Three in one blow

You know the story, right? The Brave Little Tailor? It's a pretty good story ... and the part of it that's going through my head is the claim of "three at one blow." That's how our family looks this spring. And we didn't plan this any more than the slightly manic tailor did. It just happened this way.

Three kids in the space of about 47 months. When #3 was born, #1 wasn't 4 years old until the next month. So in the following months (months that felt sometimes like glacial eons and sometimes like lightning strikes), we did the baby thing.

Then we started to spread out a little ... we sent one kid off to school. But this turned out to have been one of the most idiotic decisions we ever made, and we idiotically stuck to it for the full two years, for some idiotic reason. By the time the next school year came, we were doing our schooling at home. (That girl? That girl that's in the military now? She wasn't any better at conventional education when she was seven than she is at twenty-two, but she was a lot more dependent on the grownups at the time, and classroom school was a hideously bad idea for her.) So ... we did the kid thing.

Everybody learned to read. Everybody learned to do some math. Everybody played outside a lot and painted and colored and built stuff and mastered the two-wheeler. There was a kingdom of stuffed animals, each member of which had his own back story and particular relationships and unique voice. (I never got it all straightened out and always needed a translator - but they never argued over who was who, so I think they really did know all the parts.) There were friends and sometimes cousins - there were annual customs and weekly duties. We did the kid thing.

Then we did the teen thing and everyone learned to drive and to decide a lot more of the schedule (if you can call the way things are around here by the word "schedule"). The screens joined us - movies and computers and reruns of the Cosby show for some odd reason. Other old sitcoms too, now I think about it. It was almost like stages of sophistication or levels of maturity or something. Older sitcoms got watched by younger kids, and as the kids grew up, the newer and more subtle shows were better appreciated. It was fascinating for me to watch my kids watching these shows. Something about all of this seems to have nurtured a certain kind of brain, regardless of the individual personality of the individual child, too. They don't all like the same thing, but the all despise stupid stuff - with all the passion and heat of youthful scorn, they hate stupid stuff.

So here we are. This summer, the baby will be nineteen, and that means we're really and finally and unquestionably done. Now we're just in consultations - or ... we will be after high school graduation. Until then, the poor guy is in Age-group Limbo. He's legal for a lot of stuff, but not for his pre-arranged absence permission slip from the high school. The secretary called me yesterday. She knows our kid - and she knows me - it's a small town. She signed the form for me once she got my verbal consent ... but she had to have it.
Him: "But I'm eighteen."
Her: "Yeah, but we don't care."
Oh, man, is he ever ready to get out of there.

But back to the point. The point is ... THREE at one time! None of it is normal or conventional - we're really pathetic about anything normal or conventional. But for us, this is very conventional and it's all at once. #3 Kid graduates with a state diploma (not a Stevenson High diploma because his credits don't include freshman year because he was still schooled at home for that year, and I didn't have the inclination to enroll him in anything accredited -- never mind why). #2 Kid is finishing his community college Associate of Arts - which means that his first two years of college are in the bank, and he can transfer that into a university when he gets around to it ... but he will take some time off because he has never not been in school. And #1 Kid is standing on the line at the End of the Beginning as well. Basic Training is over (and she didn't think it was hard enough - no joke - she hasn't gotten any better since first grade at staying with the level of the group), and it's time for Advanced Individualized Training in Arizona, and she's champing at the bit.

But do you see what I'm getting at? It's all three at once! Time to buy "graduation" presents - all three at once - this month - even though none of these graduations is entirely an "all done" sort of thing. The graduates are done right now with their beginnings.

I think I'm looking at the finishing touches here. Back in the day, we decided to be the kind of parents that didn't insulate ourselves from any part of the parenting job or delegate many of the responsibilities. There are lots of ways to do a family - we did it by our own total immersion. The kids were weaned and they were in their own beds for the whole night when they were ready to be (different for each one) - they got support and approval for any and all independence, but no amount of autonomy was ever dumped onto them before they took it for themselves. We decided (at first, we only decided one year at a time) to directly oversee even the academics department. We stood like llamas, my husband and me, looking out over the sheep pen, ever ready to kick the life out of anything that invaded, grazing calmly with the shorter animals, and we just let them graze. We watched.

I guess what I'm surprised at is that we got to do this last bit at all! I think I expected that we would be made redundant by now. But we got to finish the job we started. Our offspring have each practiced living the Adult Life while we stood there, watching for predators and doing less and less about it even when we did see dangers at the edges of things. They got to practice, but they didn't have to leave to do it. I am very grateful for this part. Huh. Interesting. I hadn't realized that until just this moment. We did not choose this. This was a gift. This last bit was pure gravy. (Do guard llamas eat gravy?)