She Graduated!

Congrats to my Piper

It has happened.

Wildwood has graduated one more student. We gathered a sweet group of folks together to celebrate Piper Finn and all that it takes to graduate from high school.

And if you were there, you can completely skip this post because you heard all of this already.

If you were not, here is what I said at graduation . . .

Piper Finn - you have never been an ordinary person. You are unlike anyone else. You have never approached any aspect of your life in an ordinary way. It makes perfect sense to me that your graduation would also be unlike any other graduation as well.

You were born on just the day I prayed you would be born. You were born on my mother’s birthday, your grandmother, the first birthday after she had passed away the previous winter. You are a gift to me, for sure. And you are named after her - one of the many names in your line up belongs to my mom and to me too. And now, of course, it’s yours as well.

You talked before you walked. In full sentences actually. Mostly grammatically accurate from the start.

You were speaking in fully formed paragraphs before you grew a head of hair. You said yes to a trip to Guatemala when you were just 15. You hopped on the back of a moped and rode through those bumpy city streets.

You wore high heels on the cobblestone streets of Paris so you could take just the perfect photo you had imagined in your mind at the Louvre.

What I am saying is - you are unique and this celebration is unique too.

Tonight we are here to celebrate Piper. To celebrate and honor and recognize the years of academic learning, the years of personal growth and the people who walked with Piper on this unconventional path of homeschool, co-ops, public school, Fine Arts Center and back to homeschool again.

Piper is the fifth child in our family. This is the fifth homeschool graduation we’ve done.

I’ve already been asked - does this get easier?

I’m here to say - no. It does not.

Piper - when you were four years old, I started debating at what time I should begin your education. Should I start you in kindergarten at four years old? You were already joining us at the table for school and you certainly were learning rapidly.

You were chatty and eager and so I considered it.

But then a fellow home school mom whose children were on the other side of finishing school, asked me, “Do you want to send a 17 year old to college?”

Again, you were baby number five so I knew a bit more at that point than I had before and so I confidently decided, “No, I do not want to send a 17 year old to college.”

And so your formal education began the following year.

It was a good decision.

But here we are - and I find out, maybe I still don’t want to send an 18 year old away either.

I don’t want you to leave. And, of course, in the same breath, I am elated for what is ahead for you.

A lot of Piper’s education has happened at the kitchen table, in the living room, in a hammock, in a cardboard box on the floor that she and her brothers often acquired and turned into some sort of village in the hall. Piper is the only Keigley girl to be sandwiched between two brothers and they’ve been her friends and her audience since the start.

But as I was looking through photos in preparation for this event, I also was reminded of how much of Piper’s education has been experiential. I don’t mean as in an experiment - although perhaps all education is - I mean as in, her educational life has been marked by incredible opportunities for experience. She was just in kindergarten when we read the entire Little House on the Prairie series and traveled across the United States exploring where Laura had lived - sleeping in a covered wagon, visiting DeSmet, South Dakota and cheering on her sister in a Laura Look A Like contest. We learned about maple syrup traveling to maple orchards in Upstate New York. She was the voice of a maple leaf in a video series promoting maple syrup. Piper was violently ill in Zion National Park and a little leftover at the Grand Canyon. We cheered with ice cream cones at the faces at Mount Rushmore.

At the end of first grade we started what would become an annual trek across the country to reach Colorado. In high school we had the opportunity to visit Guatemala two years in a row, building stoves and building relationships with new friends in San Juan La Laguna. Piper didn’t hesitate - she hugged kids and carried cinder blocks and ate whatever was on the plate. She earned a new nickname there - Papelita, which means Little Paper because that’s what one gentleman thought she said her name was.

We’ve read plays and watched them live, we’ve taken pasta making classes and watercolor classes and picked up trash from the highway. We saw the Mona Lisa together and danced in front of the Eiffel Tower as it sparkled. We visited my brother in New Zealand. She hunted wild goats and rode in a helicopter and landed on a glacier!

I cannot even begin to count all the hours she has babysat children. Piper has worked for several years at TR Makers Co, helping students and creating art. She’s spent years working at Brett Einsely Studios, learning how to write songs, how to write music, sing. She’s volunteered and served on our church’s worship team for years. She has taken ceramics classes and two years of photography courses.

Yes, she has learned math (thanks to Teri Lee) and she has learned science (thanks to Mrs. Merriweather and Mr. Forest and a host of other names), she has written gobs of poetry and essays and read novels upon novels. She’s taken Spanish class and whatever all the other electives and requirements the state of South Carolina says matter.

But what she’s really done, is lived a life. Become a whole person. Had experiences.

Piper has grown into the person she is, in part, because she has experienced education. She has grown and she has changed and she is still growing and still changing.

Raising children is complicated. Homeschooling is challenging. It involves a lot of providing opportunity. Of careful placement of good and lovely in front. It involves a lot of waiting and seeing.

Charlotte Mason, a British educator who has deeply influenced our family’s homeschool path, said,

The question is not, - how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education - but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care?

In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?

Piper is the sort of person who comes to the right conclusion in her own time. She thinks. She is deep. She ponders and she prays and she CARES. Goodness, she cares. I’ve watched her navigate impossibly hard situations with grace. I’ve seen her mature, delete apps that don’t honor her heart, have hard conversations, make solid choices.

I’m deeply proud of you, Piper.

Did you see the quote by Frederick Buechner?

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.

Piper, we know a little bit about what is next. We have the plane tickets and the schedule. And also - we don’t know what is next.

2 Chronicles 20:12 is a verse that lives beside my mirror and I see it every day. It’s a gentle and secure reminder for whatever comes after today.

We don’t know what to do but our eyes are on you.