From my father, I inherited a love of constant movement.  From my mother, I was given the means to deal with such rootlessness.

            My father's desire to travel, to see new things, and to help those less fortunate than us brought my family and me to a small island in the South Pacific when I was only six years old.  At that age, I thought it was a great adventure.  My mother had a few more concerns than I did, naturally.

            Her story is familiar: the schools weren't up to par, so along with her sunscreen, she packed two years' worth of texts and syllabuses.  Those lesson plans lasted almost six months.  After we had soaked all that up, she was pretty much on her own.  No other children on the island were being homeschooled, so she had no parents to commiserate with, no internet to help provide resources, and only occasional supply trips to a slightly larger island.

            She improvised.  My sister began to learn Latin, while she drew big lips on particle board for speech lessons for me.  We made a newspaper: the Saipan Sun.  We took field trips almost every other day, receiving lessons in botany and seeing science theories in motion.  It seemed like she knew everything, even though every other question I asked would be met with a calm "look it up."  I thought she was just holding out on me.  I learned what research was.  Still, the most important lessons, and the ones that stuck with me through the years, were ones not found in books and not taught in a conventional classroom.

            Lesson One: Be flexible.  My mother was a master of this.  If there were no books, she taught from the window - lesson plans that encompassed the span of eight years difference in her pupils' knowledge base.  If a storm had come up suddenly, it was a perfect opportunity for a lesson we found in the store down the hill usually came with Japanese characters on them, but this only added to the fun.  Stories were woven while guessing at what they were trying to tell us, and imaginations flourished.  Our second year there, I was Mary in a not-completely-standard Christmas pageant, where Joseph was a young Chamorran from across the island, and the Angel of the Lord was a sweet Japanese girl with palm fronds for wings.  We would greet the pastor and each other with "hafa adai," as often as "good morning."

            Lesson Two: There's no escaping work.  Forget about faking a stomach ache; what was the point, when your teacher is the one giving you your medicine?  I remember at the time thinking that my mother had no heart, forcing me to do schoolwork in bed, even when I was sick.  I would sign and groan loudly, and when that availed me nothing, I would grumble that she would force me to write my letters, even if I was on my deathbed.  "Yep!"  She'd say cheerily, and open the window shades for me.  Years later, away in college, I would remember this lesson.  I toyed for a while with the freedom I had, ignoring homework and procrastinating like mad, but even then, I knew that work was inevitable, and I might as well just get to it.  If your fingers aren't broken, you can write a paper.

            Mom, of course, was the best example of both those lessons.  She wasn't trilled about moving far from home and the things she knew, but she adapted.  When the schools didn't meet her standards, she didn't complain or put off doing anything about it.  She rolled up her sleeves, and just went to work on a couple of whining teenagers and one little kid with a lisp.

            I'm pretty glad that her lessons have stuck with me.  They've served me well in my wandering life so far.  I can only hope that one day, with children of my own, I can be as flexible and as steady as she was.

- by Bethany Herron