What hurts you blesses you. Darkness is your candle. — Rumi I’m slamming things around the kitchen. The girls are sitting at the counter in front of me, wide-eyed. I’m on the verge of tears, telling them that I feel like they don’t do their share of cooking and cleaning, that they aren’t children any […]
Home-Schooled College
I took Saoirse to see the Dartmouth Campus. She was more interested in watching the squirrels racing and playing in the quad. I took her to my alma maters, SUNY Binghamton and Cornell. There, she was more interested in finding good coffee and the best Korean food. I suggested a paddling trip up near Paul […]
The Voice in My Head
“Is that what you’re wearing?” I sound like every mother ever. We’re rushing to leave for the train station. It’s our last visit down to the city to hang out with Saoirse and Anthony and Vivian for a few days. Then we get to bring Saoirse home for the remainder of the winter. I’ve got […]
Not Just Another Cappuccino
She’s gone again. Our good friends and neighbors, Anthony & Vivian, who own Plowshares Coffee in Harlem and Bloomingdale (and who roast the coffee we serve at Sap Bush Cafe), ran into another labor shortage this January. Saoirse was only too glad to help them out. She threw her sleeping bag and a change of […]
First Month
January’s back. The month of reconciling and reevaluating. Bob’s and my fingers touch every piece of meat on the farm, examining condition, tallying stock, physically assessing what has been damaged, what has sold, what isn’t moving….And why. It’s the month when we pour over the numbers with mom, dad and the crew, celebrating the […]
Hear What You Want
The first time Mom and Dad brought me to New York City, I stood in Grand Central and cried. We were only five minutes off the train, and I pleaded for us to turn around and get on the next one going back upstate. I was twelve, and totally aware that my behavior was most […]
The Walk
Mom and Dad sent a text around last week, reminding us that we need to be at the farm at 6:30 this morning to load the turkeys. Dad wanted to meet in person on Sunday morning to go over winter changes and, again, to discuss loading the turkeys. He reiterated that he wants everyone at […]
It was all about the wait.
“There must be 700 people on this line,” Bob tells me. We’re driving to Cape Cod for a CSA delivery, and we’ve detoured to a Renaissance fair for the girls’ amusement. I bought tickets ahead, expecting this would cut our wait time. Balderdash. I’m dismayed to realize that the Ren fair is so packed, the […]
It’s all about the dress.
“What’s homecoming?” Such questions are common among homeschoolers. Ula’s boyfriend Jack, who’s a senior at Cobleskill-Richmondville, asked her to go the dance with him. He explained that it was semi-formal. Say no more. Ula had 2 weeks to work out what to wear. So it began with rummaging through her scrap fabric heap and extracting […]
The Neglect and Party Theory of Music Education
They used to cry and carry on when Bob would take out his guitar and I’d start to sing. When I first entertained the idea of home-schooling, I had the notion I’d teach my kids to be musical wizards. SinceI never became a serious musician, I intended to give my children every opportunity to succeed […]
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