Ever marveled over how your child is different from the one you’d pictured?
When I found out I was pregnant 16 years ago, I was over the moon. In fact, there were a few days during a women’s retreat when I suspected I was miscarrying. Fear clutched my heart with thick talons.
So like it or not, we’re all homeschooling now, right?
I personally was World’s Most Reluctant Homeschooler…until surprisingly, I ended up loving it. I even learned some things about my own strengths and passions I wouldn’t have known. (My kids eventually transferred with relative smoothness to public school.)
That very well may not be you. You might just be looking for ideas so your child, the walls, and the permanent markers stay socially distanced.
So maybe like me, you got the automated notice from the school yesterday that your kids–surprise!–have an extra week of spring break next week, because #coronavirus.
And maybe like me, a member of your family braved Costco this week. Or maybe you now possess a weird amount of toilet paper–which according to a meme I saw yesterday, is now the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
So yeah. That happened.
I won’t tell you which one. It doesn’t matter. And I have this phobia my kids will need to be in therapy because their mother is a writer.
For most of my life, I’ve been one of those people who could fall asleep anywhere. This is both a rich blessing and potentially a mortifying curse, of course.
Airplanes? Hotels? Weird bedrooms? Check.
I could tell you my son has energy. But that would be kind of like me telling you Bill Gates is kind of good at computers.
We’re on a sports rotation at my house. It is not because we love to be busy (we try not to be?), or love getting up on Saturdays for games (nope), or think he’ll be a star someday (odds are pretty slim).
I have a child with ADHD and one who’s got a lot of impulsive energy (i.e. occasional irrationality typical to 10-year-old boys) at school.
I know that feeling of seeing the school’s number on my phone and thinking, Please let it be good news.
My thirteen-year-old and I sat across a sticky table from each other at the local donut shop. If I remember right, he had this maple-frosted thing that was the size of a small planet, totally at my permission (unusual for my Sugar Nazi tendencies). His tears had dried by now, leaving a whisper of salt on his cheeks.
“I just feel like I have more setbacks than wins,” he shrugged, so clearly in pain.
I sat at lunch on Sunday with a handful of friends over turkey with homemade gravy and mashed potatoes (“So much for Keto,” mumbled the woman dishing up next to me). Of all things, the topic turned to high school wrestling. Two of the guys next to me had competed in high school.
One of them, Marshall, is 6’3″. In high school, he was upwards of 190 lbs. Maybe that’s why I was surprised at who he said were the most formidable in the sport: The kids from the school for the blind. In fact, one of them was the state champ during Marshall’s years in competition. At the time those students had no other sports other than swimming in which they could compete; baseball, basketball, and football were all out. So they competed year-round.
Even more than that, we all reflected aloud, was a blind wrestler’s exaggerated sense of touch. We’ve all heard that with the loss of one of our senses, our other senses rally to compensate (think of Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles).
I’ve wondered for awhile how to start this post, what to write. I’m still assembling the pieces in my head like a jigsaw puzzle without the photo on the lid, and wondering if some of the pieces have fallen into the couch for good.
I’m hoping it doesn’t feel overdramatic? Guess I’ll just try to be honest with you.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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