Many, many years ago I decided to travel to America. It was to be a short visit; a fortnight at the most. Australia had always been at the top of my list of places to visit but opportunity landed me at DFW airport toting one tiny suitcase and a snazzy duffel. A handsome Texan, complete with Hawaiian shirt, had fallen in love with me at Victoria station in London and sent me an invitation with a plane ticket, to visit his home in Dallas while he was between rock and roll tours. Nothing ventured nothing gained I thought as I made my way through customs and into his waiting arms. Twenty-five years later I find myself still here, Australia is as yet unvisited and my parents have given up asking me what they're supposed to tell the neighbours.
Before my quick trip to America I lived in many different countries. I began life in Hostert, West Germany and then traveled with my parents as they diplomatically made their way throughout the Middle East. When I graduated from London University I moved from the hustle and bustle of England's capital to a small island off the coast of France. Here I learned that the Guernsey patois had no words to adequately express the urgency of putting off doing something until the morrow.
My next move was to Southern Andalusia where all time as I knew it ground to a halt. Thi s complete abandonment of the clock could only compete with God. Lunches stretched for hours, siestas were mandatory until 5pm, dinner was taken, with children, at 10pm or 11pm and in August the whole country closed so that everyone could go on holiday. After a couple of years of Mediterranean living my biological clock began ticking and I was ready to pack up my tiny suitcase and snazzy duffel to head across the pond, which is where my story began.
My husband, the handsome Texan with blue eyes, who loved me at first sight, and then comforted, honoured and kept me in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, remains a faithful and perfect Southern gentleman. We have four grown children aged 25-19 who were my guinea pigs when I accidentally stumbled into the world of homeschooling. They willingly acquiesced for the fifteen-year lifespan of Wild Flower Academy, the fancy name I affixed to my one room schoolhouse.
I became the mother of the year for allowing: snakes to co-habit with us and shed their skins in my bath-tub; raccoons to learn how to swim in our pool; baby squirrels to be bottle fed every three hours and abandoned opossums to cling upside down from my hands by their tails. As luck would have it I single handedly disposed of the snakes, once my boys were college bound, by airing them outside one afternoon under the brutal Texas sun, but no amount of mesh, owls or bee-bee guns will discourage the squirrels from returning to the 'place they remember with fondness' and nesting each winter and spring in our chimney.
With children under my feet every waking hour I insisted that they pursue one common activity at a time, and that it be under a roof, I may have spawned outdoors types, but I am not a member of the jolly hockey sticks brigade myself. First came gymnastics. With this intense sport I developed a resistance to crowded, chalk filled gyms, hard bleacher seats and the smell of sweaty gear. These skills stood me in good stead for the next activity, ballet. I soon discovered that a dancer's bag seriously challenges any other sports bag when it comes to odiferous stenches! As the children grew we transitioned to our final common activity, theatre. Grease paint and dust are the over-riding nasal ticklers here. We still volunteer, perform and work at the local community theatres in Garland. Directors and producers quip that all it takes is one phone call to the McNeny household to staff their shows.
The children have now all graduated from home school, three have also graduated from college and one is still undecided, while she completes her Associate of Arts Degree this semester! Yes, we did have four at college for a brief period but like having four teenagers under one roof, we survived to tell the tale and to experience that awful of awfuls, the empty nest...
I encouraged my oldest son to follow his dream of joining a team of astronauts on the Space Station. Then the gift of a video camera on his 11th birthday resulted in him graduating, Cum Laude, at the tender age of twenty, from The College of Santa Fe with a degree in film. For the past five years he has worked in the film industry on industrials, commercials, weddings and short movies, and has shown himself to be a very talented, independent, editor and director.
My second son encouraged himself to seek a career with animals, "Otherwise," he told me, "I'll just end up an ignorant field worker!" So he put away his toys and red-necked it to Texas A & M where he joined the Wildlife and Fisheries Department and passed all his exams to become a herpetologist. While he wasn't studying he attached himself to the rock wall at the A&M gym and made quite a name for himself as an athlete. No money there just a burning desire, upon graduation at barely 21 years old, to travel the world as a climber on $200.00 or less. Both his father and I laughed at this idea and after a year of denying the real world he is gainfully employed at The Dallas Zoo where he puts his degree to good use shovelling Okapi manure!
My eldest daughter served on The Mercy Ships as a missionary in Liberia until she was struck down with malaria four months into her one year tenure. That was three years ago and today she is a certified Special Education teacher and works locally at any school that will offer her hours since she now lives on her own about a mile from home and has to pay rent. She supplements her income by shopping, eating and doing laundry chez nous!
My youngest is a semester away from her Associate's Degree. After a chronic outbreak of hives curtailed her passion for dance a couple of years ago she has decided that she really cannot live without pirouettes or coffee so she is researching (or at least I am, she finds it too stressful, apart from the fact that she has a "busy social life, Mum") several possibilities both Stateside and across the pond. To label her "undecided" is an understatement, when she was four our priest correctly tagged her as "a butterfly" and all I can say is, he's a visionary.
My GB bumper sticker shares space on the back of my car with The College of Santa Fe, Texas A&M and Collin College, symbols of financial poverty which British students are soon going to be able to relate to!
When I'm not rushing around with my adoptive fellow countrymen, I enjoy reading and thinking. My children threaten to take my books away from me if I don't text them when I'm on my way home; to make me watch television for several hours if I can't find time for them when they're available, and to create a Facebook for me the next time they catch me sitting in my room alone. I have remedied the latter by starting an intermittent blog so that I look as though I'm wasting time on line!
If I'm not reading or thinking I capture my ideas on paper, screen really, and contribute regularly to my writing group who listen patiently to my stories and give me encouragement whether I deserve it or not. My husband, the gorgeous T exan mentioned above, and I share dinner dates at home each weekend, we reckon that our food is infinitely better than anything a local restaurant can set before us. We have the added fun of tasting while we cook, chopping veggies side by side, creating sauces and indulging in witty, or so we think, conversation. We went to Costa Rica this year and it looks better on-line so our dreams of opening a rain forest cafe will have to wait upon the Lord.
Be bold and the Almighty will send in the troops to help you, who knows what this year will bring? Tune in to my show, The Sociable Homeschooler, to find out, first hand, on Fridays at 8am CT.
