home schooling

I stumbled on to an available loan of Michele Obama's Becoming in audio form, a few days ago, and now she has become my walking partner for the last few days. I don't want to begin to compare her childhood days on the South Side of Chicago to my pastoral days of growing up in rural Lancaster County as a whole, but in some important ways I do! What resonates with me the most about her childhood was her sense of security with her family. They lived in an apartment, there was very little extra money ever, but she always happily knew who she was in the context of family and I just wanted to say to her, "Me too!" 

And at one point she was describing how she would come home from school and tell her mother every single thing that happened. Her mother listened, sympathized, sometimes tried to shift viewpoints, but most importantly, was there as a sounding board. The emptying out of the day unto someone else's shoulders flushed her system of hurts, victories, longings, dreams giving space for rest and recovery. 

I've thought a lot about that because that's exactly what I did with my mother. And that simple act of pulling up (often with a glass of chocolate milk as dark as I could get away with) beside Mother - who was usually ironing, cooking, sewing - not just sitting down listening to me telling my stories - gently rounded off all the edges of my day and put them into our family values perspective. 

So many years later, I give thanks for the "home schooling" that took place after the books were closed.