Well now, the dust is settling. The children are getting crabby. The adults are too. Ahhh, after-season let-down oozes into the house. Normal enough. We've spent the better part of the year and certainly two months in preparation and build up. We've navigated, for better or worse, the complex family relationships. (OH MY GOD, my husband just had the audacity to walk in here. Is it not perfectly OBVIOUS this is my ALONE time? Sheesh. He wants clean clothes and warm socks. WHATEVER!) Ahem, as I was saying, we've halted normal routines. We're packed together in the house and commanded to be jolly. We're spoiled. We're overfed. We're casting around for the next super sparkly distraction.

Is this why our thoughts turn to the new year? Is this why we get pensive and broody? We sift through disappointments as we have reviewed, under scored by this "warm season of giving", old painful scabs. At the same time, we have to admit our amazing wealth. The abundant love and good fortune so evident this week. And so much happened this past year. So much growth and change. What on earth, or in the mysterious cosmic universe, could possibly happen this coming year. A LOT, apparently. I am kind of wishing for some boring uneventful gardening time myself.

The humming birds will be back through here soon to build their nests and defend their territories, scolding and hording, and raising their stylish babies. Hum, not so unlike the humans. I took a tip from them and looked hard at my nest this past year. Hummers build with lichen and spiderwebs. That sounds dainty. But if you are lucky enough to hold a hummer's nest you realise how strong they are. Seriously. And how flexible. Their nests are built to stretch and accommodate, to bend. When you hold the nest of a robin or a blue bird you notice they are fragile. A nest like that, of stitched pine needles and leaves, almost sifts away as you handle it. But the hummer's nest is compact, light, tight, and as efficient as tyvek. I like the metaphor. I aspire to that kind of flexibility and strength and planning for the inevitability of growth and change.

I aspire. I guess aspirations define the ritual purchase of a new calendar, all fresh and wide open. How best to fill, what we pray is, that promise of time? What homeschooling mother can miss an opportunity to reassess, for the 100000th time, where the children are and where they should be led? I aspire to teach them more, teach them better. I aspire to be softer, more loving toward my husband (IF HE WILL STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY ALONE TIME.) Ahem, as I was saying, and more grateful to my husband. I push more, I plan, I seek to improve. Yes, aspire is the word of the day.

And in the midst of all these aspirations, some vague and undefined some quite concrete, I notice an odd paradox. If you want to improve you must aspire and you must put forth effort. But its an oddly soft path as well. It seems to work better if you reach forward inside, where invisible forces reside. It is a spiritual thing, to aspire. Its almost magic, almost akin to making a wish. I aspire, therefore I grow. I know not what will happen or which results will manifest. But if I aspire, I've noticed, I do get better.

That is not much of a paradox, I guess. Here it is. I always thought adults did their work of growing up and then sat, fat and sassy, square in their mastery of the world. I grew up thinking that by the time you reached adulthood you were basically reaping aspiration profit. Profiting off the aspirations of childhood, or more accurately, previous aspirations? Balderdash, Poppycock, Insanity! My aspirations are generally revealed as childish and inadequate as I grow. They are shed, these old plans, and retooled on ever acquired new information and understanding. This doesn't seem to end, either. But there IS magic in the process. Such that it doesn't seem to be what you aspire for, so much as that you are required to simply and honestly aspire. That is a hell of a paradox.

I hope it works as a parenting technique. The children do seem generally well and competent. Is an aspiration the same as a hope and wish that they will continue to grow ever more well and ever more competent? I don't think so. Hopes and wishes don't really imply effort do they? And effort does appear to be required. But, I see now that it is blind effort and aspiration, mostly. You never REALLY KNOW where it's all going and how best to arrive.

Oh, this is so tidy for an unschooler, isn't it? That makes me smile. Happy New Year! But only if you aspire to it, whatever that means.