The hay wasn’t cut at the normal time this year. Somehow that seemed exactly right for 2020, the year when nothing has happened per the usual schedule. Hay cutting is one of those mile markers, one of those events that has a firm place in the calendar of our lives. To have it delayed seemed to hold off the avalanche of summer for us all, and now that it’s happened, we’re finding ourselves looking around and feeling the weight of a handful of remaining weeks before the school year begins. The balance of time is quickly slipping from the summer column to the one marked autumn– even if the weather doesn’t quite agree.
Our CC community will come together for the first time in 27 days. Later that same week, we’ll move Mary Hannah and Mathaus back into their on-campus housing. Our summer will have come to an end.
It feels odd, after so many months of limbo and drift, to wonder where an entire season has gone. And yet that’s where I am. Somewhere between the very clear long days of the present and the blurry edges of the first half of the year, waiting for whatever is coming down the pike. I know I’m not alone; our local school district has delayed releasing its reopening plans until the middle of this month, essentially offering parents two weeks to digest whatever scheme they’ve devised to straddle the spectrum of opposing political views. If the general feeling of our city’s homeschool facebook page is any indication of the feelings of the community, this has placed many folks on edge, and contingency plans are rapidly being scaled up to become How We Are Doing Things. The same seems to hold true around the country, where a large but vocal number of families are saying they’re through waiting to be told what expectations they should have in a just a few weeks when they drop their children off at the doors of their classrooms.
I’ve been contacted by a number of folks who never imagined they’d be homeschooling. Some have arrived here by default, unable or unwilling to trust administrators who haven’t set foot in a classroom for decades with the minute-by-minute details of what their child’s day will look like. Some stumbled into a rushed approximation of home-based learning this spring and decided that actually, it was something they could embrace after all. Some have simply had enough, and have lost trust in a system they suddenly realize was never really designed to accomplish the goals they hold dear in their own hearts and homes.
Many will make it. Many will not. I don’t have the ability to see the future, but I can hear red flags already waving for some and for others, I can see the sweet victories they don’t even know are coming in the months ahead. There’s the mother of a child with learning challenges who is certain she’s the worst possible candidate for homeschooling. But I can tell you she’s going to win at this, because she’s already finding support, rearranging her life, and asking the questions that lead to more questions and, ultimately, the answers that will be right for the learning environment in her home. Then there’s the mom who has ten years of classroom teaching experience backing up the slightly-adapted scope and sequence she’ll be instituting in her home this fall. I’m praying for her… because there is no Common Core standard for how to engage a 1st grader in a scripted science lesson he already learned years ago thanks to sitting in the bathtub and playing his own version of “sink or float.”
The days of summer are dwindling, and we’re all doing the best we can to re-imagine the months ahead. Will the libraries stay open? Will travel be ok? Are field trips a thing of the past? Will music lessons remain in person? Will we all find ourselves juggling zoom meetings again? Or will life find a rhythm and stay there, allowing us to all breathe and find our way in the midst of the new norm? No one can say.
The crazy, mixed-up reality of 2020 continues to exact its toll. Those things upon which we have always relied are suddenly merely suggestions, leaving so much room for interpretation. Our hay was cut now, in the second week of July, rather than a full month earlier. We’ve only had one family pool outing this entire summer… and we were the only people there, at noon, on a day when the temperature reached 88 degrees. There’s been no summer reading challenge at the library, no hosting weekly community dinners here at home. But the creek has been a constant destination, and so many good books have been read. Mathaus is the only older kid home, and the one-on-one time I suddenly have with him has been so, so precious to me.
Fall is coming. And it’s going to be messy. You can already feel that, right? Breathe deeply, I keep telling myself. Find God’s peace and purpose now. You have a month to revel in the beautiful pause that is summer before whatever is coming lands in your lap. And maybe, just maybe, 2020 won’t take you by surprise for once.