Thoughts of Love…
Girlie and I were up and out early yesterday with our thoughts on love….and Valentine’s Day. She wanted Valentine’s for her friends at the learning center, I needed some for my students, and we definitely wanted to take care of our men.
We were very excited to finally find a Homemedics Shiatsu Chair massager for Big Daddy. He often suffers from back pain when work aggravates old football injuries. After much debating and looking around, Girlie decided to get her friends simple boxes of conversation hearts. She was loving our relaxed mode of late, and didn’t want to spend the weekend making homemade ones this year. I agreed with her wisdom, and got little Valentine paddleballs for my students.
Girlie is not a big talker. She is witty and insightful, but more like her father than me. She doesn’t feel a need to voice each and every thought or opinion. We were still stuck for a gift idea for Scout, and decided to check out camping gear. I mentioned that I got the flyer for her camp this week. She brightened up and started to chatter away. She is so excited to return this summer.
She shared a story of her last day at camp that she hadn’t told me before. She and her cabin mates were packing up the room, and everyone but her dreaded going home. They went on and on about all the reasons they did not like home and their families. She assured me her cabin mates were all good girls from nice families. She just realized that in going away to school all day, they didn’t have the time together to really know each other the way we did, and work through differences to get to a place of understanding.
She just kept quietly packing her things, but started thinking about us, and how much she was looking forward to seeing us and going home. When a friend asked her what she hated most about going home, she honestly answered that she even though she loved camp, she really missed her family. She shared about our homeschooling lifestyle and how wonderfully close we all are with each other.
The girls were resoundingly supportive of our lifestyle, and all thought her so lucky to be so close to her parents. They all wanted that, but said their parents were too busy or too tired, and admitted that they often felt they needed to keep their lives separate. The more they talked, the more Girlie became aware of how different her life could be.
As we walked through the store, I listened to her open up about this. She truly had been transformed that day. Now I know that it was not just maturity that brought about her change of attitude toward her school work this year.
I asked how this conversation with the other girls had changed her. She stopped me, looked me right in the eye, and said,
“I realized that you took the hard way, and made the sacrifices, so that we could be close and have the very best childhood. You could have picked money or career or even freetime and made it more important than us, but you didn’t. You stuck with us even when we didn’t make it easy.
I love you for that.”
As I stood there weeping in the Walmart garden center, I hugged and kissed that girl who is now eye-to-eye with me. I realized that I just got the best Valentine ever.
I am the mother of two wonderful children, ages 12 & 15, that I have been homeschooling using a blend of Charlotte Mason and unit studies for ten years. My hubby is a terrific dad, contractor and big kid, and we also have two furry, four-legged children others would call “dogs.” I am a total crafty mama, trying my hand at almost anything, and enjoying most.
How lucky you all are to have that bond!!
One of the things I love about reading your
blog is the hope you inspire in me to have that
for our family.
Thank you as always for sharing your story.
That is great. Though she needs to work on setting maybe.
Also, did you mean to put that egregious misuse of an apostrophe in the first paragraph? Do I get a prize for noticing?
That is beautiful!
That’s lovely. Very very sweet. Especially that the other girls were envious of your daughter’s closeness with her family.
Not that I needed any more reasons that homeschooling is a good thing for my family… but it’s always nice to hear stuff like that, you know?
I couldn’t figure out how to tell you how lovely it is to read about the your daughter’s understanding of what you do for her and how much she loves you. When I first read it I felt a stab of envy. Right now it seems that I will never get there with my daughter because of all the attachment issues. If I get only a quarter of the love you feel I will be happy.
I just keep thinking how lucky your daughter is to have these moments captured for the future. Do you let her read what you write? What a wonderful Valentine’s gift.
Oh - I found your blog finally! lol. Tears when I read this! Great big Grizzly Mama tears. Also, I call my girls ‘girlies’ and we call Papa Bear ‘Big Daddy’.
Great entry. I feel so bad for all of the public school friends of my daughters’ who have told me that they have begged their moms to homeschool them. Kids need their moms and dads, yet they are thrown out into the world at a very, very young age. It’s sad. Many parents don’t seem to really like their kids much and I feel bad about that too, because they really are awfully nice kids with not a thing in the world wrong with them.
We are blessed.
Wow! It is so wonderful when children notice those kinds of things. It is so common for them to get caught up in what everyone else is doing.
Thank you for sharing this bit of encouragement!