Every summmer Lea asks if she can go to school and each time I say no. This summer I chewed on my lip awhile before answering, "Maybe."

Her excited bright reply came out in a disbelieving, "Really?!"

One of the things we've tried to nurture in the children is a sense of trying new things, entertaining new ideas and possibilities. Public school has been one of those off-limits though, because keeping the kids unmarked by the system was a commonly held belief that we thought was best for them so they wouldn't be pigeonholed or limited or bothered with someone's idea of who they should be or become. We encouraged them to learn things that interested them, and to pursue things that they love. School, we felt, tempered that natural sense of curiosity, it never occuring to us that school would become a curiosity... or that perhaps our dreams for them might not fit into the dreams they have for themselves.

I thought my big hurdle in registering her would be that we don't vaccinate. It even kept me up the night before with worry about how she would be disppointed when they turned us away because she is a smallpox epidemic waiting to happen. And me laying there certain, with a little bit of a stubborn gloat I'm ashamed to admit, that they would tell us no, even though it would dash her hopes...

But they didn't. I'm not as fringe as I think I am. All you have to do is submit a refusal to vaccinate form, and the secretary doesn't even blink her eye at it.

And I thought we'd meet the control freak principal and Lea would, with her sharp home nurtured instincts, be immediately repelled by her. But Lea wasn't because the principal was simply warm and kind and inviting to us. Steven even asked her if he could go to school...

"Not yet." I said.

I went to public school until the end of 3rd grade. My parents pulled me out of it even though I loved it, and placed me into a private Christian school which I hated and which almost succeeded in ruining me. I think it is probably no accident that Lea will attend the same public school that I left too early, and that she will be going into 4th grade. It was humbling to realize that yesterday ~ To remember that every so often we do take on things where our parents leave off to finish another undone family story. Lea's story is ofcourse her own, but it was important for me to realize that the next generations accomplishments can often have the affect to help to heal old woundings if we let them.

I showed her my second and third grade classrooms, and man, talk about a time warp ~ the rooms looked exactly the same as when I left. The whole school did. I was amazed at the memories that came pouring back to me of the good teachers, friends, fun and learning. The best parts of my childhood, the ones I write about now here, are mostly when I attended there.

We left the building yesterday, and it was over lickety split, her registration was so easy and she is now a student in a public school.

She asked me, "Mommy do I still have to go?"
And the "control freak" part of me answered her, ofcourse with well hidden hope, "No honey, you don't.."
She went, "Just kidding. I can't wait to go."