Who put the "home" in homeschooling anyway?

Today our family decided to clean out our van. When it gets so that every time we exit our vehicle, it vomits candy wrappers, coats, socks, underpants (yes, I said underpants…CLEAN ones for just in case), singular shin guards, solitary shoes, towels (we subscribe to the literary theories of Douglas Adams), school text books, bills (which we are unsuccessfully trying to avoid) and a partridge in a pear tree, it is probably time to for a vehicular purge. Although I always find that for the two weeks afterward we have emergencies that can only be solved by the chewing gum, claw hammer and chicken wire that were found in the bowels of the back seat and are alarmingly no longer present. It is like a more mobile version of MacGyver, but usually with more bleeding and screaming.

How does my car get to this state of discombobulation--full of miscellanea and bric-a-brac (we are practicing our homeschool vocabulary skills while I write)? My answer is simple, because we homeschool. I think that homeschooling is a complete misnomer and should be revised to be live-out-of-your-vehicle-always-on-the-road-to-a-different-educational-experience-schooling. The truth is, that I am away from my home for so long during the day, it is amazing that I can remember my own address. 

“I called you this morning and you didn’t call me back,” my mother chimes accusingly on the other end of the telephone while I collapse into a chair and stare out the window at the darkening sky. Breathlessly I reply, “Sorry, I just got home.” “Wait, I thought you homeschooled.” People somehow think that being a homeschool family means that you are able to constantly clean while simultaneously being glued to the dining room table in academically riveting conversation. Although other family members somehow think that homeschooling means that my children are sporting loin cloths and running around like wild beasts. The truth is somewhere in the middle, but more focused around my van than my home.

I have friends on social media who ask how I do everything I do in a day. (The truthful answer is with great cursing, swearing, and extremely poor gas mileage, but….) So, I thought I would include a day-in-the-life-type scenario for my curious followers.

My day starts with an exhausted blind stagger for the line to the bathroom that rivals those of a public women’s restroom. I immediately enter by slipping uncontrollably across the floor on the centimeter of water left by the eldest son who has finally mastered daily showering, but not how to tuck the curtain in the tub. My less-than-graceful skid is only halted by the underpants in front of the commode that were forgotten by the toddler in his perilous descent from atop the toilet.

Upon arrival in the kitchen, I realize that in my slothful slumber until the ripe hour of 6:30 has resulted in my minions having raided the fridge and I am left to fix breakfast with one egg, a jar of sauerkraut, a bottle of hot sauce with a chicken logo, and an unwrapped stick of butter that has finger marks in it and smells vaguely of bananas even though they ate all 15 lbs that I purchased yesterday before they exited the van from the shopping trip. Like Mary Poppins meets Pollyana, I raid the pantry and create an organic breakfast of seven-grain oatmeal with cranberries, local honey, and raw sunflower seeds and seat my crew at the table. I am met with an appreciative, “Is this genetically modified?” (always the eight-year-old minion) “Couldn’t we have had bacon instead?” (that is the fourteen-year-old with an unhealthy fascination in smoked pork products), “I LUB OAPEAL!” (the three-year-old whose bowl is now being shoveled to overflowing with the remnants of his siblings’ rejected food.)

In trying to shuffle a load of dishes into the dishwasher, my eyes glance at the clock on the stove only to realize that we are late for our homeschool co-op and half of my brood is dressed, or rather undressed, in attire that might result in legal action if worn in public (my youngest three are dedicated nudists, despite my complaints.) So, I bark orders to get everybody dressed as quickly as possible and we stampede out to the van. We then drop by to retrieve carpool at three friendly houses, arrive at our destination, realize that we forgot the fourth carpool family, go back and pick up the forgotten souls, and then back again. As we file out of the van in clown-car style I make mental note of the wardrobe malfunctions of the day. Toddler is wearing Daddy’s shirt and no shoes, kindergartener is wearing one left tennis shoe and one left snow boot in the middle of June, the teenager is STILL wearing that shirt he loves and won’t remove for washing, the daughter’s hair hasn’t seen a hairbrush and she has a raging case of bedhead, and the eight-year-old has something dubious in his pocket which requires a pat-down.

The crowd is herded to their individual classes and I suddenly realize that I forgot that I was teaching a room full of 6-11 year old children and start digging through my van for impromptu teaching options. I arrive instantly at a math lesson involving an array of magnets, dry erase markers, broken crayons and a reading book forgotten since last year. At lunchtime, the groaning masses remind that we forgot the lunches that I packed last night and we return home and send in an energetic child to retrieve the cooler from the kitchen table. We consume the food (well, most do, while others hide their sandwiches under the seats to be petrified by the sun or be used as a culinary petri dish for an unknown number of life forms) while I drive/eat on our way  to Shakespearean play practice for my older two children.

I race to the freeway to begin the ride to ballet class, suddenly realize it was my day for carpool and perpetrate an immediate U-turn to pick up another budding ballerina. I successfully navigate the demolition derby that is the parking lot of the ballet studio, deposit the two ballerinas and begin the commute to the new gymnastics gym, with the eight-year-old assuring me that he has the address in hand. Fifteen minutes later, his exact direction of “It looks sort of like that place over there but different,” actually results in a completely accidental and miraculous arrival at the gym and I offload two more enthusiastic athletes.

I spend the next hour grocery shopping and holding meaningful conversations with my toddler in the front of my shopping cart. Our dialogue consists mostly of his insistence on needing something with a colorful package and my patient explanation of why he doesn’t need mucous-dissolving tablets despite the funny cartoon on the box. I then spend the next half hour trying to quiet the resulting sobbing and blocking his unrelenting grasps like a ninja. With groceries in hand, minus a few key ingredients that will require a panicked trip another market before dinner, I pick up ballerinas, get lost, finally find the gymnastics gym again (which is located somewhere in our own local Bermuda Triangle) and sigh with relief as I leisurely drive home.

I open the welcoming front door and I am reminded with emphatic shouting that it is soccer for one child, Boy Scouts for  another, and a reminder taped to my door about my mandatory Cub Scout meeting this evening (because I am a den leader). This erupts in the immediate and frantic re-entry to the van. When I finally crawl through my front door, exhausted and completely disinterested in food, the complaining revolt of hungry children and disgruntled husband are a dismal reminder that social conformity prescribes THREE meals a day and I begin the search for something nutritious to pour into their mouths, since most of my family doesn’t usually pause to chew their evening meal.

Each child is bathed, clothed, brushed, and groomed. I begin our read-aloud bedtime story, and am delightfully surprised by only 10 interruptions (which is half the usual number.) This reprieve is because the youngest minion has dosed off in his dinner and everybody is afraid of his reign of terror if we wake him. We pray together as a family (me mostly for dropping gas prices, a good night’s rest, and some tension-relieving herbal tea) and shuffle each kissed child off to their bed for the ceremonial two hours of rambunctious bedtime uproar usually peppered with the occasional complaint about wanting to sleep, but being disturbed by the raucous noise (recited half-heartedly by the loudest of the bunch pretending to be sleepy-eyed.)

I then spend the evening hours sewing, knitting, cooking, cleaning (although those that enter my house may doubt the validity of this claim), preparing school curriculum, snuggling children awakened by alleged nightmares, singing soothing lullabies, and doing automotive maintenance to ensure transportation for the ballet rehearsal, costume fitting, three piano lessons, art classes, pack meeting, and Arabic co-op on the agenda for tomorrow.  

Phew, homeschooling seems to involve everything but the home and although I lived this schedule yesterday, it is really exhausting to write about.