A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

“So we were sitting in Ryan’s bedroom and they kept asking me what homeschooling was like. All I could think to explain it was to talk about teatime,” Jacob, the now public schooled student, said to his friends. I laughed. Sometimes I think the only thing my kids will remember from homeschooling is teatime.

“They thought it was so cool that we got to eat treats during the day and drink tea. I told them we read poetry every time too. Ryan said, ‘What did you read? Beowulf?’ He smirked and looked over at Sarah, (nicknamed Jano), like ‘No way did they read Beowulf.’ I said to him, ‘Actually, yeah we did.’ And all he could say was, ‘Wow. Cool.'”

Apparently that was the trigger. The next thing you know, Jacob, Jano and Ryan were off to the supermarket to buy PG Tips to make tea. Unfortunately teatime in Ryan’s kitchen didn’t conjure the same atmosphere or success as ours. Jacob told me that his tea tasted like dirty water and I was the only person who could steep it till it was “just right”… Once sufficiently buttered up, he asked me, “Can Jano and Ryan come over on Saturday afternoon for a real teatime?”

And that’s what we did today. The kids all pitched in to clean up the family room, to set the table and to help make the vanilla cake. I made the tea and poured out.

The Bogarts all took turns reading poetry aloud to our new audience. Jano and Ryan flipped through a couple of poetry books, smiled through all the readings, but weren’t quite brave enough yet to jump into the rhyming fray. They sipped their tea and declared it good. Everyone loved the vanilla cake (a Trader Joe’s hit!).

Once finished, Jacob, Jano and Ryan moved to the family room where they played rock band for hours.

I washed up realizing that these public schooled kids had just caught the teatime bug. A happy infection.

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