities flare. With a day less than one month to go before he departs, I think the reality of what we're leaving behind is giving way to what life will be. I see a time coming when there will be no escape. I don't want to make it seem like taking a break from my family deserves the word escape, but when I am on 24/7... escape is just what I find myself needing. With Dustin here, I rarely have a moment without a child by my side. The last few weeks I have had to struggle against the bonds I have shackled myself into as well as the ideas others have of my role.

I did choose to go the home schooling route. I do not regret it, for if you know me you know there are no regrets... only lessons learned. I have tried, really really tried, to find a way to help the 9 year old see the benefits of this way of schooling and he has done all but spit my words back in my face. And now, again, when offered the chance to go back to his school, his friends, he says he'll think about it? What to do when an orphanage/slave labor is out of the question???

The two times I have made it outside my four walls, without a child dragging along, I have been with people I love and am going to miss terribly. I have met people who could end up being just as important, just as missed. Good people are everywhere, this I know. Nothing lasts forever, as I'm frequently being reminded. Letting go, saying goodbye, it's never easy. All I can hope is that this next chapter will benefit my family. That my children will be afforded a better quality of life. That they will see more of this world than I ever would have been able to show them in our current circumstances. I am struggling with the idea of death and how final it is. If Dustin does not come home, life will go on, but what a different life it will be for our three offspring. I suppose that is not what I am meant to dwell on... but I can't stop the thought from reaching it's creeping tentacles across the lobes of my overactive brain.

With all that is on the verge of happening in my life I rarely have time to stop and think outside of the box I live in. Much too much to think about in the here and now. My grandfather passed away on September 29th. I have felt strangely detached in my grief. I was listed as the alternate, behind my mother, on his Advance Directive. My mother called to tell me he had passed and really that's all the info she could give me. Shortly after her call, a chaplain called to inform me of the death. The chaplain said he called me because I was listed as the person who would make sure my grandfather's wishes were followed. I live 300+ miles away. I met my grandfather when I was 13. I have seen him one time in the last 8 years. I am having difficulty reconciling the man he was to many with the man he supposedly became. They could have been one and the same. I do not know. I wasn't there all those years ago. But the stories that have followed his death and the light bulbs that have flashed above my head as pieces of this puzzle fall into place, make me a bit shaky. Either way, he's gone and I've done what I could from my distance to carry out his last wishes. There has been much grief in this family over the course of the last few months. My Aunt K, his daughter, is gone. He is gone. The rest of us are left to pick up pieces and grapple with our own personal realities, memories. The weight keeps getting heavier and heavier.

I think I will have a talk with Avery again. See what the hesitation stems from now that the opportunity is there. Lighten my load either through sending him off to public school or through arranging some kind of deal with him regarding his attitude here in home school. Stretch my wings a bit, maybe even spread them and fly away for awhile... enjoy what I have while I have it and hope that someday when I leave this plain my children and my familiars know that I lived with the best of intentions, loved with all my heart, and was only human for needing to escape the confines of these walls occasionally.