THE MOM WHO HOMESCHOOLS HER KIDS by DIZZY TUREK
April 7 2025Not everyone is like her. She may teach her kids Latin, Math, & Roman history. She may make a whole mess of chili or spaghetti. That type of meal where the whole family & a few friends get their fill of the exact same thing, no specialities, no extra sauce, or different seasonings & it’s an insult to salt it more. All basically the same except the picky eaters who get peanut butter & honey sandwiches. The mom who homeschools her kids may believe demons were in the vaccine. That if you took the vaccine you have tainted blood & it isn’t over for you but your blood has been infected, not in an irreversible way, but a very damaging way & it may actually be over for you, though God’s mercy is powerful. She may invite the pastor from Holy Name to her property for a theological lesson for her kids & her.
A homeschool depends on so many factors that are outside the control of the family. There’s the socializing & higher education & the government. The mom who homeschools her kids may also believe Satan is alive in the culture writ large with its drag queens, school shootings, bullying, abortions, & people switching genders back & forth like shadows shifting in the pitch of night. The mom who homeschools her kids may pray to God & say Blessed be Your Holy children. Blessed be God, Blessed be His Holy Name, the mom may say with her kids all around. She may light a candle for her piece of the whole world.
The mom who homeschools her kids may be making sloppy joes for her middle kid’s baseball trophy ceremony tomorrow. She will have to decide, that or peanut butter & honey sandwiches. The mom who homeschools her kids may see a demon on the edges of her property. A demon out when her kids play kick-the-can. A demon shifting at the doorframe. She may sit in her sheets with her glasses off. She will always recite the name of every person she has memorized to pray for everyday. This includes every new kid she has welcomed to earth, every random friend of her kids, every wayward kid of the families she knows.
“Put your glasses on.”
She will pray on. She may think of the sloppy joe plan for the baseball celebration.
“Put on your glasses.”
She knows these demons. They always take on a familiar shape at her peripheries. She may have difficulty sleeping.
“You should check the bowl. I don’t think it flushed all the way.”
She will ignore the demon & finish the sloppy joes, load the kids in the 15 passenger van, load the sloppy joes, drive 30 minutes, unload the kids & the joes, help feed the whole team, help clean, reload the kids, drive 30 minutes, reunload the kids, & put everyone to bed. She may sit in her sheets with her glasses off.
“Put your glasses on.”
She will always recite the name of every person she has memorized to pray for everyday.
“Put on your glasses.”
In her most intimate moments, when the kids she homeschools are in bed, her husband on a sales call in Michigan, the mom who homeschools her kids may pray for the whole world because wouldn’t that be the right thing to do?
“Can you hear me?”
After all the noise & anger that she learns about online.
“I’m right here.”
After years of news of rape, murder, estrangement, tantrums, cruelty, hatred, lust, pain, suffering, resentment, nausea, fear, baseballs to the eye, war, debasement, humiliation, embarrasment, misinterpretation, assaults, terror, strikeouts, trafficking, abuse, losses, sickness, death, all that’s befallen the planet, after all the people who yelled at her, slandered her, called her stupid & cowlike, mocked her, & made her to be a housecrazed loon, a dirtsucking sow, after all the unendurable loss & heartbreak, doesn’t the world deserve a final chance?
“Can Christ save these doomed people?”
“Yes,” she will say, shaking, blind. The demon may stay.
“Yes,” she may say again. Because the mom who homeschools her kids knows in her soul the power of forgiveness & love above all & she will never forget it as long as she lives.
dizzy turek writes in chicago but is originally from ohio.