There is a delicate thing I need to explore here. It is a corollary to my theory of a Handmade Life. I have still been thinking about that, noticing the ways it manifests around me and around the people that I love. As sure as we choose what we love, we choose so very much of our pain. In two bobs of a lamby's tail I could make a sad list of lives close to me and ways folks I love choose to get in a pit and wallow in pain, just really root and grub in it. I have done plenty of this rooting myself. I hate to admit there might be ways I still do it, ways I am unaware of.

Oh, does that keep you up at night? The thought that you are blind to your most grievous shortcomings. After all, if you could see them clearly you would eventually change them, right? This is why art is so important. Shakespeare, or one of those lofty bitches, said that art offers you a mirror in which to glimpse yourself. But you have to be brave enough to take a hard look in the mirror before it can do you any good.

In the last week, the Handmade Life Theory has yanked my fanny upright about 50 times. I catch myself wanting to look behind me and take a quick hop in the pit of wallowing pain but I don't. Why do I even get tempted? I don't want to choose pain so I try real hard to choose something happier and lighter, or at least productive, on which to focus. Its a process, a dance, a yoga, balancing act, whatever you want to call it. This jive does not come naturally to me. I was raised to seek the darkness. Now I am a bit frantic to stop the dark addiction and, at the same time, to teach my children different.

Listen up dear baby children, a dark life is handmade. Know how someone described this dark way of thinking and choosing? Life as a vulture feeding on carrion, dead meat of the past. Ok queue James Brown with me and holler "OW! I feel good. I knew that I would now. I feeeel nice like sugar and spice!"

I think the arduous process of becoming a homeschooler has led me to this ferocious and brave idea that we choose so much of our happiness and, conversely, we choose so much of our pain. It was profoundly freeing to realise, with dawning wonder and amazement, that the children are not required to suffer so much. Life will present suffering, that is fundamental. However, schooling the children in the life of hard knocks does not prepare them for life's real hard knocks. We can all agree that is true. You can not prepare for the worst life has to offer, you can't even imagine it. Throwing the children in school so they can learn how to handle adversity is crazy. Teach them to habituate love. There is no better remedy for every ailment. No better guide. No faster release.

Wrong. There is another remedy, guide, and release, honesty. Love and honesty applied with integrity across all the differing aspects of your life. And that last bit about applied evenly across all the differing aspects is the key and the tricky part. Deception, self or otherwise, digs you deeper into the pit. Honesty is the ladder out.

One learns to choose love and to choose honesty. I can promise you that those ideas are not built into standard curricula at many schools, private or public. If you find those lessons in school it is an accident or a side note. I'm thinking those are lessons best learned at home and mostly by example.

Did you whisper "Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits" to yourself this morning? I did, as I have done for luck the first of almost every month of my life since third grade. I had a third grade teacher named Sally Carothers. She wore an eye patch because she had cancer in her eyeball. She knew she was in trouble deep, especially since that was the early 70s. What did she do? She chose to make love and magic and wonder her conscious curricula. Everyone thought she was a solid stone freak. She was. And she was the best teacher I ever had. I keep my kids home so we can further this course of study.