Opening Day

It was opening day of the T-ball league we had joined.
The sky was sunny.
The whole town was readying itself for the big parade and opening day festivities. There would be a band.
There would be a snack bar.
There would be hoards of kids strolling the streets of Kenilworth.
There would be our family members lining the street cheering. Then the first game.

We had signed Jackson up back in February-
The call had come in the way it always does: my dear sister- with an invitation.
Our sons are so close in age- I know we both had imagined being able to have them be together at things.
So we could be together too.
I am aware that when my sister called with the T-ball news, that I felt a quick blast of no, just a whiff of it really, and that I didn’t stay with it long enough to investigate it.
I know that when I told my husband Chris his face lit up at the prospect of having his son play ball.
Somewhere in the minute between the phone ringing and my initial gut feeling, I second-guessed my no and hovered somewhere, caught between my sister’s well-meaning invitation, and my own deep intuition.

We had been through this half a dozen times- day camps, art classes, trips, and I had heretofore been able to successfully field the slight disapproval coming from my sister.
Brush it off.
Chris asked Jackson if he wanted to play and Jackson said, quite pleasantly, “no”. Chris asked again- “why not?”
"Because, Daddy, it just isn’t something I want to do" and with that, Jackson went back to drawing his volcanoes.
Charlotte, our daughter, chimed in with “I want to play!”- which was no surprise to any of us. She thrives on being with people- just being around other people's energies, she comes alive.
Not so with Jack.
Chris tried a specific question “is it that you don’t want to throw or wear a uniform?”
And, again, beautifully,thoughtfully, Jack responded “No, I just don’t want to be on a team and do baseball games”.

At this point, the phone is still in my hand. There is too much going on in this room for me to hear that original no that had arisen in me earlier.

Now comes Chris's hard sell- "Well, what if it is only practice- and you don’t have to do it if you don’t like it- would you try it?" And Jackson,for who-knows-what reason, agrees. This could be the most painful moment of the whole thing: Jackson's Yes, coming as it does after we have not listened to that first clear 'no'- both his 'no' and ours.

It takes five missed practices, nearly an hour conversation with my sister- in which I actually allow my nephew to get on the phone & ask (read: guilt) Jackson about why he doesn't want to come to the team anymore. (Wait- could this be the most painful moment to recall? Possibly.)
Chris, who is out of town the week preceding opening day, sighs heavily into the phone when I tell him we missed the practice again. My sister seems annoyed, can't see how we could have spent the $200 only to have him QUIT. She says "how can he know what he wants?"
When I say, not expecting an answer, "he just doesn't want to- what can you do?" she says, answering my non-question, "Put him in the car." I think she actually means I should PUT him in the car. Like with my body. I try to conjure an image of this and feel like I have left my own body. I feel woozy and have to hang up. I think my sister is actually disgusted with me.

For a full day, I am more than a little lost.
I reach around inside myself feeling for that original no .
Ahh...there it is. The knowledge that we would be exactly here.
That Jackson is not a t-ball team player. Not now.
That it was never going to fit for him now.
I pace the kitchen.

And then it all shifts.
I hear him first and I wander outside following the sound.
There is my son.
In the garage with his Daddy's saw, sawing furiously at a VERY thick piece of wood, just about to saw through. He has been at this a while.
He is intent.
He is working, he is playing, he is alive.
I realize then that I knew all along how my child looks when he is most alive. I know when he loves something- when he is thrilled to try something.
I know him but more than that, I know that he knows himself.
He has always been free to decide what makes him feel alive (while this has only been true for me in recent years).
He will turn 6 this May, and he is clearer about his own nos - his own knowing- than his 37 year old mother.
With this return to myself, brought about by seeing my child delight in his woodworking, I felt a huge sense of relief.
I called Chris in Hawaii- told him what I had remembered about our son, about myself, about our life, and he sighed. This time, a sigh of relief.
We don't just unschool our kids, we live a life with them that is about trusting one another's deepest experience.
We practice allowing ourselves to be known- not only to one another, but to ourselves. Here the kids are our best teachers.
Our opening is like dilation in childbirth- We go through these spaces of breathing, then there is constriction. We lose ourselves for a moment, then there is the dilation and we are moved more fully into ourselves. Into our life.

So on our best days, there is a spiraling downward and inward and then a spiraling back up and outward. A dilation followed by a constriction- wherein all things are just setting, and seeping into us so we get it more deeply.
Then further dilation, spreading outward into our family.

There is pain.
But, like childbirth, it is good pain.

And so here is what happened on opening day:
Jackson spent the morning making his onion grass soup. Collecting twigs, leaves, dandelions, onion grass from the yard, mixing in a little dirt, and then coming into the kitchen for some carrots, asparagus, and some old spinach.
There was a big pot.
There was filling the pot with water from the garden hose.
There was a little boy, loving being alive.
There was his mother, no band music to accompany the scene, no banner a-waving, watching him create his own parade.

Most of all, there was the remembering: that in this, our spacious unschooling life, every day is opening day.
And all we really ever need to do is show up.