I’m stood on the beach, toes digging into the sand. To my right side, the sky is pink, streaked with candy floss wisps of cloud. To my left, the side my friends are facing, we are watching, waiting. The dark descends gradually as we stand there, expectantly. Then like switching on a light, it happens suddenly. So suddenly in fact that my friend has gone to fill up our water bottles and we shout her back, giddy with excitement. I turn to my left and in front of me now is the harvest moon. Huge and close, with a reddish glow, it’s what we were waiting to see, and I’m awestruck.
Earlier today we’d taken the train down to Bournemouth. It’s just over an hour journey from our home. As a home educator, who doesn't drive I find ways to make all the time we spend on public transport fun. I’ve packed copious amounts of snacks for my children and some of our favourite sea themed books. We snuggle up, the three of us squeezed on to two seats in front of a table that’s now as messy as my living room floor. My daughters eat oranges and apples while I read to them about the wildlife of different seascapes. We’re transported around the world to the polar oceans, mangrove swamps and estuaries.
When our train pulls into Bournemouth, we hop off and rush to the bus stop, knowing we’ve only got a few minutes to make our connection. Luckily, it’s running late, and I’ve got time to catch my breath before we board. The driver is friendly, smiles at my children’s excitement and doesn’t charge for my elder one, for whom I should in theory pay. My kids sit at the back of the bus, singing and laughing, while I keep an eye on the screen for our stop. My 4-year-old has been asking to go to the beach all summer.
We’d gone a couple times on holiday in the Isle of Wight back in early June, but we tend to avoid the beach during summer holidays because we’re not used to the crowds, so we’ve not been since. We found an amazing secret paddle spot shaded by sycamores and featuring a rope swing just a short train ride from home and have practically lived there for the last few weeks. But I know my little one is missing the salt sea air and the feeling of freedom and possibility that can only be found by the sea.
Making Memories
Last year in early September we’d had one of those days the kids still talk about, at the beach with friends playing with our brand-new body boards. My plan was to repeat the same again this year, but the weather had other ideas. I know it’s almost a mantra for many nature loving parents that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes, but for me, without a car, rain means staying close to home and avoiding big adventures. So, when the idea of a beach trip is floated in our home ed WhatsApp group, I’m determined to go now the sun has returned.
We’re the first of our group to arrive at the beach. We set up camp and almost straight away we’re in the sea, holding hands, jumping the waves and screeching as the cold water hits us. I love this time together just the three of us, feeling connected and laughing uproariously in unison. Then the body boards are out, and my children giggle as they glide over the waves that return them to shore, before racing back out into the sea to catch the next one.
I know as they grow their lives will take them further and further away from me, but I hope I’m doing enough to keep them wanting to come back time after time. We get ice creams and have a mini poetry teatime, reading our favourite beachy poems about shells and whales. Our friends arrive, family by family, along with a new family who’ve recently started home educating. The children play together while us parents chat about motherhood, home ed, our children and our lives.
Once the tide has gone out and the waves are calm, a friend and I swim out to sea, as our children build sandcastles on the beach. The water is freezing but it’s exhilarating – I feel so alive. I give myself a pep talk to dip my shoulders under and afterwards I acclimatise to the cold. Most waves buff me gently. An occasional one is slightly bigger, thrilling me as it approaches, and I float over it. I look out to sea and feel a world of possibility ahead, for me and my children.
The Community of Home Education
I look back to the coast and I’m overcome with a feeling I cannot name, that I’ve only ever experienced since home educating, when witnessing my children play with others at the beach or in the woods while I observe from a distance with fellow parents. It’s impossible to articulate fully but it’s a sense of rightness, of belonging, of being in community with nature and with fellow humans. I feel deep in my bones that this is what we are designed for, that this is what nature intended for us all. I let the peace wash over me as the tide washes over the shore, and I bathe in feeling like we’re right where we’re meant to be.
We swim back to shore, and I chase my children round the beach then create a mermaid tail for each of them out of sand. They make one for me, delighting in burying my legs and then covering their creation with the beautiful shells they’ve discovered. My elder daughter writes our names in the sand, and I take pictures so she can see our names even after the waves wash them away. We don’t really have a sit-down lunch but they sporadically snack on fruit, veg and flatbreads, and eventually move on to the raspberry brownie I made the night before.
A 'Feral Mama Summer'!
I saw a meme a few weeks ago about having a ‘feral mama summer’ where your house is a mess but you’re outside all day, so you don’t mind, and instead of meals, your children snack as they please, in between making memories running around and jumping in any available water. I shared it with our home ed village as it sums up our lives – somewhat wild and feral, but full of adventure and love.
Sometimes I wonder if my children will grow up to wish they had a more normal childhood, with school, routines and predictability, and a mother who is more organised, neater, polished around the edges. I wonder how they will fit into the boxes society has available for them – of 9-5 jobs and strict hierarchies, of institutions that lack compassion, and of days, weeks, months, of indoor office life, away from the song of the sea and the hum of the woods. Away from anywhere to paddle, or anything to climb other than a career ladder.
The evening is approaching now, and my phone battery is running out. My friends plan to stay to see the harvest moon rise tonight, but I’m uncertain about what to do – whether to cut and run now while we’ve had a good day, or risk staying out later and potentially managing meltdowns on a long journey home. My phone battery dying seems like a sign that now is time to go – walking back to the bus stop in the dark with no google maps sounds like an adventure too far.
