A Homeschool Day

After our first training session with the swim team yesterday, this is what our Home School day looks like. What a shock to the boys' systems! Little to no activity for over a month, then WHAMMO, straight into training for an upcoming swim meet. They take their swimming very seriously here and the boys swam 4000 yards last night (that's nearly 3.7kms!). Not really a surprise that they're both shattered today.

Clicking my Ruby Slippers

Funny Go Home Welcome Mat (Photo credits: www.xpressmats.com)

Recently, I've read a few posts on home sickness and the malaise that seems to afflict more and more of us these days as we negotiate an increasingly smaller world and greater itinerancy. It seems serendipitous as I begin my own journey into new lands that these posts have popped up in such a timely fashion… but perhaps there was more design in their appearance than I'm allowing credit for. Or maybe it's like when you buy a new car - just before you buy it, you don't see a single one of the same make or model, but the second you drive your brand-spanking-new cool-mobile out of the dealership, the exact same make and model and colour are EVERYWHERE. Maybe seeing posts about home sickness and a sense of place/home has more to do with my own sensitivity to those feelings at the moment.

It's true that I'm struggling this week. The last few weeks haven't been as bad because there have been other distractions. Initially, we had just arrived and the shiny-newness of everything was charming. We approached everything with wide-eyed wonder and childish awe. LomL had leave and we traipsed about in a fog of jet-lag, insulated by a cloak of holiday-ness (that's the one you only wear on special occasions, the one that lets you feel like you can completely relax and let your guard down). We did holiday things, went to holiday places and LomL was excited about showing us all the attractions. Then he went back to work, and the boys and I were still in holiday mode. We didn't stress about school work, or even getting into a school, we didn't fight the fact that there was no routine, no plan for the day, we hadn't yet begun to flounder.

Towards the end of last week, it finally hit. That empty feeling in the pit of your stomach. The feeling that you're hovering, suspended, in limbo. You can't go back, and forward doesn't seem to have a clearly visible path.

Now you have to remember that I grew up in a migrant community in Australia. My parents arrived in Australia in their 40s and it was their fourth "permanent home". They'd spent the majority of their early years in India (yes, my mother was born in Burma and spent her early childhood there, but for the most part, she was in India and it's the place she still holds in her heart as home). They'd married in India, then set up house and had children in Singapore. Then there was the big move to Brunei, where they'd stayed for 15 years, where I was born, where they'd seen my siblings off to boarding school. That really had been the place, I think, that they'd settled in. I've never asked them, but I suspect that Brunei had been the place they had come to believe they would always stay. They had spent so many years making a home and a community there, they had become involved in community life and had strong friendships. So the move to Australia, after being so well established, to start home, hearth and community again in their 40s, was not easy. I lived that life in full Technicolour, Dolby Digital surround sound. Their sense of never fully settling permeating everything. Their longing for "home" but never really knowing where that might be, seeping into every aspect of our daily lives. I still maintain that's what gave me the itchy feet, the longing to travel that I have to this day.

The only time I ever saw them completely relaxed, completely "at home" was when they were in their own mothers' homes or their siblings' homes. There, when everyone reverted to the roles they had established in childhood, my parents became themselves. My father was the eldest brother, waited on by his sisters, teasing and laughing with his brothers. My mother, the respected sister-in-law in my father's family, was quickly dragged into the kitchen or asked for advice. In my maternal grandmother's home, the roles were similar. My mother reverted to the child she had been and I caught glimpses of her as a teenage girl, giggling and sharing secrets with her sister, adoring her mother. My father in that house, became the man of the house. He was the one my grandmother insisted be consulted over every decision, usually to the exasperation of my Aunt, who was the primary bread-winner of the household and was used to making all the decisions during the remainder of the year. Her nose would get regularly out of joint when my father arrived on holidays. It must have been so frustrating and demeaning for her. She earned the money to keep the house running, she made all the decisions when we weren't there, she had to deal with all the things that went wrong on a daily basis, yet my father would sweep in and my grandmother would turn to him for advice. He didn't do it purposefully or to slight her. It was just the way those relationships worked. They could all have been more graceful and gracious in hindsight. But hindsight is blindingly clear and free of emotions that plague the moment being lived.

