As I looked at the whiteboard with markers in the hallway, I tried to come up with something that would help my son and I reflect on the entire week by the time Friday rolled around. Not a simple quote of the day to help frame our studies would work this week. I needed something stronger to help support our spirits, as the days just keep dragging for him and for me. No matter how many interesting hikes we set out upon in the magical backyard (even in the quick unexpected snow squalls), or dances to Troikas laughing aloud in the kitchen as we streamed the music videos sent to us from his Catholic school website. Our cultural heritage, our love, and our appreciation for one another were all showing up. Even our faith was still very strong this week. Each night we visited our God of the Universe, thanking him and loving him, staying close to him even; or especially in the confusing moments. Still amidst this love and strength, something was just not “right” with the world, not in our space or in the community around us. There is a weird quiet, yes; but there is also emerging (now) a deep worry in the faces and voices that I have not witnessed-- until now-- in my solid friend’s lives. It is the lack of stability and fear of the unknown; in their voices, over the screens, in their forced and calm smiles looking back at me-- that are surfacing. The jokes and light-heartedness have slowly disappeared; since this all began. Going through the motions is what each of us (as adults) have to guide us through this unknown.
With all this in the back of my mind (sitting there like some solid, awful lump of clay), I picked up the marker and began to write, in my best handwriting, the challenge for the week: Name a wonder for each day, and be prepared to reflect on (at least) four wonders by Friday. Indeed, this was a challenge. I had two wonders ready to go (for Friday) by Wednesday afternoon, but they weren’t necessarily the kind of wonders that really touch the internal peace so many crave. They were magical, but not that ethereal realm I was going for with this challenge. To tap into the ethereal meant my son and I needed to become really still or silly (light-hearted) in our minds to connect to the light and airy realms of nature. The field guide, we were making from our discoveries outside, was not enough. Or his carving of a tree branch to create a bow was very magical and interesting, but this just wasn’t the wonder I was inviting us to seek out this past week. These were mere activities. I was asking and inviting wonderment. We tapped the magical. For instance, I tapped into one moment of magical wonder when my son reached for a book on the shelf, and he pulled out this special book that took us back to the stories I used to tell when he was barely two. The drawings in this book resembled the colors and shapes of the song storybooks I would share with him at night years ago. It brought us back to those moments, as we sang together the old songs. I would sing, “Play me a Mambian Melody” … His discovering the magical book on the shelf right at dusk lent us the wonder we were seeking. Or the Robin he spotted on the ledge with the roundest belly and brightest yellow beak he’d ever seen. Again, these moments were beautiful in their own right and definitely held a bit of wonder to them. Yet we needed something other to mix our rhythm up a bit and move us out of the stagnant arena of being caught in time and space at home.
What was this wonder we were trying to uncover to help ease the strangeness of the ever-continuing “stay-at-home” experience? Even as I sat at the computer this evening to write the week’s journey, knowing full-well that this week’s subject was not so much about an educator’s trick in the tool box, or a reflection for helping to support continual academic growth in the learner’s needs. I knew this week’s journey tried to reach into the reasons I began teaching in the first place over fifteen years ago, to reach the “ethereal” moments when the aesthetics touch the physical, practical world and create a momentum to witness all of its own, a very rare phenomenon but can happen every once in a while. That is the beauty of teaching that not many educators confess. The educators passionate about this acquiescence of learning care about these matters, deeply. They recognize and appreciate the transcendence and power of knowledge in those rare occasions.
This wonder I had been reaching for all week; for my son and me- to come close enough to touch physically- came to me this morning. When I finally recognized that having spent so much more time with my son (teaching him, cooking with him, playing catch in the yard with him, building blocks and trying to connect engineering marvels with wood and sticks together, and such) in the last weeks that something had already taken place this spring right underneath all of our activities. Even though our time has nearly begun to stand still around us (the weeks feel like months for me and years for him) and quiet our inner selves, the natural element of childhood growth still moves forward wildly in its most natural sense. Whether at school or "home-schooled" during this unusual period, my son is still growing up—just now it is literally happening before my eyes and not something I just think about as a passing thought each year, as he blows out the candles at a neighborhood birthday celebrating another year; another milestone.
The wonder, that ethereal piece I was searching to connect to this week was not in the outside (natural) world around me; but, in the ever-changing (naturally occurring) relationship with my son. As our lessons ended each day, he would run to the digital time with his friends. Before this spring, my son loved the opportunities to play a card game or to sit and talk about the day at dinner with his mom; these times were sacred to us. This change didn’t happen merely because we were now spending all of our days together and tiring of each other’s company. That is just not us. We have always been authentic side-kicks. Yet, I realized our interests have changed, and his interests were growing up,too. That is where I met the ethereal moment. In realizing, quite frankly, that no matter how circumstances change in the uncertain external worlds, the natural course of a child development continues, as if it were on auto-pilot and just knows when and how to move from kid to tween. This shift would have happened regardless of the “stay-at-home” experience. The birds innately know that they will fly if they just jump. The “when” is out of the mother’s hands.
Perhaps, in the weeks that follow, I will be looking for new ways to help him jump more. And me to jump more, too, now that it is nearly time to move from the kiddo stages to an entirely new era of growth. Time didn’t stop the natural course of things when we were just simply letting things be and unfold as our learning continued. Real observers, we are meant to be as parents, witnesses to our loved and cherished ones’ moments through time. That is the wonderment of this week.
Until next week, Ms. Porcupine and her son
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