Creating the Village

[sarahmichelef]

Not too long after M and I were married (probably around the time Josh & Jacy moved to Cambridge), he commented that he thought it would be lovely to share a house with them at some point.  At the time, I was so opposed to the idea that it wasn't even funny - I had recently spent 5 years (my senior year of HS and all of college) living with roommates, not all of them of my own choosing, and often with moderate to major conflict.  I wasn't interested in sharing space with anyone but him, even theoretically.

And then we had TRex and moved to a city where we knew no one.  It's no secret that the first year to eighteen months that we were here were really REALLY hard for me.  Super-extraordinarily, soul-crushingly hard.  I don't make friends all that easily, and I was working from home most of the time; efforts I did make to form relationships with people didn't pan out (the Itinerant Sociologists Club of Buffalo, trying to socialize with acquaintances from baby swimming lessons and/or toddler gym class, the neighbors down the street who always say "we should get together" but then nothing ever happens).  Over time we got to be friendlier with SCA folks (hi kiersey, hi rapierlady) and started to have some semblance of a social life - me being head of the textile guild helped me feel like I had something of a group of friends.

But I keep coming back to that idea of "community", the impulse that I assume was at the heart of M's comment years earlier.  The clichéd "it takes a village" came up in our discussion of child-free/breeder issues a couple of weeks ago.  More and more I'm coming around to the idea that it really DOES take a village (a village where everyone's on board with it being a village, of course), and that a village is important not just for those of us with kids. 

At this point, I am to some extent attempting to CREATE that village, that tribe.  No, I'm not in a place where I want to have a big communal house.  But I could see a world in which a number of families came together for a huge group meal once or twice a month.  I am cultivating, or attempting to cultivate, friendships with like-minded families (the family of TRex's friend J being the most notable example - it helps that they live only a couple of blocks away).  This is at least part of the reason that I'm excited that the P family have moved to Buffalo, even though they live probably 10 minutes from us by car. This is why I bothered chasing down the contact information of a local woman we met at a wedding last weekend.

I will build my village.  Will they come?

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Comments

[helwen.livejournal.com]

I missed the child-free/breeder discussion, but the village sounds like an excellent idea. And perhaps you'll end up with a mix of with and without kids, a grandparent type or two, etc. Somewhere around here, Easthampton I think, a village-type setup was being developed that would be child-friendly and would include grandparent-types -- folks who would be happy to help care for and mentor kids, and the kids could learn to help in turn, so that there would be at least three generations of people living in the same area who had mutual concerns about a healthy and safe community for everyone.

[alphasarah.livejournal.com]

In some ways I love the idea of that multigenerational "intentional community", but I don't think moving into such a planned community, where I would be stuck with people who drove me up a tree. Tolerance, especially of stupidity, not being one of my virtues, you see.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

I agree. But I believe in the case of this community, people were having opportunities to meet each other first, rather than blindly applying. Don't know how it's going at this point, but their first few years were going pretty well. Anyway, I mostly mentioned it because it sounds like you're kind of trying to do that, and perhaps at some point some grandparental types may show up who might fit in.

[nalyirri.livejournal.com]

I am totally with you. I don't have any desire to be around people All The Time, and I'm pretty picky about who I want to spend time with, but I do want there to be people who I like, and who I'm comfortable with, and who I see every couple weeks. I'm slowly realizing, like you, that for this to happen, someone needs to make an effort, and probably that someone should be me (as it hasn't magically happened without doing so...). Please share any friend-finding/community-building tips you come up with, as this whole process seems awfully mysterious.

[alphasarah.livejournal.com]

Please share any friend-finding/community-building tips you come up with, as this whole process seems awfully mysterious.
Well, everything I've tried so far hasn't worked. So I'm pretty much just muddling through, too.

[stefka.livejournal.com]

I'm way over here in Vermont, but I will wave in a neighborly way at your village. And socialize with it when I can!

[alphasarah.livejournal.com]

I am *so* not discounting the value of Internet community. It can be so important. Hell, when one of the moms on my preemie list was chucked in the hospital on bedrest at 24 weeks gestation (where she remains... six weeks later, so that's made of win) and was going out of her gourd, one of our other members went to sit with her at the hospital that first night.

[ladydairine.livejournal.com]

A group of my friends are planning something kind of similar. Those of us who are planning to have children are planning to have them in the next 5 years. A couple of our friends parents are moving to the area and are interested in playing grandparents to the group. Also, those who are not having kids want to be aunts/uncles to them. Due to housing prices, we cannot buy close to everyone, but we want to make a community so that everyone has a chance to have other adults to interact with and the children have a wider group of adults to learn from.

[alphasarah.livejournal.com]

That is SO FANTASTIC. I hope it works for you!

[kass-rants.livejournal.com]

I'm having a serious problem with being solitary -- I work from home, I live nowhere near my friends, I basically have to event reasons to leave the house. And with gasoline costing what it does, I'm more limited than normal.

I seriously crave a "tribe". I don't even participate in my hobbies enough to have a gang of friend there anymore.

I never thought of the "village" idea, but it makes sense. Back in the autumn, I was thinking of moving to the next county where my two best friends live, but the housing market is too much of a mess.

[alphasarah.livejournal.com]

I hear you on the working from home, believe me. Makes a person CRAZY.

[aoibheann-ol.livejournal.com]

It's really hard to find that group of people; the people you click with intellectually who also are people you want around your children as role models, care givers, etc.

That said, I've recently come to like the idea of co-housing. My husband of course calls this a commune (which it's NOT). That said, I would still want to be able to have some choice in my neighbors in that situation; which of course is easier when you buy into a community than when someone else does.

In the meantime, our local SCA group has really become our community. It's very nice that there are lots of others with children as well as adults without kids. Sometimes parenting in a village is great; though it can cause it's own issues.

[alphasarah.livejournal.com]

That said, I've recently come to like the idea of co-housing. My husband of course calls this a commune (which it's NOT). That said, I would still want to be able to have some choice in my neighbors in that situation; which of course is easier when you buy into a community than when someone else does.
Yeah, that's the rub. I think that there would be TOO MUCH togetherness that would make co-housing non-ideal for me (as I said in my response to helwen above). But folks within walking distance? I'm all about that.

[dymphna79.livejournal.com]

Nalyirri and I have discussed that it would be great to buy a big apartment house and set up dorm-style living with all of our favorite people from college, to recapture that just-happened-to-stop-by-let's-stay-up-all-night-talking-with-smart-people style of friendship.

Unfortunately, many of our favorite people from college do not really get along.

Idea tabled.