Familiar Education

Tristan was home schooled. In the mornings he would help his father in the garage, or out on the driveway. He fetched tools and held lamps while his father repaired old truck engines, black from seared oil. The kind of trucks that still had carburetors, not fuel injectors.  After lunch was either science or arithmetic followed by a variety of bare-foot skipping exercises in the back yard. His two sisters and mother would take turns playing instruments while they skipped along interwoven astral patterns foot-worn into the earth.