News From Hawkhill Acres

Well, I don’t know if it’s really Instamatic Flu that I have, but I’m Sick. When I mentioned it in an email to a fellow homeschooler, she sympathized and said she understands how hard it is to be sick when your kids are at home, rather than at school. I started to agree and then I thought a minute and realized that it’s actually easier to be sick when you unschool. However, my friend’s homeschooling method depends on lesson plans that she sends in to some online company and there’s a schedule, so when she’s sick, she has a dilemma.

Should she drag herself off the couch to coach little Walford when he draws a blank while doing his times tables worksheet? Or should she just croak out the answers thereby staying on schedule, but teaching a collateral lesson about cheating and the goal of education and probably end up with a drugged out, coffee-brandy swilling, smash and grab man for a son, who blames it all on her when he’s older? (My friend is a tad apt to see the glass as half full… Of hemlock.)

Anyhow, her email made me more aware - or as aware as I can be considering that my head aches, my lungs are creaking like the bellows on a hurdy-gurdy, my throat is so sore that the only thing I can swallow is my pride and the world seems to be a bit more swimmy than it usually is when I’m above-water… Where the heck was I going with this? Ah! So her email made me realize why unschooling beats schooling when Mom is sick.

For one thing, unschooling means that I don’t have to get up until I want to. That’s a huge deal nowadays. I mean, how many people can say that? If they don’t have a job, they have kids in school. Of course, when I’m not sick, I almost always want to get up when Geekdaddy gets up so that I can see him before he leaves and help him find all the things that went mysteriously missing overnight. Like his wallet, his keys, the top of the percolator.

(We found that in the cats’ food bowl. Evidently, the geek was making coffee, stopped to feed the cats, left the top in the bowl and got distracted somewhere between the kitchen and the mudroom so the cats never got their food. But it’s okay, they’re tubby cats anyway. The real tragedy here is that the geek had to wait ten minutes for his first cup of coffee.)

But Geekdaddy is on a training trip out of state this week, so when I want to get up has changed to when I have to get up to use the bathroom. Same for the kids, evidently, because they usually get up just as their geekdaddy is leaving so they can hug and kiss him goodbye, but now they’re straggling downstairs just as I’m plopping down in my recliner after exhausting my physical reserves tottering the twelve feet from the bathroom to the living room. (Hey, I told you I was Sick.)

And this is why Unschooling is much better than schooling for sick moms. They bring me tea. They bring me toast. They ask me if I’m warm enough. Son even takes my temperature and brings me vitamins, herbs, zinc lozenges, chest rub and hooks up the nebulizer for me so I can take the albuterol treatments that keep me from coughing while we watch funny videos together. (This afternoon, it’s going to be Arthur and Some Like It Hot and maybe an episode of The Irish R.M. if we’re not square-eyed before then.)

Son cooks. Daughter reminds me to nap and tucks me in with a kiss on the forehead, just like I do for her when she’s sick. Then they do something quiet so I can sleep and wake me up when it’s time for another round of medicaments or for chicken soup or because the cats had a fight and one is bleeding. (They’ve been trained from birth. When Mom naps, there are only two reasons to wake her: flames or blood.)

My doctor told me yesterday that what I have is rampant in our area and hangs on for weeks. He said I might find myself coughing, weak and tired for 3 months or more, like he was. Tchah! Give me a week at the most of kids taking up the slack and I’ll be right back in mid-season form. (Also give me codeine cough syrup at night to stop the coughing, tons of herbals and my usual vitamins, aromatherapy, garlicky-oniony chicken soup and a daily shot of whiskey with lemon and honey. Let’s not be foolish.)