An Unschooling Moment

We were at the little round table which is now where we sit and eat. It's along the north side of the house, which faces out on to the garden.

We were eating toast and drinking tea, and Orlando said, "Mama, it's like your tea has smoke coming out of it, but it's not smoke. Your tea isn't on fire. ...But it's hot..."

I sat a moment, watching the steam making a thin snake toward the sky, "Yeah."

He scrunched up his face a moment, "Why is it doing that?"

Although this isn't always what he wants, I said it anyway, "Hm. Why do you think it's doing that?"

He was in his chair, but pressed his head in as his legs straightened beneath him so everything about him was leaning forward while being anchored, "Because of evaporation?"

Well, there you go. I said, "Yep, it's evaporating."

He said, "I wasn't sure if that was it, but it came into my mind and I felt like saying it, so I did."

We sat for a moment, and then I said, "Remember when we were talking about fire and how there is a chemical reaction to make it, how the elements of certain materials combine?"

"Yeah."

"Well, this is kind of like that, but a bit different, it's the same elements but it's just a different state." {We've already done some kitchen chemistry since then.}

And then Orlando said, as he watched a black crow poking about the garden, "I wonder if crows have a word for us in their language. Like what they call humans."

I smiled. "Yeah, I wonder if they do. Maybe it's caw-caw."

The double entendre was intended for my own amusement, but we both laughed.

And then Orlando again, "I mean if aliens came to our planet they would think we were the aliens. We would be aliens to them!"

I felt a little thrill. The roots of empathy.

We watched the crow for a while. And then Orlando asked, "Do the plants talk to each other? ... Though it's winter so maybe they're not talking to each other because they're asleep."

{He also recently asked about how fish communicate, so we've been learning about that, and now we're on to plants, apparently.}

Mica asked, "What is the crow doing?"

I said, "I'm not sure..."

Orlando said, "Maybe it's looking for food?"

"Yeah," Mica sighed, "to bring back to its nestlings."

And who knows what happened after that, but it went on, and on; the chaos that includes these quiet moments.

These moments when things are born, when things are... these moments when we're really together, making a circle at the table.

photo by tsmyther

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Come talk about the quiet... in a free, live chat, "Mindful Mothering: Parenting in the Here and Now" on TheMotherhood.com, this Thursday, Feb. 10 at 1 p.m. Eastern. The hosts are authors Karen Maezen Miller, Tracy Mayor and Katrina Kenison. Co-hosts include Mindy Tsonas, Wendy Cook, and me! Let's see what we have to say... You can register by clicking here.