The Chatham Spring was cunningly walled and roofed with rock. There was a wooden door that you opened into a little room, moist and dark, where the vein flowed out of the hill into a pool deep enough for the Brightleafs to dip their buckets in. The water flowed out of the pool under a large foot-worn rock that was the threshold of the door. The Brightleafs carried all their household water from the spring.

I opened the door. When my eyes had accepted the dimness I could see the water striders' feet dimpling the surface of the pool and a green frog on a glistening ledge just above the water. I fastened the door and lay down outside at the place I liked best to drink, which was just below the threshold stone where the water was flowing and yet so smooth that it held a piece of the sky in it as still and bright as a set in a ring. The water was so clear you could look down through the reflection of the sky or your face and see maybe a crawdad. I took my hat off and drank big swallows, relishing the coldness of the water and the taste it carried up from the deep rock and the darkness inside the hill. As I drank, the light lay warm on my back like a hand, and I could smell the mint that grew along the stream. When I had drunk all I could hold I put my nose into the water, and then my whole face. A World Lost ~Wendell Berry

It has recently come to my attention that zero times any number is not, in fact, zero. Zero times any number is an error. In our working world, if you multiply anything times zero, you have made a mistake. It can not be done. It doesn't even make sense. This seems innocent and simple, you can not multiply or divide what you don't have, but this is not precisely what is taught. We are taught zero times any number is zero. I suppose we must accept the limitation of notation. Still, this struck me one morning after a conversation I had with Henry.

Henry asked me, "Mom, what is six times twelve?" Ah, a defining homeschool moment. I countered, "What is six times ten?" And we were off on a long conversation about math and multiplication. What I learned, during our exchange, is that Henry would likely test behind his peers in math. Unschooling had not brought the world of multiplication before him, until that moment.

I feel no panic, that dear Henry might test behind his peers in math, neither am I surprised. I feel a new love. No surprise either, as I love easily. This has caused me trouble occasionally, loving easily, being willing to put love forward, to profess love early. Because, of course, sometimes my love times a new one equals a mistake. But not this time. This time I am loving Wendell Berry. There can be no mistake here. My love times Wendell Berry will move forward from this day on, 2gether 4ever!

I am gratified, actually. Henry is behind in math. No one has ever tried to convince him to multiply an impossibility. My realisation of the limited language of math is beautiful in an inverse way to what one might expect. In glimpsing the limitation of the language, math yawned open its huge and mysterious maw. Just as Henry's lack is inversely beautiful. We, the children, Me, Wendell, and Math all share the language of poetry and the natural world. This is what unschooling has taught me. Little wonder, as industrial education never really even hints at the poetry of math.

We skip the senseless frustration. We skip artificial rote. We skip rocks. And we pass more time with water than numbers. It is raining now. The children are asleep. Never this year or the next, will I wake them early and press them to the task of multiplying zero, a fools errand. In stead, we will water the animals, contemplate the multi-plus variety of language, and work at loving easily. We'll focus on the world found, for now.