The answer is no. Absolutely not. Uh-uh. Pshhh. Snort.  At one point I didn’t even want to be a mom! I was certain motherhood wasn’t for me. It was around the time I was seventeen and my cousin’s third baby had just crapped down the leg of my new gray wool pants. When her mom laughed hysterically at my disgust and then leaned down to retrieve the giggling pooper’s pacifier that had dropped on the floor,  and then proceeded to clean it off by sticking into her own mouth and then back into the baby’s, I arrived at absolution. Me? A mom? Ewe.

So obviously that thought lasted about as long as my ability to play coy with my handsome husband. But did I always want to be a homeschool mom?  Heck no!  When I was five I wanted to be The Last Unicorn. And then a fighter pilot.  And then a writer. And then just rich. And finally, I settled on just successful and not cliché.

And yet here I am a model of middle class modesty, married with three kids and not only homeschooling, but writing a homeschool blog. Where did I stray from my pursuit of unpredictability?

Really, I was never unpredictable.  That is, until I made the sudden and bold move to homeschool. Ha, no one saw that one coming! Not even me. Now four years later I’m looking back thinking, “Wow, that was ballsy of me?! Good thing I didn’t think that through all the way. Somebody could have died! Or at the very least, not learned to write in cursive?!”   Wait…oh, the irony.

Did you know you always wanted to homeschool?  Or did you wake up one day and discover you were teaching fractions in your nightgown and enjoying it?

It is amazing how every decision I made to get as far from “housewife” as possible led me straight to what I never knew I always wanted.  I mean, I left Texas to go to college in Miami, for crying out loud!  And while I was there I armed myself with two graduate degrees and a butt load of student loans to ensure I’d have to work until my ovaries shriveled up and turned to dust. I was running from what I perceived to be a cop-out life; social death by diapers, mini-vans and bonbons.

If you wanted to homeschool from the time you were playing school with your cabbage patch dolls, more power to you.  Apparently I had no idea who I was or where I was headed.  I’m glad I got here eventually.  I mean, I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. I have always been a sort of a Jack-of-all-trades, but an expert at nothing.  (Okay, ‘Jackeline’-of-all-trades.) Maybe that makes me a good homeschool mom.

Whether you marched a straight line into homeschooling, or ran barefoot zigzagging through the Amazon and ignoring all the signs until you smacked into your own crying child and a rebellious notion to leap, I’m glad you found your calling.  Homeschooling is the ultimate career gamble; pleasantly unpredictable. It’s just so….me!

 

 

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