We homeschooled. That’s actually what happened over the past ten years. We homeschooled.
Here is another of
many valid perspectives on “the rest of the story” or “our family’s last 10
years with Lauren.”
We homeschooled. And
we celebrated life. That’s also what
we’ve been doing for the past ten years.
Though Bryn graduated high school in 2008 and Lauren is really our forever student, from 2002 to the present, we have been dedicated to giving both Bryn and Lauren the best education they each could get as very different individuals with very different needs. We have also been embedded in a homeshool community our whole family treasures. Thankfully, it took me a long while to write this post, so I am fresh from another homeschooled friend’s graduation celebration. The graduate’s mom’s party decorations included a thorough poster board display of photos of 16 years of her homeschool (which is now officially closed—Yeah!). Bryn was in many of those photos, and Lauren was even in a few.
This graduation event reminded me of the families that took
us in over the years in a variety of ways.
The most prominent way was when our homeschooling group was going on one
of (frequent) field trips, and there was little likelihood Lauren could be
successful on such a trip. Bryn felt as
comfortable going with one of 5 other homeschooling families as she did going
with her own family. Bryn tells me today
that she feels like she has many families.
Though her experience of having a sister is far outside the norm (no
experience of traditional sibling rivalry when your only sibling can’t talk/argue
with you), she feels like she has had many brothers and sisters and she
treasures her relationships with each.
I would love to show a few of hundreds of pictures of my
kids with homeschooling friends, but I’m a big believer in not posting pictures
of persons on the internet without those persons’ permission (which I’m too
lazy to get). These people helped make possible our ability
to celebrate life. In between, and even
amidst, the trials, there were many celebrations. Here were a few:
In the spring of 2003, our homeschool group held an Arts
Festival at which our students could display and perform anything representing
their school year’s study within the arts.
Bryn attended and recited some memorized poems, but both Bryn and Lauren
contributed to a table display of our children’s work. Here was their display:
Five pieces were Bryn’s, and three (the 2 colorful splotches
of watercolor, and a paler marker piece entitled “Feeling Better”) were contributed
by Lauren. We were celebrating Lauren’s
willingness to dab a paintbrush in water, paint, and then on paper at that
point during that school year, so this display felt like quite an
accomplishment. It’s amazing how easy it
is to find something to celebrate every day when you adjust your standards to
that which you have, and not which you crave.
(One of the poems Bryn recited was T. S. Eliot’s Rum Tum Tugger, and she
did a multi-media unit study based on Rum Tum Tugger, I believe, as I see the
display once again—though there is an original, unrelated, poem there, too.)
I’m sure I would have never come up with the hair-brained
idea to go to the Outer Banks, NC, in 2003 but for the excited announcement at
a homeschool moms’ meeting about the centennial celebration of the first flight
of Orville and Wilbur Wright at Kitty Hawk.
Craig loves all things aviation, and for some reason, that became a
desire and focus of mine—to make possible for Craig a memorable trip to the
First Flight celebration. And we did it.
(Three other of our favorite homeschooling families attended, as
well.) The timeframe was when Lauren
was at her worst behaviorally, so setting our expectations at a proper level
was key to our success as a family.
Craig and Bryn thoroughly attended and enjoyed the
festivities planned to celebrate the centennial.
I doubted Lauren would be able to tolerate such a crowded
venue with lots of people, as well as surprising, loud aviation noises often suddenly
overhead. And I was right. Lauren and I did get through the gates and I
took a few photos of her tolerating those moments, but we soon exited the
grounds and spent the next two days doing our own thing. Here’s evidence of how we spent one day:
I plotted out a course for Bodie Island lighthouse, and we
found it! It was beautiful! We even saw some planes coming from the First
Flight celebration flying past the lighthouse. I took many pictures of our adventure and
we used the public restroom on premises (which was always a big adventure with
Lauren back then). This is Lauren after
our successful public restroom adventure and before we made our way home as
successful tourists who had seen something fabulous:
I realized while going through family photos for this post that
our family doesn’t have a lot of pictures of events where people usually take
photos, like birthdays and vacations.
(The photo above is “the best of” of Lauren on vacation.) Where we don’t have a lot of “event” photos,
we have plenty of “moment” photos. When
a “moment” strikes, we better grab the image of it to last a while, so we can
get through until the next moment. Here
are some moments that were well worth celebrating with a slew of photos to mark
each:
Lauren tolerating not only clothes (other than a houdini),
but wearing layers on a cold day in the
fall of 2002.
On an early spring day in 2004, we discovered something
Lauren loves . . . washing cars!
She’s master with sponge and bubbles, but be careful handing
her the sprayer!
Another cherished outdoor memory was in April 2003, when Lauren
acted interested in one of her sister’s then favorite pastimes, sidewalk chalk:
Though this next one (before SCD!) wasn't necessarily a super happy day for
Lauren offering photo ops of smiles, in December 2003, we took many
pictures of a day outside playing as a family during Craig’s week off for
Christmas. Though you can tell in each
of the photos that Lauren doesn’t feel so good, she often came in close for
comforting hugs that afternoon, and that gave us one of my favorite photos of
her and me:
Okay, so our family doesn’t have a bunch of photos of typical
celebrations, but as you can see, we had many celebrations over the past ten
years. Ours just occurred in a more
impromptu fashion than for most families.
