Mindful Homeschool: Embracing Your Roots

My husband asked me to go to the bike shop with him the other day to try out some mountain bikes. This was one week after he asked me to go on a trail ride with him and deemed my twenty year old mountain bike unfit and unsafe. 

“You need a new bike so we can ride more trails,” he said.

“But I’d rather buy an unlimited membership at the yoga studio,” I said. For the price of the bikes he is looking at, I could buy several years worth of unlimited yoga classes and a car for our daughter. Today’s bikes cost as much as my first two cars combined. Two wheels for the price of eight.

I must admit that the new bike felt great, and I was tempted to let him plop down our credit card so I could ride the bike home. Ultimately we decided to think about it and shop around a bit more.

Biking is my husband’s thing, yoga is my thing, and when I think about it, each of our preferred activities is suited to our different lifestyles. As the sole financial provider for our family, my husband is get up and go go go. Flying down mountains and climbing back up them is the training he needs for, and the relief he needs from, his physically demanding job. 

As the sole care provider for our family, I am get up and stay stay stay. Struggling to stay on my yoga mat, balancing on my hands and feet, and listening is the training I need to be present for my demanding job as mom/counselor/nutritionist/home-economist/emergency-responder. An hour of not talking and just moving in a hot studio keeps me from being a hot mess at home. 

You know as well as I do how much work it is to stay in one place and focus on the task at hand. There are days when the idea of getting up and leaving the house to go to work seems like the ideal vacation. More than once I have wished for a performance review and a bonus check as an indicator that I am doing a good job. As homeschooling parents, we don’t even get the little validation from a satisfactory report card and a written comment from the teacher about what a good little student we have. Teaching our own is a way of living, but certainly not a way to make a living, and while our labor is unpaid, it is certainly not without benefits.

Trail riding is fun, and there will be a day when I will say yes to a bike. If do my job well and my kids learn to take care of their future selves, my current job will become obsolete and I will have the time to hit the trails on two wheels. For now I’m going to stick to two hands and two feet, or no hands and one foot, on my yoga mat. It takes a lot of work to stay in one place, but the place I’ve chosen to be is the best place for me, for my family, for now.

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