Thankfully a friend has a portable charger. I plug my phone in, relax and decided to stay. We order delivery from a vegan cafe to the beach and grab the kids some chips. I grasp this comparatively quiet and still time as a chance to read to them – this time about bioluminescent plankton, and how coconuts travel miles across the sea.
Later, once the temperature has dipped noticeably and the sky is starting to darken, I confess to my friend that I’m nervous about the journey home. I’m worried I’ve made the wrong call staying out so late and that my children will be on the train this evening exhausted and cold, and that we’ll all end up in tears. That their upset will make me doubt myself again, and wobble about how I’m raising them.
My friend can empathise; we’ve all been there. But she passes on a tip – when her children are wet, cold, tired and grumpy, she asks them “was it worth it?”. We chat about how when they look back and remember this day, if it is worth it, they won’t remember a difficult journey home, but they will remember what mattered to them – playing with dogs on the beach, running wild and free with friends, paddling in the shallows as dusk falls. I know my daughters remember our day at the beach last September still, and I hope the memory of this day stays with them too, forms a part of their childhood, a part of their soul.
Waiting for Moonrise
By now, the sun has set and moonrise is due soon, so I pack up our things and get my children changed into dry clothes. I have another spare set of clothes but tell them this is their last so not to get it wet. Despite agreeing, they soon run off to play and cannot resist the temptation to jump back into the waves with their friends, their laughter ringing out as I smile to myself, knowing this would happen. When I’m not watching my children, I’m scanning the sky, waiting for the harvest moon to rise.
The moon nearest to the Autumn equinox, which is 4 days away, this one is also a supermoon, so it’ll be bigger and brighter than usual. Also known as the Corn moon or the Barley moon, the name comes from the extra light it gives which helped farmers harvest their crops for longer past sundown. It will be lower on the horizon so the light has to travel through more of the earth’s atmosphere and there’s a partial lunar eclipse taking place tonight, meaning the earth will block some of the sun’s light from reaching the moon, these factors combining to give it a reddish glow.
When it appears, the children are oblivious, still playing their games together by the water’s edge. But us adults are transfixed, amazed, humbled. We call the children over and arrange them on the groynes in front of the harvest moon for pictures. Typically, we can’t photograph them all together, all smiling, all at once! But we’re not fussed really. The point is being here, the memory is enough. A photograph can’t capture how we’re feeling right now, but our minds will. I know every time I step on to this section of the beach for the rest of my life, I’ll remember this moment.
It's fully dark now and we start to leave. I collect my phone from my friend and shoulder our packs. Adults and children alike wave goodbye – to each other, to our names in the sand, to the beach, to the sea and to the moon. I turn around for one last look at that glorious, bright, round moon, glowing like an orb in the sky. I imagine how my ancestors would have seen the harvest moons they witnessed. For how many of them was it a pure spectacle of nature, to rejoice in and revere? For how many of them was it as a symbol of extra work, extra toil?
We’re approaching the toil part of our night – the long walk and long ride home. My children are chipper and so am I, until I go to switch on my phone and realise my battery is still dead: the portable charger hasn’t worked. It dawns on me that now night has descended, I’m walking through pitch black in a city I don’t really know, to a bus stop I can’t remember how to reach, with my two young children. Internally I’m panicking, but externally I keep it together. I remind myself that as a last resort, there are hotels nearby and while my bank balance wouldn’t be happy if I shelled out hundreds of pounds for a last-minute room, our safety is invaluable.
Kindness of Strangers
I think I know the way to the bus stop so I decide we’ll try to find it for 15 minutes and if we can’t, we’ll grab a hotel room for the night. We keep walking, chatting about our favourite parts of the day. A car pulls over and the window unwinds. Inside, a woman, a girl and a dog peer out at us. I joke that if they’re looking for directions, we don’t know the way anywhere! But they’re not asking for anything from us – the woman is offering a lift.
The presence of a child and a dog, the study books and well used booster on the back seat, reassure me and I take up her offer. My relief is palpable, I breathe a huge sigh and settle us all in, strapping my 4-year-old on the booster. The woman drives us to the train station and when we get out, I try to express how thankful I am, but I can’t, not fully. Without her we’d be lost in the dark, trying to find a bus stop, with my panic mounting and my children struggling. I’m grateful beyond words for her kindness to a complete stranger.
There’s a train leaving in two minutes, so we run for it. Out of the side of my eyes I catch my daughters’ faces set in determination, that we will make this train. I’m proud of their perseverance and resilience. We just about make it, almost sliding past the doors before they close and then collapsing on to the nearest seats. Once we’ve rested, we move to a table. A fellow passenger overhears me explain to my children that my phone is out of battery and lends me her charger. I thank her and thank fate for how many good deeds I’ve been the recipient of today. We cuddle in as best we can, and I read to them. My 4-year-old nods off.
The journey I had been dreading turns out to pass pleasantly enough with my littlest asleep and my 7-year-old engrossed in our book. With a charged phone, I contact my partner who picks us up from the station and helps me settle them both in bed. I’m on a natural high as I journal about our harvest moon adventure at the beach - an amazing day filled with the love I have for my children, the brilliance of our home education community, the kindness of strangers and the wonder of nature.
Beccy lives in Hampshire with her partner and two daughters, who are home educated. The family enjoy spending time in nature and being part of a vibrant and supportive home education community
