Freedom to celebrate difference -- shouldn't homeschoolers have it, too?

I'm not sure what woke me and the baby up at 5:30 this morning. (Probably his tummy wanting more milk.) But I do know that the noisy motors of buses filled with children headed back to school kept us from getting back to sleep. Our house is in walking distance of three elementary schools and a high school, and the buses use our wide residential street as a thoroughfare.

My neighbor, a fellow homeschooling mom, stopped by in her robe around 8 to see if we were planning to go to the library this morning, like we often do on Mondays. "Happy Not Back to School Day!" she said. "Aren't you glad you're not sending your kids off to prison?"

"Be careful," warned my mother from her spot on my couch when I expressed the same sentiment 20 minutes later. She was waiting for the boys to put their shoes on so we could go out to breakfast and celebrate her birthday.

My mom doesn't like me getting too excited about the fact that we're not sending our kids to school. At least not around people who do send their kids to school, like she did. I understand her concern for offending people, especially people I know and love. My friends are not all making the same choice as I am, and I respect their reasons and their decision as their own.

But it is nice to be around those who share my perspective and aren't afraid to celebrate our choice to buck the mainstream. We are happy about keeping our kids home with us. Why can't we celebrate that and joke a little? Why does it seem like homeschoolers are the ones who have to protect the feelings of schooling moms, when we're the minority surrounded by a culture that doubts our validity?

I don't normally experience that doubt directly. Somehow I've avoided the kind of conversation my neighbor has with people in line at the grocery store on a weekday morning, her three children in tow. I'm just not as friendly and talkative.

So I hadn't thought much about the conspicuousness of taking two school-age children into a restaurant at 9 a.m. on Back to School Monday. (Instead I'd been remembering how my parents always took my sisters and me out to breakfast on the first day of school, giving us new wristwatches when we each started kindergarten to commemorate the moment.)

Otherwise, I might not have been as caught off guard by all the questioning stares as we entered a cafe full of adults, many of whom had undoubtedly dropped their own kids off at school at hour earlier. Fortunately we didn't get any rude comments. Although it might have been a nice opportunity to educate people, as my neighbor so often does.

If it hadn't been my mother's birthday, we might have been at a Not Back to School Party with our fellow homeschoolers -- eating pancakes and ice cream sundaes, swimming, and celebrating our freedom to do so any day we like.

There's nothing wrong with that.

I know there are moms who miss their kindergarteners terribly after sending them away for the first time. I know this because I know homeschool moms who began as schooling moms, and hated it. But most moms get used to it, even breathing a sigh of relief when summer vacation ends and they have a few hours a day to themselves again.

I admit the possibility occasionally appeals to me, too. Think of all the blogging I could get done!

But then I think about how that would change our family life. How much I would miss them. The struggles and boredom they might face in school unnecessarily. The moments we would miss out on because we simply weren't together to experience them.

And I celebrate our choice to do so. I know I'm lucky to have a husband who feels the same way I do -- even as he headed back to school himself.