Against that tide, however, Lauren’s 16th birthday
turned out to be a lovely Sweet 16 celebration because of the relationships we
had built with our dear homeschooling friends.
I was inspired to actually have people over for the event because Lauren
was feeling so good (it was 3 years into her healing on the SCD) and we had
just completed a remodel of her bedroom that I wanted show off:
After years of Lauren’s room being simply a pared down safe
space, it now looked like a room fit for a calm, happy girl—the young lady she
had become.
This was the first room Craig and I hadn’t painted on our
own, because we needed to completely focus on keeping Lauren happy while her
bedroom was torn apart and off limits, and a professional could do it
quicker. But the professional took a day
longer than expected, so we were challenged with 2 whole nights of attempting
to get Lauren to go to bed and asleep in a foreign space. The depth of that challenge was probably what
made us want to party and scream from the rooftops, “It’s done! It’s done!”
Lauren loved her new space.
That party was a happy thing because, once again, we planned
it around Lauren’s limitations. Lauren
has never been patient for long with people sitting around in a sitting room,
and she usually left such situations quickly.
But Lauren has understood since she was very young the appeal of a
“table party.” Table parties are ones
that occur entirely at the table. Lauren
completely grasps and appreciates the concept of gathering where there is food. She is happy to make eye contact across a
table, to hold hands and nod in agreement about the goodness of the food and
drink. So we had a short, evening table
party for Lauren’s 16th birthday celebration, inviting her
grandparents and our friends.
We served SCD peanut butter brownies and traditional
chocolate brownies all from the same platter so Lauren didn’t feel like she
wasn’t permitted to touch the platter of good stuff.
I don’t think she noticed some brownies were
darker in color than others, and the peanut butter ones are great anyway.
And Lauren had a great time.
That “all on the same platter” made me think of Bryn’s Sweet
16 celebration two years prior, which turned out to be another of life’s
amazingly unexpected blessings and a celebration of life so much bigger than a
16th birthday party. Thanks
to some dear neighbors who provided dinner, Bryn’s party was a sleepover with a
fondue dinner and fabulous cupcakes from a local bakery for dessert. We weren’t worried about Lauren’s participation
in the dinner, as we didn’t think she would be interested in fondue,
particularly as we held the dinner in our sunroom where Lauren’s unaccustomed
to eating. I was concerned, however,
about Lauren being able to join in the singing of Happy Birthday without being
denied a cupcake after the candles were blown out—I had not yet figured out how
to make an SCD cupcake that could rival the look and appeal of this bakery’s
cupcakes.
One of our dear fellow homeschooling friends came to the
rescue. She took the cupcake and
frosting recipes I had, asked how the bakery cupcakes would be decorated, and
then went to work to create an acceptable SCD duplicate. Though I have no good pictures of her on the
occasion, Lauren sat giggling among Bryn’s girlfriends much of that evening,
and was fully present for the singing of Happy Birthday, as well as for the
birthday cupcakes. Her SCD cupcakes were
on the same platter as the regular cupcakes, frosted with white icing and decorative
colorful polka dots just like all the other cupcakes. My friend had taken my nut flour and probably
some butter and honey to use in the process, but otherwise searched out her own
ingredients and figured out a natural way to make colorfully dyed SCD legal frosting
for the tops of Lauren’s cupcakes. There
was not a moment of her sister’s Sweet 16 birthday party when Lauren didn’t
feel welcome, mostly thanks to this dear friend’s great efforts.
One of the last “field trips” we went on as a family (before
Bryn headed to college in 2009) was a summer day trip to Toccoa Falls, GA. I had heard of these falls when traveling in
the North Georgia mountains on another homeschooling field trip, and then saw
them when looking at colleges with Bryn, as they are actually on the campus of
Toccoa Falls College. We rarely travel
this far away from home with Lauren, but I was sure that, with much planning, I
could plot out a day of fun—a pretty, scenic
car ride to Toccoa; a stop at the college’s public restroom (key!); a
short, dirt trail walk along water from
the parking lot to the falls (Lauren loves to hike); hopefully some time at the
falls (the most unpredictable element was Lauren’s reaction to the potentially
overwhelming site of the roaring, super high falls); then no matter how quickly
we needed to get her back to the car, I had the path to an acceptable,
close-by, Lauren-friendly restaurant plotted out, as well as their menu perused
and SCD options pre-chosen. Mama was
ready . . . and it turned out to be one of the grandest days of celebration in
our family’s adventure so far . . .
Lauren’s first sighting of the falls.
Yes, those are people below.
We called them the blue shirts.
(Apparently a camp was in session.)
For a long while, “I’ll just look at them from here—a nice,
safe distance.” But she was sure they
were close enough to touch, and kept trying to.
Bravely getting onto a HUGE rock with her dad’s help.
Lauren, Craig and Bryn . . . SO close! Now they CAN touch the falls, because the
mist shoots off it that far!
Mom’s joined her clan on the rock. Lauren’s super comfy with the huge waterfall
and we’re loving the mist on our faces.
The best, most relaxed picture of Lauren ever taken her entire
life. It only took a deafening,
water-throwing, phenomenon of nature to make it happen! (With credit to the photographer, Bryn
Silvernail.)
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