The Day the Doorbell Rang

My doorbell rang. I ran down my steps to the front door and opened it to find five young, beautiful, bright-eyed girls standing there.

It was England during the month of March in the year of nineteen eighty-one. A decade into the homeschooling boom, these girls were actually my first homeschoolers.

They were probably more like one-room schoolers because the girls had always been taught together in one of their homes; but they were also like homeschoolers because each had had individually-paced lessons, they’d never been tested, and the girls had never been enrolled in the public education system.

My girls were pristine learners.

I’d been approached by one of the moms a couple of weeks earlier and asked if I could teach their daughters. I said I would. Grammar was the subject. Their ages ranged from eight to thirteen.

The day the doorbell rang was their first day of lessons with me. To say they were excited would be an understatement. They were so delighted they were practically bursting at the seams.

Partly, I think they wanted to study with me. I was young, I had no children, and in some ways, my youthful spirit was still more aligned with theirs than it was with their parents, who were overwhelmed trying to run households and raise kids outside of the system.

And partly, I think it was because, at the time, I lived in a 22-room home which, for five young girls who were growing up in counsel homes, it must have seemed like a castle.

I taught my first lesson upstairs in my sitting room overlooking my backyard which was surrounded by trees, rose bushes, and lilac blossoms. There were no other signs of civilization apart from ourselves. For a short while, we were in our own world. There was something magical about that day and the days to follow.

Do I remember how I conducted my first lesson? No. I only remember that I was given a grammar book and it was from that book I taught the girls.

What I do remember is the gleeful expression in their eyes, their eagerness and willingness to learn, and their concentrated efforts to contain their giggles amidst their excitement.

And for as long as I taught them, which wasn’t too long as I soon moved to Spain, whenever the doorbell rang on a Wednesday afternoon at 1:00 pm, I would continue to find five bright-eyed girls standing at my front door eager to begin their grammar lesson.

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