I’ve been thinking a lot recently about things in my life that have come full circle, and this month saw the conclusion of another very, very significant full circle. We had the last day of our Davis Academy homeschool, EVER, with Tristan graduating from 12th grade. Our last day of school each June has always been a game day and pizza lunch. This year I didn’t even think to get a pizza and I had to leave for work at 1:30, so it was an abbreviated game day. Taylor was to be home in the morning, though, and when I informed him it was the last day of homeschool ever, he wanted to join in. So we played Yahtzee, three rounds of Boggle, and six rounds (two apiece) of Balderdash, a favorite we’ve done every year. We threw together a lunch of canned chili, saltine crackers, and peach smoothie. And after the last game, we yelled our cheer that we’ve always ended game day with: “No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s nefarious looks.” Then Taylor quietly said, “And thus ends homeschool.” And that was it, just like that one of the greatest experiences of my life was over.
So speaking of full circles, I remembered my very first day of homeschool, August 21, 2000 in Tennessee when Taylor started kindergarten. I woke up that day with butterflies in my stomach. I had planned and prepared for years (fleshing out a curriculum for kindergarten through 12th grade when he was only two!), and now the day was finally here! Of course, kindergarten days were short and very simple—I had just worked myself up psychologically I guess. And I bet after our short first day was over, I probably spent the rest of the day going over it in my head again and again, reliving my little success and eager to do it again the next day. What completely different situations between the first and the last days—different homes in different states, no David here, me going to work every day, Taylor going to BYU, and Tristan doing school on his own. And that first day was so all-consuming to me. It was the absolutely biggest, most important thing in my life that day. I had no other job, I never even made any to-do lists. But the last day crept up on me with hardly any notice. I had to remind myself to squeeze some games onto my to-do list, while my mind was clouded with a million other things.
It seems that the last day should have had more fanfare than it did. I didn’t tell anyone at all about it because I knew it was a big deal only to me. And for that reason I wanted to hang onto the day for as long as I could. Because from recent experience, I knew what would happen. Soon it would become ‘yesterday’, then ‘the day before yesterday’, then way too soon it would seem like long ago. The whole 17 years would seem like a blip that flew by in a second. But don’t good times always fly by?
So it’s time to enter a new phase, to begin a new full circle for all of us, and with the preparation we’ve all had (because I’ve now been educated through the 12th grade three times!), it’ll be exciting to see where our separate and collective circles take us.
