basketball buddies
(the little girls playing at the basketball game)

A few years ago, my husband urged me to start a black homeschool support group. I thought that would be pretty hard, considering that I didn’t know many black homeschoolers. In fact, I thought I knew all the ones in my area, and I was a little apprehensive about contacting them.

Then we became small group leaders, and Annette and her family, (black homeschoolers!) were in our group. They were new to the area, and I thought it my duty to show them around, so I started making my park day group a little more consistent. Then I got a call from Lillian, asking if I still homeschooled. She had a lady in her scrapbooking group that had told her that she was struggling because there were no black homeschoolers in town. Lillian had told her pshaw–she knew several. But when she tried calling them, she found that several had quit homeschooling. She was quite desperate by the time she reached me. Meanwhile, Keisha, the lady from Lillian’s scrapbooking club had found Annette in a directory and had called about getting together. Annette invited Keisha to our park group, and we all had a good time getting to know each other.

I started to panic about the legalistic ramifications of a black homeschool group. I mean, does it have to be all black? Can’t we just have people that we get along with, have similar goals and visions, etc., while still being black ourselves? Well, yeah. So I started inviting other friends to our group, and we were going along swimmingly.

Then Keisha and her family moved away. And Maureen and her family moved away. And Miriam got busy. So we’re down to about three families on a good day.

When one of the families from our church that had inspired us to homeschool (but had been one of the people Lillian had called and had quit homeschooling) started up again last year, I thought, ok, now we can have our local black group! Except that they were busy and we were busy what with Yasha and everything, and before I knew it, they had put their kids back in school.

Saturday, Keisha and her family came to visit. We took them to Yanni’s basketball game, and I had the most fun I’ve had at a homeschool game. Suddenly, a vision flashed before my eyes. I remembered back three years when Yanni played on the 7th grade basketball team. At the homeschool tournament, there was a predominantly black basketball team. They were from all over East Michigan, apparently unable to find a group in just one city. People traveled from all over their area to play basketball together. Keisha is back in Detroit, still looking for a community of homeschoolers. Why couldn’t we be a community? It’s not like she moved to Wisconsin or something. . . those little wheels are turning in my head.

I see how the performing arts group draws from all the surrounding areas to put on a production. Why couldn’t we get something off the ground like this? I’ll have to pray and work on this.