So having experienced a childhood in a migrant community, where all around me were adults coming to terms with their feelings of displacement, their changing worlds, you'd think it would be easier for me as I go through a similar transition. I suppose the one advantage I have is that I know with unwavering certainty that the "home" I long for no longer exists. It has changed. Even in this short time, it has become a different landscape. I saw it with my parents. They would travel annually to India, expecting the idealised place of their childhoods, expecting that people would be the same, have the same reactions, speak in the same ways, offer the same respect. They would be annually disappointed, and strangely, a little surprised. They would return to Australia, griping about the changes, the way people spoke, the way the young dressed, the changes they couldn't reconcile, but still feeling out-of-place in Perth.

They became a cornerstone of their migrant community in Perth, more displaced people looking for a sense of belonging, a sense of family and community. This community I grew up in left me confused about identity. I didn't feel the same sense of displacement as they did. I didn't feel the same loyalties to India or an idealised life there, as they did (I suspect no-one of my generation felt that either). But equally, I didn't feel truly Australian either. I just felt different. Different to the first generation migrants I was surrounded by, and different to my Australian friends. I believe that nobody feels that sense of national identity in the core of their being until they have left the country. I know that the times when I have felt most Australian, most like I belonged, are the times when I have been away from Australia, on holidays, or now in establishing a new home. Those are the times when I have reverted to familiar stereotypes of Australian-ness, my accent growing stronger, my use of idioms growing more frequent.

But knowing that everything has changed in the place I once called home, doesn't make it easier to separate myself from it. It does spur me on to create a new sense of home here and that's a promising start. In the interim, however, it's still a matter of dealing with feelings of being adrift, harbourless and a little tossed about on unfamiliar waters, no land in sight yet, forging forward, heart in mouth and resolve firmly in hand.

Weighing In to the Gun Debate

So let me start with a disclaimer: this is a portion of what I think and feel. It is by no means the entirety of my thoughts nor have I come to any firm conclusions about gun control and my mind remains open to being convinced by sensible, reasonable and reasoned arguments.

English: A man holding a blunderbuss. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've tried not to enter the fray when it comes to the debate on gun laws in the US. As a new resident and a foreigner, I am keenly aware that my perspective is skewed and largely uninformed. Today, I came across this particular snippet of news and it has been the catalyst that has motivated me to break my silence on this issue.

Firstly, let me say that I have grown up in Australia. A land colonised in the name of a reigning monarch, where tracts of land were claimed and the indigenous population were fought in the name of the King (of England and Australia - King George III was the reigning monarch of the day in 1788). It was colonised in the same way as many other nations at the time. Indigenous people were considered no differently to local fauna (in fact in Australia, Indigenous people weren't even recognised officially in the constitution as a people until 1967 - a disgraceful and shameful fact). However, the point of difference with the colonisation of the US, is that the first colonisers to land in Australia were not fleeing the motherland. Rather, they were expelled. Australia was initially a penal colony and later took the overflow from the rapidly growing population subsequent to the Industrial Revolutions in England.

America was not the same. The founders of this nation were not expelled from England. They escaped. They escaped religious persecution from a reforming church that saw no place for their particular brand of orthodox and conservative religious practice. This nation was not claimed in the name of a reigning monarch. It was claimed as a sanctuary, a refuge - and yes that does make me think of a boat load of hunchbacks of Notre Dame sailing into Plymouth harbour.

Forays were made into the interior of this nation by colonists claiming portions of land for themselves and their families, not for King and country. This is obvious when you look at the names of states, counties, cities and towns in the US. They're generally not named after kings and queens of England as they are in other nations. Here, places are named after the individuals that claimed the land - Crockett, Texas is actually named after the infamous Davy Crockett (those of you who grew up in the 1970s can probably still remember the theme song for the TV show…sing with me now, King of the wild frontier). States and towns are named after local indigenous groups depending on their ability to stave off invading colonisers - Texas for example comes from the Caddo Indian word tehas (meaning "friend" and applied to the coalition of Caddo tribes that lived around the Nacogdoches region, the word was later adopted by the Spanish [spelt tejas in Spanish] and used to refer to both the Indians and to the region in which they lived). I think this shows the ferocity and independence of the Indians who lived here. This land was not easily acquired, and in a very macho fashion, respect for the Indigenous population was won on the basis of their warrior-like nature.

