(With kids back to school this week, here’s a throwback to our homeschooling days with our three little spacemen.)

            This week in our house, we’re discovering the final frontier. No, I’m not talking about the dust-bunny village under my bed or the dark recesses of the furnace room, although both are rather scary places. The kids have been learning all about outer space and not just because we are threatening to send them there.

            This expedition was kicked off by a simple bedroom renovation. Maybe we were being doting parents or maybe we didn’t know what we were really getting into (most assuredly the latter), but a couple of months ago we decided to create a spaceship themed room for the three boys. With a little manipulation, we were able to steer the brothers in this direction and even make them think it was their idea, since their suggestion of a castle bedroom with full-sized knight in shining armor daunted me just a little more than stenciling a few portholes and planets on the freshly painted walls.

            And so, after a few days of studying the sun, stars and so on, I find I’m learning a lot more than I bargained for. After all, can there be a larger subject than the cosmos? Most of the speculation of how stars are “born” and black holes could be used to travel through time is where science fiction found its origin. No wonder George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry made so much money plumbing the subject that has no limit.

            Children don’t have the same difficulty with entertaining such notions as do skeptical adults. Their minds as wide as the universe itself, they dispute nothing and marvel at everything: that Venus is hotter than Mercury which is closer to the Sun; that Jupiter is 1400 times larger than the Earth (more impressive if demonstrated with appropriately sized paper circles) and that dogs and people have rocketed into oblivion on their own volition. (Well, maybe the dogs had to be convinced.)

            While reading about the characteristics of the Milky Way’s family, the boys entertained themselves by yelling “stupider than Jupiter” and then collapsing into mad giggles. I was thinking that the phrase was very apt for anyone who would volunteer to leave the nice safe atmosphere of Earth to live in a spaceship where you had to sleep seat-belted to your bed. (If there’s a time I appreciate gravity, it’s when I sleep.) But all giggles aside, the gray matter in the boys’ heads soaks all this stuff up, if maybe not the correct names for everything. At one point, Tim tried to tell to me that the largest planet was named Jerkury. I suspected that although this planet was yet undiscovered by Earthlings, it probably had sent more than a few “ambassadors” here and presented a good explanation as to where grouchy people really come from.

            Much to my surprise, I found myself one evening when my husband was away curled up in bed with the oversized Dorling Kindersley Guide to Space and smaller but just as interesting Everything You Wanted to Know about Johannes Kepler But Were Afraid to Ask. I was riveted to the bed (without a seatbelt) and the subject matter. Earlier that day while the boys were testing the theory of gravity by dropping dangerously heavy objects from the tops of chairs and spinning pails of water over their head to imitate centrifugal force, I was my most captive audience as I read aloud the story of Galileo and wept as he succumbed to the Inquisition by refuting his theories about the Earth revolving around the Sun instead of the then popular vice versa.

            While I wonder to myself how I could forget (or never have learned) such interesting stuff, my sudden fascination with the subject at hand is very comforting. After all, the idea of trying to teach your children everything is overwhelming. At any rate, what they don’t learn when they’re young, they can still look up when they’re 35.

(True to summer in Alberta, there certainly has been A LOT of weather lately. Here’s another throwback to the what the weather was like in my yard twenty years ago…)

Some days it seems like my children go through more emotional ups and downs than a Richard Simmons infomercial. Often the grouchy quotient is elevated by a bad cold and/or not enough sleep. But sometimes, in young families, I find we’re still all just trying to get used to each other.

Throw another kid into the mix and things can really get messy. My children love to have friends over. The best thing is when a family with about the same number of kids comes over and mine pair off with theirs. But the other day, just one friend came over and this particular day, it emphasized the battle lines. 

It all started out innocently enough. Gil, my oldest son, had the great idea of playing baseball. Of course, Mom had to dampen that idea by nixing the use of the real baseball bats since I wasn’t able to supervise at the time. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something about three and five-year-olds swinging a Louisville Slugger with reckless abandon that I have a problem with.

So, they settled on just playing catch. Gil doled out the ball gloves and, true to form of the oldest child, began to give everyone orders of where to stand, how to hold their glove, who throws to who, and so on. As I looked up from vacuuming out the van, I first noticed Simon, the three-year-old standing about one hundred feet away from Tim, to whom he was supposed to throw the ball. So, I did what no mother is supposed to do. I interfered. All I did was make the suggestion to Gil that maybe there was no possible way that Simon ever in a million years could throw that far. Simon apparently had more faith in his big brother’s direction and proceeded to run the first ninety feet towards Tim before he hurled the ball at him with all his might. He still came short three feet.

Everything went downhill from there as the three younger players suddenly lost all interest in “organized” sports. Gil declared mutiny and informed the younger tribe that he was running away from home. At first, they weren’t too concerned since kids are used to each other’s dramatics.

But then Gil crossed the fence and Tim got mighty upset with this turn of events. Perhaps it was genuine concern for his big brother’s welfare or maybe he was worried about losing a good Nintendo partner, but he felt the acute need to report Gil’s departure to me at the top of his lungs. I yelled out to Gil to remember that he couldn’t cross the fence that bordered the back of our property and he replied that he merely intended to stay out in the bush forever. Much to Timmy’s dismay, I returned to removing an entire sandbox from my van.

After ten minutes of Tim keeping a not-so-silent vigil at the barbwire fence, Gil suddenly decided that forever was a long time if he had to listen to his brother whine for him to please, please, please come back. He stepped out of no-man’s land and to Timmy’s relief, agreed not to play baseball but to ride bikes instead.

With the incentive of the younger friend’s ability to ride his brand-new two-wheeler, Gil that day learned how to ride a training-wheel-free bike, after a few good pushes from his mom. The boy who convinced himself he could never learn to ride a bike was all sunshine and laughter, a sharp contrast to the gloomy boy he left behind in the bush. And I just marveled at how quickly the weather could change in my yard.