March 28, 2020

Watershed Moment - A Homeschool Lesson

The poem I start to write is cute.
It's warm and fuzzy and offers insight
into how we need this time to
recenter and reorient ourselves
to what's truly important, to home.

I do not write that poem. It's not that
it's not true. It is, probably.  It's just
that it's far from earned. Learning a
lesson means earning the lesson, and
one week at home does not an earned
lesson make. Actually, it's two weeks
now, but who's counting? The only time
we've done anything with numbers is,
well, every time we wash our hands,
we count to twenty. Does that count?

Is that math? Does that add up –
to anything? In the shower the other
night, Emma asks, "Does water really
have memory, Momma?"  Already,
she's watched the ice queen sequel
a few too many times. I do keep a rough
count of that, a sort of guilt metric – right
or wrong. But this is actually a great lesson,
and a teachable moment to boot, so I go for
it. "Yes, Baby, water does have memory."

As I wash her hair, we trace the path
of the rainwater that fell on our pasture
the night before – into the pond, and then
the stream that runs off our property into
the river half a mile to the east. From there,
we follow it into the bigger river and the
bigger river after that, counting the bodies
we're passing through as we go – the crawdads,
the frogs, the turtles, the snakes, the fish –
taking bits of them with us to the Gulf of Mexico.

From there, the sun draws us skyward again,
in a sort of moisture rapture, and we gather
together in clouds, clouds now driven back
over land by the wind, and growing heavy
with the longing of remembrance, of home.