Because You Are Worth It

Dear Ladies,

As I write, you lie in bed.  You have 50 fact cards due tomorrow and expect to join me for a tour of a co-op we haven't considered before.  My house is a freaking mess because of all the laundry.  The laundry is the way it is because of the plumbing.  In reality, you know that is not the reason the house is really embarrassing is that everyone in the house has learned that all you have to do to get out of cleaning is yell at people and in order to avoid the yelling, mom has been willing to continue to lower the standards.

In my opinion, I have failed you in homeschooling.  Your teachers and the headmaster of the independent study program, and the standardized test for profit company all say different.

Here is the deal.

I dreamed about having a norm-rockwell-currier-ives-I-don't-know-what-all-yes-I-do-but-whatever experience in homeschooling.  All backlit and blowing dandelions and wading in creeks for Science.  Every year has been a fight.  A schedule?  Ladies, Please.  Every year you have dared me to impart so much as one "unit of measure of learning".

Well, I didn't get my ideal.  Apparently, neither did you, (with your hundred average in all the classes you are taking at co-op).

 What I didn't plan for is that as adopted kids, you would begin to work through identity, grief, control (OMG, control), shame, rejection, and loss.  Quite magnificently. While you waited for me to clue in to what is going on.

The last six years have been a hard time for all of us.

Now, I can only pray for God, Himself to light a fire in you, to give you a vision for your future.

We'll probably end up at the co-op today.  I don't know what to do, because it is really a magnificent amount of money, just counting your classes and not textbook purchase or anything for your brother.

I love you.  I think you are funny and brave and smart and beautiful.  We are supposed to feel this way.  Like the leaves beginning to turn colors in the fall.  This is the first sign of the ending of this season of our lives.  There was more I wanted to do and I have regrets.  But just like a holiday celebration, I desperately want to send this season out with joy,

because you are mine.