Several years ago as a mother of two young children with another visibly on the way, I was attending my 10 year college reunion and felt insecure about my job title. I had never quite gotten that doctorate in history that I had always planned on and instead chosen to stay at home with my small daughters. It was a good decision, and I have never regretted it, but on the eve of consorting with fellow alums who now boasted lots of letters after their names and important titles, I was feeling a little insecure. In a day and age when the moniker "homemaker" or "stay-at-home-mom" gets about as much respect as "dung beetle," I wanted a decent job title, doggone it.
So, being a fairly crafty person, just before departure I hand-painted some business cards that read: Creative Lifestyle Designer. "Hey, Little People," I said, "I design your lifestyle, creatively!" As it turns out, there were plenty of us who had opted out of a high octane career track, and we marched in the alumnae parade under a banner that proclaimed proudly "At home, raising the next generation!"
So when I started this blog, ostensibly about homeschooling, the title seemed apt. Teaching your kids at home isn't something you do for a few hours each day; it becomes what you do all day, every day, and all of life becomes a place to learn. Freed up from the constraints and schedules of conventional school, you get to design the lifestyle that particularly suits each one of them, and your family as a whole.
We have one daughter who loves dance, writing, and art, and intensely dislikes math. While I insist that she does enough math to function in adult life, I suspect she won't become a calculus teacher. As I look down the road, I am thinking how best to plan her days to free her up to grow more in the direction of her strengths and interests.
So Lifestyle Design can be considered the sum of all the conscious choices we make as a family to create a community life that reflects our priorities and end goals. Sometimes those choices make me feel confident, like when my eight year old tells a stranger about the defeat of the Spanish Armada, or content when I see my children help each other with their math assignments. Sometimes our choices make me feel hip and counter-cultural, like when we go out to the beach on a beautiful day and the rest of the world is stuck indoors. Sometimes I just feel weird, like when another kid on the basketball team tells mine, "I'm sooooo glad that I'm not homeschooled!" And sometimes, I feel like I am headed way out of my comfort zone.
Which brings me to our latest incarnation of Lifestyle Design. We are about to embark on a year of life abroad, in the little village in French speaking Switzerland where Zeus grew up. The children will go to the village school, to better learn their paternal language, and we will be within walking distance of their grandparents' home. It was a dream and a wish for many years, and finally we decided to make the choices to make it a reality. A Design, or Redesign, as it were.
Early July is our departure. This past year we scaled back on activities and budgeted and set aside funds to make this all come together. The house is emptying as we pack most of our belongings in boxes for storage. The boys are deciding which beloved Legos get to make the trip in one of our twelve suitcases, and the girls are helping me shop to cover our clothing needs for the year.
I am excited and apprehensive. It's a locale we are familiar with as we've often gone for vacation. But this will be different. This time it's everyday life over a long period of time. We won't be guests, per se, but residents, with our own space in which to live and our own relationships with the people and culture around us.
We are trading life in a major metropolitan city for that of a small village of 1400. Standing in line recently at my local grocery store with a bunch of people I don't know waiting to make small talk with the cashier that I also don't know, I realized how much I appreciate and rely upon the anonymity of a big city. For all my love of community and desire for more of it, living in a village where everyone knows everyone else's business will, I am certain, challenge that notion in myself.
A few years ago, strolling by myself in this Natal Village, I paused to smell some voluptuous vermilion roses that arched over a fence enticing the noses of passersby. When I finished inhaling and looked up, a gentleman had appeared in the garden on the other side of the fence. As we exchanged pleasantries he was obviously pleased with my enjoyment of his flowers. He cut off a bloom for me to take along and cast me a sidelong glance, jerking his head up the hill. "You're the American who married the oldest Schmitt boy," he said. I nodded, very surprised, but he wasn't waiting for confirmation. "That's a long ways away, America - you live on the other side of America, don't you? You have three children, now? or four?" It wasn't unpleasant to have all my facts known by someone I had never seen before, but it was a little disconcerting. Now, as I think of that little village, I am preparing to have that experience repeated many times over.
And that too, is part of the design of our lifestyle. I want my kids to live, at least for awhile, in a community where everybody knows their names, and where everybody knows everybody's business, but where in a real sense, everybody is also looking out for each other. Maybe I've just read Heidi too many times or too many books about small town America. We'll see.
What conscious choices have you made to design, or redesign your family’s life? How did they stretch your comfort zone? What were the tradeoffs? What were the results?
You can follow the adventures of our year away at www.walkalongtheway.com.