But I digress. My point here is that the difference in the basis of colonisation has led to a difference in attitudes towards land and how to defend it. Remember, in Australia the land was claimed in the name of the King of England. It was largely defended by soldiers and militia and was quickly governed locally by a proxy for the trusted King. In America, land was claimed by individuals, defended by individuals for themselves and their families and largely governed locally for individual and family needs because of a lack of trust in a government's ability to treat individuals fairly. Heck, the US constitution begins "We the people". Not "we the government", but "we the people"

They have elected sheriffs here. Let me just say that again. Elected sheriffs. So the local constabulary is elected by the people in the community in which they live. In Australia (as in many other nations), the local constabulary is appointed and administered by a centralised government (usually a State government) and is a public service. So here, they chose who they wanted to defend the town, or city, or state, but they didn't leave them on their own (largely because they don't entirely trust any level of government ). Here, the attitude was always that it was an individual responsibility to defend the home and family, and that sheriffs defending a local population were supported by an armed populace - think about all those cheesy westerns we've all watched, where the sheriff deputised members of the local population who all had guns.

So in this nation of fiercely independent individuals, mistrusting of the government of England (and any other government) who essentially made them pariahs, who have generations of a cultural milieu that supports gun ownership by the populace (men, women and children), it should be no surprise that gun ownership is considered an inalienable right. So what happens when this nation is then forced by events to confront some of the ugly consequences of gun ownership? A debate ensues. A hotly contested, often polarised debate.

As a foreigner parachuting into the middle of this, I've tried very hard to not form an opinion based on my own prejudices. I've tried very hard to see as many perspectives as possible and to exercise a little cultural relativism. I've tried very hard to rationalise some of the inflammatory public statements put out by the NRA and understand the membership that they represent. I've tried very hard to listen with intelligence to the equally inflammatory arguments of those demanding gun restrictions. But this latest video advertisement by the NRA has tipped the scales for me. I no longer feel the responsibility to make sense of the thinking behind this "need" to own automatic or semi-automatic weaponry. I no longer care to hear the arguments against strict gun controls, mental health tests or regulation of guns. I will admit that gun deaths in states where there is an open gun culture, appear to be fewer and I think there needs to be more investigation of why this is so. I await with bated breath and a hopeful heart the cessation of these highly emotive arguments and a more reasoned debate. And in the meantime, I hope ardently for every person in this nation to be able to walk this land, to be able to send their kids to school, to be able to go to midnight screenings of movies, without feeling fear for their lives.

Just Another Brick (in the) Wall

Old school books (Photo credit: justmakeit)

So, we've been in Houston now for one month and life is slowly starting to take shape. The house thing seems to be working out and stars are pleasantly aligning. The school thing is slightly more problematic and I'm going to have to bite the bullet soon and make a commitment to home schooling. So what's my resistance? For B1, it's chemistry. Seems like a small thing huh? Nothing too dramatic, something that could be easily negotiated. But it's my sticking-point. How do I go about accessing chemicals? How do I set up a functioning lab? How do I break him into a local school for chemistry classes? And the worst part is that I'm suffering a migraine today, so it's all just that little bit too hard, little bit overwhelming.

But that's not the only thing holding me back. In the state of Texas, home schooling is an interesting adventure. There is no registration and no accreditation. Home schooling is considered in the same vein (legally) as private schooling, and in Texas that means you can pretty well do anything you like, including nothing at all. There is no monitoring, no moderating and no registration of home schoolers. If I wanted to fill the school days with making balloon animals, that would be ok by the state. Now I know what you're shouting: but you would never do that! You'd have a riot on your hands from the kids! Both you and the boys would be bored senseless in seconds!! Yes. You're right on all counts, but here's my point, that's the home school community I'm working in; unregulated, unmonitored and in the most part unqualified. The majority of people in Texas who are home schooling are doing so for religious reasons - because the school system isn't providing enough (or orthodox enough) Christian education for their children. That's not our primary reason for home schooling. It's not even waaaaaayyyy down the bottom of our list of reasons. It doesn't even make the list.

 So? I hear you ask. Well, it raises the issue of who my children would socialise with. I don't want to isolate them here. That defeats the purpose of bringing them all the way here. I want them to make friends and build a community. But if the community of other home schoolers has almost nothing in common with us, how do I effect those friendships?

Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic at the moment. Perhaps that's a reflection of my own lack of community here. It's hard to make bold moves like home schooling when you have no social support systems, no clue of curriculum and little idea of where to obtain resources… and you have an impatient personality. I have always been the kind of person who has an idea and wants to effect it IMMEDIATELY. The notion of slowing the pace down is an anathema.

For now, we wait to hear … and my nails get chewed to the quick… and my migraine gets worse...