Lawsuits Don't Home School

Six years ago a company filed for declaratory relief against my small software company. The name of the action is almost polite. It asks a court to say, out loud, what the parties already claim is true. What it took from me was the part of the day when truth is taught more slowly.

Homeschooling is mostly presence. The lesson is the smaller half. The larger half is staying in the room when a sentence doesn't land. I spent that half on a case whose premise was that a court should declare the software mine, against a company that had already taken it. The declaration came after the taking. A judge can say whose work it was. A judge cannot put the missed mornings back at the table.

She kept getting older inside those five years. A curriculum will wait. A daughter will not. I told myself the evenings would repay the mornings, which is the arithmetic a lawsuit offers you: it spends hours a child is also spending, and only one of those accounts can be restored.

What remains is the schooling I was not in the room to give. Lawsuits don't homeschool.