Accidents happen . . .

Homeschooling is not something I ever dreamed of doing -- single or married. That was for other people -- you know, people who are "together." It was for those organized supermoms who got married when they were 24.5 years old to a clean-cut engineer with a good job.

I, on the other hand, am a mess: single, unemployed and lacking excess energy.

But I've never been conventional.

When I was 35 years old, I realized the dream of getting married before official oldmaidenhood was not going to happen. Instead of moping about it, I decided to do something that no married woman could do. I took a leave of absence from my secure job at a university and flitted to Japan for a six-month exchange program teaching English. It was a perfect fit. Unable to bear the thought of returning to my average, but stable life in the U.S., I struck out on my own in Japan, landing a job with a private Japanese school, learning the ropes of English teaching as a business and having a blast along the way.

But there was tragedy, too. In 1996, when I was just 36 years old, my mom died in a car accident. Since my dad had died when I was eight years old, this left me feeling very small in a very big world.

With my 40th birthday approaching, I happened to read about tens of thousands of orphaned girls in China, victims of the one-child policy (read my article on the one-child policy here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/355978/chinas_one_child_policy_leads_to_adoption.html) My heart was captured by this image and I was frustrated by the fact that I was single. Who would give me a Chinese baby? My friends challenged me to go for it. Within 18 months, all the doors opened and we two -- both orphans -- were tied together into a family.

It has been the most rewarding as well as the most difficult thing I have ever done. There is a reason most people are married and in their 20s or 30s when they have children!


Out of necessity, my daughter was in daycare almost immediately and she spent most of her life up to age 7 in a school setting. Last year when we went to Japan again for a short-term stint teaching English, Bonnie went to a Japanese school. I didn't think I had a choice. It was a wonderful experience for her and I'm sure she learned things in that year that most Americans wouldn't learn in a lifetime. But she didn't learn how to read and write English. So this fall, when we returned to the U.S. and stayed with a family of homeschoolers, I saw that is was not as mysterious and intimidating as I had previously believed.

So I gave it a try. This blog is a record of the journey. As of today, I fully intend to enroll Bonnie in public school as soon as I get a job and we decide where we're going to settle. But only the continuing journey will tell.