The Future

For many years now, Jeff and I have had numerous conversations about "The Future." The chats are always positive and inspirational, often bordering on the phenomenal. We come up with very dreamy ideas of "what could be" for our little family, get really excited, make grande statements and then resume life, as usual, after the excitement of radical change wears off.

Yet there has been one consistent vision that we have quite diligently stuck to: take a year off with our girls and travel the world while home-schooling them along the way. We started saving for this after reading about a family from our neighbourhood that did something similar several years back. The goal is to leave once Sophia enters grade seven, and Olivia hits grade six. The intent is to drag them around with us before the indifference and profound dislike for their parents sets in (though there are already indications that we might be too late).

Is this insanely ambitious? Yes. Do I really have it in me to teach my daughters integers while in Vietnam? Probably not. But even detached reality checks can't dispel the impulse to try it anyway.

We have divided the year up into quarters, and our first leg will be North America. What a travesty that we really haven't seen our own country, so we intend to buy a used RV, pack our choco-lab Ruthie, and head east. After we cross the country and finish in the Maritimes, we will head south to the eastern US and visit Civil War sites, and most importantly, Mount Rushmore.

I have developed some kind of unhealthy fixation on this monument after seeing "North by NorthWest." I had never paid much attention to the monument before that, and then last August when I took the girls to New York, we were passing through US customs where on the wall was a large mural of those four, giant Presidential faces. To my horror, I could only name three of the Presidents. I kept saying aloud, "Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson...but who is the third?? Hamilton??" The girls didn't know, either. I was completely perplexed by the fact that I couldn't remember.

Once we were settled in our hotel, and on our way to a friend's apartment, I decided to stop in a liquor store and buy some Prosecco to take along. There were two people working in the store, and I said, "Who is on Mount Rushmore? I remember Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson, but for the life of me, I can't remember the fourth President!" They both looked at me and shrugged. They couldn't even hazard a guess. I said, rather smugly, "It's really terrible that you don't know this. You live here! I'm Canadian and I know three of them!" Again the shrug.

But, the very next morning, the girls and I were walking across the street from the liquor store heading to the subway when the door burst open, and out ran one of the guys from the night before. He stops and cups his hands across his mouth and yells, "THEODORE ROOSEVELT!"

Maybe I'll be a good home-schooler after all.