I did it! What did I do? I finished The Odyssey! I'm not sure I've been more proud of myself for reading as much as this. I'll get to that in a minute but first I have to take a moment to thank the little guy in this sucess story - narration!
Narration! I love narration. My (school aged) kids have to narrate all their (school) books for every single reading. I'm just that mean of a mom ;-) But that doesn't mean I'm always quick to use it myself. Because it's kinda hard and I'm kinda lazy. True story.
However, I do believe in it's "power" so when I was really overwhelmed at the beginning of this book and I was starting to just skim it and lose track of what story within a story I was at. So I stopped and got a notebook and started writting down my narrations. I had to stop a lot but suddenly I understood so much more! It was clicking and it was fun. Then my joint pain started up again so I switched a voice memo app I have on my phone for Lucy's narrations. That worked too. Funny thing though. When I stopped using the app and just tried to narrate to myself outloud, it didn't work. My brain knew I could fudge it too easily. So back to the memo app I went. Because it is work but fruitful work and reading something but not really understanding it feels like such a waste of time. I'd rather spend more time but get something out of it!
Lucy even "caught" me once and asked what I was doing. It was neat to share that I was choosing to do narrations because it was helping me understand. She asked who was listening to them and laughed when I said "No one! I delete them when I'm done reading for the day." She kinda rolled her eyes a bit at her weird mom but secretly I thinks she liked that I'm willing to do the same thing I assign.
And slowly but surely, I made it through, I actually did stop narrating towards the end but not because I was lazy, but because I got into the story and I was excited to read it. Which is huge. Back when I started learning more about Charlotte Mason and Classical education, I stumbled upon this idea of Ordo Amoris or rightly ordered affections, loving what is lovely and true and how loving what should be loved is really what virtue is all about. That was pretty deep and while it stood out to me back then, it's also been a concept I've come back to again and again to think about what it really means for me as a parent/teacher and as a person.
But even that initial introduction to this idea caused me to change how I viewed my opinion of certain subjects. Poetry being one of them. I had all these reasons why Poetry was not for me. I'm analytical, I like things black and white. I want to know I have the right answers and its not always clear what a poem is about or trying to say and I don't like being confused. I don't like flowery writing. Excuses, lots of them. But I stopped looking at poetry as the thing that was wrong but rather that it was a flaw in me that caused me to dislike poetry. A failing even. Don't worry, I didn't get out the cat o'nine tails and start whipping myself but it WAS a big shift in my view. (Good) Poetry is good. I don't like poetry. Therefore, I am wrong. And I set out, to change myself. To re-order my affections.
I started really small. I knew I didn't actually hate
all poetry. I liked A.A. Milne. So I started there and we read lots of that. Luckily this was around the time Lucy started AO Year 1 so I've gotten to go through her poetry schedule for 4 years with her. That certainly helped. And then I just kept picking up more and more, trying to get more challenging as I went. Some I loved (Beowulf!) and some I stumbled through (Dante's Inferno).
And because I am a type A person, I did have an end goal. And you might be guessing it right about now - The Odyssey! Which is what makes this upcoming point so special to me. I've wanted to reach the end of the Odyssey for 4-5 years now! And it's not that now that I've read it that I have arrived, no, scary books have this tendancy to not feel very scary or intimidating once you've read them. The books I haven't read always seems much more important than the ones I have in terms of literary achievement. So I've got a lot more poems to read. But it does mean that I can no longer call myself someone who doesn't like poetry.
It also means, this thing, it works. Just like I believed in narration but as still so surprised what I use it and get such good results. Similarly, I have believed in the idea of ordering of affections and cultivating tastes enough to have structured our homeschool lives around those concepts for going on 5 years now and have no plans to change that in the future.
And yet, its huge relief to see that it's worked in my own life. I've taught myself to love what is good and true and beautiful about poetry. Actually, poetry has taught me to love what is true and good and beautiful in it. I've just gotten out of the way (and put in some time). Which seems so simple and yet, it's so huge! Life confirming huge! It's confirmation of what I've been doing all this time! If it has worked for me, how much more so for my little people with their slightly more flexible minds. Homeschooling is not about seeing fruit quickly. But it is really nice to see some blossoms popping.
