One of my absolute favorite things in the world is when I look down after placing my sleepy little baby in her bed and find the imprint of a little ear on my forearm where she’d rested her head while nursing. I almost wish I could make that mark permanent on my skin. I know how brief the time is that she’ll be making them.
* * *
Bella is now at that age where she wants to bring armfuls of stuff wherever she goes. I adore the contents of her bags.
In the Winnie-the-Pooh lunch box: a toy cell phone, a faux-fur boa, a mailing envelope stuffed with little slips of paper (her “package” and “receipts”), a little wooden cow, a string of pink plastic beads.
In the smaller clear plastic handbag (It originally held bath toys.): two old cell phones given to her by my parents when they traded up, two sets of old keys that we no longer know what they open, a red and blue scarf I don’t wear any more, a plastic lei given to her at the parish picnic which she doesn’t wear because she finds it uncomfortable.
* * *
I’m preparing pizza and Bella is sitting next to me on the kitchen chair chanting: “St Paul, pray a us; St Paul, pray a us; St Paul, pray a us.” A litany with only one saint.
Now where did she learn that the pope declared this the Pauline year?
I don’t find this surprising at all…
I worry about homeschool parents that never introduce these things to their kids, though. It’s one thing to decide when and where to expose them to the world – it’s an entirely different (and wrong) approach to hide them from the world their entire life. At some point they need to be able to deal with these issues – they’re part of human nature and have been for millennia.
Homeschooling allows us to choose when and where – and most importantly how we approach these hard subjects in life.