Personal work: Storytime

My Mom homeschooled my brothers and I for several years. (Different amounts of time for each of us.)

I don't generally like to say I was homeschooled because when I do, people sometimes get all weird. They give me a side-eye and say, "soooo....how was that?" like I just told them I was raised in a cult. One guy gave me a smug look and said, "oh, I'm sorry."

When I look back on being homeschooled, my mind is blown by how hard mom worked and how much creativity she put into making learning fun for us. Sewing us costumes, doing crafts, taking us to aquariums, museums and shows, cooking historical recipes with us, inventing games to help us remember our multiplication tables and state capitals. She DIY'd a huge teepee for our backyard when we were learning about American history. She turned the underside of our dining room table into a larger-than-life model of the inner ear. (Don't ask, it's too difficult to explain.)

But our favorite class was storytime, where we cuddled up on the couch with our well-worn blankets and Mom read aloud classic books, such as the Chronicles of Narnia, the Velveteen Rabbit, the Call of the Wild, the Diary of Anne Frank and the Island of the Blue Dolphins.

My dad would come home from work, see us happily bundled up on the couch, and shake his head with a chuckle, because his children lived in blissful ignorance of how lucky we were. We just assumed that everyone's school was full of love.

Thanks, Mom.

(I still hate math, though.)