Full Moon

10:23 a.m.: full moon in Sagittarius = full-on craziness. Ideas are pinballing around in my brain on top of the usual spooling marquee of to-dos.

This week I volunteered to help build a new community garden in the Hough neighborhood of Cleveland. Adjacent to the local library branch on 5 vacant lots, it promises an opportunity to create a place of beauty and restore a sense of community in an older, impoverished neighborhood. There is a magical energy growing around this project. But there is so much to be done and so many ideas about how it should be done and when it should be done. It's quite overwhelming.

We are leaving for a vacation in a couple of days to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. I haven't begun to pack; I have laundry to do, a yard to mow and other errands. Oh, and A and B reminded me last night about my little "tradition" of stocking a tote-bag for each of them for long road trips. I never realized how much they look forward to those little things.

As soon as we get back from our vacation, we have piano recitals, the last week of school with all of its activities, followed by dance recital weekend. Then, finally, summer begins for us.

For the past few months, we have been really struggling with our options for the education of A and B. We live in an inner ring suburb of Cleveland and we have been very committed to our public school system. Despite its many warts, we felt our children could get a good education there and we liked that they were being schooled in a racially and economically diverse setting. There have been many challenges along the way and this year we began to feel that the challenges were taking a bigger toll on us than were were willing to pay. We have pushed for meetings with teachers, the principal and district administration. They say the right things, but we don't see action or progress. Our area has many fine private schools. We have also begun to look at homeschooling as a realistic option.

I am so very torn; am I making too much of the issues we confront in the school? Are the discipline problems, the boredom, the lack of creativity and low energy "normal"? Will I be hurting my girls long-term if I pull them from the system? Will it foreclose options for them? Or is this a broken system? Can I prepare them better for 21st century life at home, where they can be self-led learners and stretch their intellectual muscles to their limits? Would it be better to return to work full-time so that we can pay the hefty private school tuition? How do you ever know what is right for your kids? Is there a "right" answer?

I watched them take off for school this morning on their bikes, hair flying (from under helmets, of course!), legs pumping, voices calling and I was awestruck at the independent, beautiful young people they have already become. Off they went, on their own, without me. As they should.