Free Love in a Time of Homeschooling by Laura Brodie

contemplating playing hooky for a year.
    A few days later, standing at the edge of the Waddell playground, watching children slide and climb and swing in the last few minutes before the final bell, I approached my friend Ruth. Ruth is a woman of sturdy good sense, with children roughly the same age as mine.
    When she asked, “What’s up with you?” I replied, “I’m thinking about homeschooling Julia for the fifth grade.”
    She didn’t express surprise or ask a single question. Instead, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’re crazy.”
    Ruth is famous for being blunt, but “crazy” seemed harsh. While I spluttered some self-defensive nonsense, she shrugged in a “choose your own poison” gesture. “No way I’d ever do that.”
    No way Ruth ever could, since she works as a full-time lawyer. But she wasn’t talking about her job; she was referring to her temperament. Ruth is a high-energy, career-oriented, contemporary woman. Staying home with a child day after day, reviewing multiplication tables and rules of grammar, would be her idea of hell. Or at least Purgatory. Obviously, she was not the best audience for trying out my fledgling idea.
    Smoothing my slightly ruffled feathers, I collected my girls and drove home, hoping for a better response from John. His cooperation would be crucial in the coming year, not only for moral support, but because I wanted him to teach Julia flute lessons and French on the two afternoons each week when I would be busy at Washington and Lee.
    That evening I waited until he was relaxed and well fed, lounging at the computer, before I mentioned the idea casually from my armchair across the room.
    â€œI think I’d like to homeschool Julia next year.”
    John was barely listening, his mouse moving in crooked circles. “What was that?”
    â€œAbout Julia,” I said. “I’d like to take her out of school next year and try some homeschooling.”
    The mouse came to a halt and John turned to face me. “You can’t be serious.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œYou two fight all the time.”
    â€œWe fight over her homework,” I replied. “We fight because I have to force her to do schoolwork she hates. If she were homeschooled she would only have to read and write after three o’clock. She wouldn’t mind that.”
    â€œYou fight over her violin,” he pointed out, and he was right. Julia had been taking violin lessons for three years and showed real talent, but getting her to practice was an ugly ordeal.
    â€œIf she were homeschooled, her violin practice could be part of the school day,” I replied. “She wouldn’t object so much if it took place before three o’clock. She just resents spending seven hours at school, then coming home and having more lessons.”
    â€œYou also argue about the mess she makes.”
    There again, John was right. (I was beginning to sense he had a list.) Julia tends to leave her clothes and toys scattered throughout the house in serpentine trails, as if she were Gretel dropping crumbs to find her way home. In response I gradually progress from patient tolerance (“Pick up your toys please, Julia”) to teeth-gritting tolerance (“Please pick up your toys now , Julia”) to raging frustration (“What the &*%^$ are all these toys still doing in the hall!”). The length of my fuse depends on the stress of my day and the sharpness of the object I’ve just stepped on.
    John could see from my tightened jaw that this homeschooling idea wasn’t merely a casual impulse. He sighed. “Why do you even ask me when you’ve already made up your mind?”
    â€œI wasn’t asking. I was telling.”
    Actually, I didn’t say those words aloud, but that’s pretty much what ran through my head. In our household, most child-rearing decisions fall under my authority; with