Sunday, 06 March 2011

• The recipe for Parenthood

  I want to tell you about a kid we’ll call Adam.

  This was back when I wore cable-knit vests and elastic waist jeans. I wasn’t a fat kid. I was just such a skinny little girl that a belt wouldn’t hold my pants up. Mostly my mom bought me overalls so that my belly wouldn’t show but for more formal occasions we would drag out the straight leg pants into the waist of which my Nana had sewn little elastic bunches. Most of my deepest thoughts from this time period are tinged navy blue from looking through the sun-proof film while sitting in the backseat of a mini-van. I’ve always had a penchant for getting carsick yet, being small and short meant that I always had to ride in the middle of the backseat and quietly swallow my puke.

   We were the “cool” kind of homeschoolers who socialize with each other and take advantage of the fact that you can take a ridiculous amount of field trips. Every school day we left the house for something whether it was an art class, Spanish tutoring, or soccer practice. We were basically a mixture of military kids, high school suspensions, and smart kids who would have gotten the crap beat out of them for skipping grades in a public school.

  (My parents were mortified when the school apologized to them after finding me shaking in the corner of the bathroom in a puddle of vomit after a teacher beat the snot out of me for not focusing on my math equations. I was  very quiet and a daydreamer. Teachers would use this to their advantage and stick me in the back of the room with the bad kids because they knew I would zone out and not react to their antics. This included cutting off my entire ponytail at the root, sticking gum in my hair, stealing my lunch, breaking my pencils, throwing erasers at the back of my head and calling me names. I was such an airhead that I would just sit there and pretend that it wasn’t happening. Most teachers were ok with this and just let me sit there and learn nothing. The last teacher was so nasty that apparently she started pushing me around. I don’t remember much of this…just a sense of dread whenever someone does math drills. My aunt was a substitute teacher one day and was disturbed by my quiet behavior. She complained to the administration after she was done subbing and they started to watch what happened.)

  However, as we broadened our group to a mixture of the mentally handicapped and the weirdo kids (whose parents think they’re gifted but they really are just so awkward that teachers don’t want to deal with it), the situation got less fun. The pace slowed down.

   

  Let’s face it… the military kids were cool. They had travelled the world and were used to wandering the bases without supervision. They were unusually relaxed. Probably because their parents knew that they were in the safest position in the world.

   The dropouts were usually hotties with earrings and spiky, frosted hair. Let’s face it. Bad boys make your life interesting. Preggo kids are funny too. Everyone tries to act like it’s not a big deal when it totally, totally is.

  The smart kids, who are too poor to go to private school (me), are just happy that they can be self-competitive without all the drama.

   (Later in life, I had to start throwing the smackdown on people who would plagiarize or cheat.)

  A certain other group mixed it up with us homeschoolers occasionally that are hard to classify. They had morally uptight parents yet with untraditional plans like if you mixed a hippy with a Baptist preacher and then inbred it with a Little House on the Prairie marathon.

  Adam’s family was like this.

  They lived in the woods, where you assume the NJ devil legends started, in a shanty with a fence barring the perimeter. Their father worked as a handyman. They had no debt and lived mostly off the land. They were totally off the grid in a red-neck sort of way. They would eat wild game that the father would find splattered on the side of the highway after the MACK trucks came through. They raised some animals and let them roam indoors, mostly sheep, goats and Shetland ponies. They cooked their food on a woodburning stove, made out of an old pickup fender and some tin gas station signs. They wore a lot of plaid and boots and straight leg jeans. They cut their own hair. They didn’t attend any churches in the area but, they were religious.

  They engaged a ritual that they referred to as “homechurching’. I’d never encountered it before at the time. Basically, it was the same as homeschooling but with God instead of math and spelling. They would all do church together on Sunday with the father leading the “service”. Outsiders weren’t allowed because they believed that institutionalized religion was a sin. They got more and more afraid of corruption as time went on so I saw them less and less over the years.

  Adam was fun and not awkward to be around. He was a little quiet but honest and kind. Thinking back, he was a little embarrassed by his family situation. I always thought they were a little like European gypsies. The whole situation was so sincere and loving that I was always intrigued by how it would turn out for them.

  Often parents blame their child’s behavior on the school they attend, the friends they have or the youth group that they play with. Sports, music, conversations…. These were all carefully controlled. They were practically children in a bubble. Like a very unscientific experiment.

  Then, the Hampton sisters join our homeschool circle. They were the exact opposite of what you expect when you hear “homeschool”. Their parents also had started to homechurch and were extremely judgemental.

  The two oldest girls (teenagers) were critiqued by father and mother every morning to ensure that their makeup was appropriate, their hair neat and their outfits acceptable. They could most easily be compared to 60s southern belles. Very tailored and attractive with just a twinge of classy immodesty to keep the boys interested.

  The oldest, Sarah, annoyed the snot out of me. She was one of those bossy “mean” friends who freaked when she didn’t have an entourage. She immediately began scoping for new boyfriends to make out with and new girls to follow her whims.

  I was informed in writing that I would not be considered for the honor of being one of the “BFFies” (pronounced like “biffys”) as the best friend necklaces that she purchased only had 4 connections and one had to go to her younger sister.

  Kate was about a year younger than Sarah and dressed exactly the same.

   I was suspicious that their mother made them coordinate when going out in public. It was too consistent to be a coincidence. She was more of a follower and quiet.

  The potential drama of the whole situation freaked me out and I really didn’t give them a chance. We probably could have all been casual friends but everything about them felt so socially aggressive that I mostly avoided.

  Even as a young teen these two family dynamics fascinated me. Adam’s family held to a strict lifestyle because of extremely conservative beliefs. Obviously, they didn’t care about what society would think. Sarah and Kate’s family held a strict lifestyle to maintain appearances. I found out later that their father was a control freak and he ran them around like the Von Trapp kids at the beginning of The Sound of Music.

  Sarah was vocally, consistently promiscuous. She started rumors about sleeping with all the married men in her neighborhood. (The odds seem against this supposed statistic but either way, it had her father worked up.) I’m not sure that Kate ever actually was. Kate talked a big game but, I think she was just responding to people’s assumptions.

  Their father was so freaked by the possibility of them not being perfect that he decided that the “world” would taint them. He pulled them out of everything and monitored their contact with everyone. They were allowed to attend music class with us and that is how we stayed in contact.

  So, I was observing two families doing very similar things for very different reasons but all of it seemed to be driven out of a desire for the kids to begin their adult lives happy and fulfilled.

  Shortly after both families cut off contact with the group, they began homechurching together. It seemed like an oxymoron but, who am I to set parameters on homechurching?

  Aren’t you curious how this turned out for these kids…

  Sarah ran away to live with a family down the street. They had a youngish son in the military who she married when she was 18. Shortly after they were married, he was sent overseas and returned a paraplegic. Some may look at it and say she had a hard life and that tragedy found her. All I know is that she seems happy and devoted.

  Adam got Kate pregnant within a month of homechurching together. They ran away, got married and returned to live with his parents until the baby was born. They now live in an airstream trailer on some of his parent’s land.

  What did we learn from this? Not sure exactly.

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