Why?

If you were to come up and ask me why, specifically, I have decided to homeschool, you would most likely get an incoherent hodge podge of half statements and random mothering narratives as an answer. I should probably work on this, sculpt some beauty of a response out of the mass of raw material currently piled in my mind, dense with significance but not all that pretty to look at. The unglamorous truth is, that I stumbled onto this choice; I tripped repeatedly over the same lousy cracks in a system I really wanted to believe in but finally gave up on when I realized the tools to fix it were simply not available.

First, there was, "Code Red" a drill my children went through to prepare them for a possible attack on the school from a fictitious gun toting nut job in response to the recent shootings at Virgina Tech. and NIU. "I curled up really small by the teacher's desk, mama. No one would find me there!" said my six-year-old daughter, Priscilla. Then there was the permission slip for "AIDS" education. Could the second and third grade teachers instruct my son about the risks of this life threatening autoimmune disease? My same son who refused to go outside last summer after dusk for fear of catching West Nile virus from a mosquito. There were tears of disappointment over our permanent lack of funds for the electronic gaming systems everyone else in class had. There is the stress filled rush in the mornings - the chaos of homework, hungry bellies, and grumpy attitudes in the afternoon. And then there is that ache in my gut when they board the bus - when they leave me most days of the week to be influenced by others.

Why, you ask, am I choosing to take matters into my own hands? Why on the cusp of the freedom I had been pining over for years - three of four kids out of my hair - would I change my tune mid-song and trade my long awaited solo career for membership in a choir of five all over again?

Well, its complicated in a ridiculously simple kind of way:

I love my family.