In Between Days
It’s been just the four of us for a month now: two parents, and two teenagers, who have always been home educated or unschooled. A month before lockdown Dad died; he lived a 5-minute walk away and was a massive part of our lives. This ‘time of Corona’ has also been an adjustment to life without Dad, without our children’s much loved ‘Papa’ and so I can’t possibly write about this time in our lives without writing about Dad.
For a while now I’ve been experiencing a powerful feeling of needing the world to stop so that I could disembark. I’ve had the strong urge to pack a small rucksack and just head to the woods to set up camp and fade out of modern society for a bit. The world has paused now, but obviously I didn’t want it to happen in this way, via a pandemic. The ache of not being able to see or hug family when you are all grieving is hard, but I also feel that this pause has been a quiet blessing for us. I say that whilst holding in my heart, those people who either do not have the luxury of in between days, or find them torturous.
Spring is here and this year it has been truly magnificent. Dad knew he wouldn’t live to see another spring, and so I am seeing with his eyes as well as mine. In every blossoming flower or cry of a red kite overhead, in every ray of sunshine, I feel his presence. I often wonder what Dad would say. We talked about everything and he was my ‘go to’ if I needed guidance.
But none of us can control what is happening and we are all in a period of ‘unknown’, which humans are not good at. We tend to fill the void of unknown with fear or else we rush to find a version of truth that we can hold onto.
It’s okay not to know though, to have no answers. That is one thing I have learnt in the last year of Dad’s illness, a year of existing in the veil between the living and the dying. I have learnt to rest in the unknown, the great unfolding of what is. Eventually, out of the unknown, a truth will emerge if only we can be patient enough and still enough, then perhaps we will be able to move forwards again, into a different kind of normal.
‘Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing’ — Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love.
Of course the other aspect to all this, is that the whole of the U.K. and much of the world is now educating from home. As a family who has always lived without school, this is strange for us too. We are not used to social isolation; we are not used to being home so much. Just as school children cannot see their school friends or go to school; our children cannot attend our home ed groups or activities or see friends both in the home ed community or locally.
Despite having a wonderfully supportive home education community, as a family who turned their back on school, you always feel a little alone and misunderstood. Over the last few weeks I have felt for the first time, a genuine kinship with all parents, as if in solidarity we are holding each up by linking hands around the circumference of the world.
Life feels weird, but actually so far, it’s not been ‘bad’ weird. We’ve found our family flow. We all straddle the liminal space in different ways. One of us, suddenly without a job to go to, has taken on all the domestic tasks with gusto, running the weekly supermarket gauntlet, whilst keeping a constant eye on the news, as if watching the virus closely will stop it entering our home. Another of us is immersed in daily movie marathons, or more accurately the Marathon Des Sables of movie watching.
Meanwhile my son and I have racked up approximately 25 hours so far of nerf wars. Whilst everyone else in the U.K. has taken up jogging or amateur photography or baking, we’ve been busy becoming the elite of nerf battles. During these nerf battles we are totally in the moment, Battle Royale come to life. We take no prisoners, it’s kill or be killed. When not in the zone, I half wonder what passers-by make of the middle-aged woman running around the woods with a plastic gun. But they have already learnt by now, that truth really is stranger than fiction.
‘There was nothing strange about it. We were on a covert mission. We had binoculars, jungle, a quarry, a threat, the hidden presence of AK-47’s…’ — Alex Garland, The Beach
Books have always featured heavily in our unschooled life, and now is no different. Creativity is also abundant — there is a lot of digital art going on and drawing. There is daily walking in nature, our local urban wilderness. For me, the art and the nature is intentional, both are healing tools I use to help me embrace these in between days. There is also a backdrop of music to our lives right now, Korean pop upstairs and a re-emergence of 90’s sounds downstairs to remind myself that more carefree days haven’t disappeared because they are etched somewhere deep into my DNA.
‘The only sensible way to live is without rules.’ — The Joker.
Our children have grown-up without school, but that is not to say we are any kind of experts. Unschooling or self-directed learning, looks exactly like life, and none of us are experts on that. Sometimes we are still and quiet, other times we are active and inspired. In the midst of our individual freedom, we negotiate our collective responsibilities.
As unschoolers we know well that life and learning is intertwined. We also know that sometimes learning looks more intentional than that, and we find time to study the things we are drawn to or are wanting to practise and improve. At other times now they are older, just like school-goers, our children feel they have to jump through a few hoops to reach a set goal. We live outside the system and are simultaneously trapped by it, as if cutting loose from the final thread that holds us will ruin our children’s lives forever.
Lockdown hasn’t changed any of that, but it has slowed everything down. The gift of slowing down means you tend to notice things you didn’t see before. One aspect of our unschooled lives which I am not missing is all the driving around the universe we did. I am certainly reflecting on that and how we could change it going forward.
Like everyone, I have a few worries in the back of my head about this odd time and how it might be affecting our children. I’ve worked hard to ensure they both have a range of mentors in their lives. Before the virus happened my daughter had a full and independent life, travelling to an art club on the train with a friend each week, being able to leave the house to see friends whenever she wanted and working at a stables at the weekend earning her own money. She has always liked and needed routine and I worry that this lockdown will equate to a monumental slump of motivation.
‘I think unschooling is the wave of the future though. Have you read much about unschooling? It’s the most radical intervention ever to hit education, because it’s not really education at all, except it totally is. The premise is that education itself is the problem with society. Not the solution.’ — One Breath, Adam Skolnick
My worries are unfounded, both children seem content and happy so far. Years of life without school has taught me that fallow time is often time well spent and that there is indeed an undercurrent of learning happening all the time, even if we cannot see it. I think it is one of those ‘schooled’ ideas that equates productivity with learning, and so we all get a bit concerned when ‘nothing useful’ seems to be going on.
There are also wonderful people out there just carrying on, often for free, so that some normality can be sustained. My daughter’s dance teacher is on zoom every week and her GCSE English tutor is too and in common with the rest of the world, my son has discovered a new fitness mentor in Joe Wicks and he has a weekly online Pokémon club. I am so grateful for these generous-hearted humans who probably don’t realise how important they are.
Our life has changed a lot over the last month or so but the thing I hold onto if things feel challenging is trust. I trust our children know and understand what they need. I trust that as parents, we will be there every step of the way to support them. Last night, we all chatted on my bed till 1:30am, about all kinds of things, including their feelings around learning during lockdown. These night-time chats are not new, but they seem even more precious right now.
As long as we all keep talking to each other, I know everything will be O.K.
‘So this is my life and I want you to know I am happy and sad and I am still trying to figure out how that could be.’ — Charlie, Perks of being a Wallflower
