Category — Community Life

Well, I once again expected everyone to be bummed out by my negativity, and then everyone instead told me I’m purty. Gee whiz.

It’s one of the great discoveries of my life. In true friendship, there is room for sharing, even with the hard things. I’m always so concerned about not being a burden. But there is definitely a difference between throwing bricks at someone and leaning your head on your friend’s shoulder.

My friend Sara called today, so that we can work out a way to get my computer to her husband, so that he can fix it for me. And she called our friend Christy, who called me and conversed with me about high interest accounts- saying pretty much the same things that Heather said in her comment. Did you know that there are blogs that show you which accounts have the highest interest? I didn’t. I think that maybe there are blogs for everything. And then there are blogs like mine, the ones that don’t seem to know what category they fit into. Parenting? Personal? Art? Humor? Inspirational? Melodramatic? But anyways, it was sweet for my friends to leap to my rescue. It made me feel very much not as alone. (How’s that for a sentence?)

*
One thing that was hanging over me since we got home is the fact that we had no FOOD in the house. And that we’ve been eating nothing but eggs because we have no food in the house. I babysat for a friend yesterday and when she came over I asked if it was okay if her daughter had eggs for lunch.

“Well… she’s actually already had eggs today, but that’s fine, I guess,” she said, kindly.

And I was like, “IT’LL HAVE TO BE OKAY, BECAUSE THAT’S THE ONLY CHOICE.” But I didn’t actually say that. But it was true.

So, today I went shopping, blissfully alone except for the little butterfly in my womb, and first of all I had to plan my meals.

Some of you know that ever since I was eighteen I have lived in community, and in most of our communities there has been meal sharing. In the last one, at the Land, Renee practically begged to be the cook, the whole cook, and only the cook, so help her God, so we let her. And I scrambled my brain on taxes. But anyways, SEVEN MEALS A WEEK! I’m so new at this. I love to cook, let me just say. LOVE IT.

But what do y’all cook? I mean, good gracious, how do you feed yourselves? I don’t know how people do it, night after night. Maybe it’s partly because I’m using up so much energy right now, incubating this baby, that about half an hour after I eat, I’m STARVING, but it just seems like overkill, eating everyday.

So, today, wracking my brain, I called my mom to ask her for her lasagna recipe. She gave it to me over the phone, in a kind of sketchy memorized fashion, since she’s been cooking for decades.

Then, later, at the store, I called her again. “You said ground beef. But how many pounds of ground beef?” (What did I think she was going to say? Four?) She told me one, and then we hung up. Because it costs me about a million dollars an hour to call Canada on my cell phone.

Then, later, when they found my phone in the freezer, next to the frozen juices, the grocery store people called the last number that I had called, which happened to be my Mom and Dad. (It says, Mom and Dad. We’re not on a first name basis.) And they explained to my Mom that they had located my phone in the freezer and that when I came looking for it to please let me know that it was at the grocery store. But not in the freezer anymore.

What a day of phone calls for my Mom. There’s nothing to let you know that you’re still connected to your daughter like ground beef and lost cell phone notifications.

I’m sure she laughed.

And really- what do you eat? I’m checking out food blogs and stuff, but I’m curious, what do you eat a lot of, and how do you plan your weekly meals?

Well, today is November 1st, Moving Day and also the first day of that thing people do where they post every day for the month. I don’t post every day, as you may have noticed. Some people already post every day. Good people like blackbird. But me, I thought, hey! It’ll be fun.

Little did I know.

I think this upcoming month may be one of the busiest of my life. Good busy, but crazy busy. So, we’ll see how my posting every day goes. I have the best intentions, of course.

So, today is Moving Day. And I’m still here, after an insane week of packing and sorting and purging and burning and cleaning. Do any of you clean under your couches? You really should, because then you won’t be like me and be embarrassed when people pick them up and put them in the truck and it looks like a littered beach has been left behind on your floor. A beach littered with small toys. But who has time to move their furniture?

A bunch of stuff, including all seven pieces of our furniture and all of our strange instruments, are on the truck. It says a lot about us that about half of our belongings are cameras and the other half are odd musical instruments. We have more antique cameras than a camera dealer. But anyways. Some people collect Thomas Kincade, we collect Russian medium format cameras.

A whole lot of stuff is waiting for me to continue sorting it. We really are in the middle of this, right now.

I have survived without having a heart attack, and Renee, who is also packing to move, is just barely surviving without having a nervous breakdown. I had to look at her quite sternly yesterday and say, “Renee, you need to calm down.” She has too much going on, poor girl. And Mike and Julie, the other couple who live here, are busy being the sweetest people in the world, watching the kids for us, making dinner, helping us load the truck.

It’s going to be weird, going away from community cold turkey like this. As Renee said yesterday, I’m going to be looking around at about 10:00 in the morning and scratching my head, thinking–something’s not right. Because where’s Renee? She should be at my house making coffee by now.

But in other ways, it will be delightful. Chinua and I have lived with other people our whole married life, and before, too! We hope that a community will form in India. But until then, we need a little break.

The surprising part is that Chinua is driving the moving truck South, to Sacramento, and the kids and I are driving North, to Eugene. I’m on my way to Canada again. We didn’t plan it this way, but remember how I said my grandmother was sick? We got the news that she’s really quite sick, and I need to go and see her. So I am driving to Edmonton.
This will be a month of journeying, since I’m taking another trip at the end of the month, this one a working trip that is so very exciting that I can barely contain myself. I’ll tell you more about that one later.

As for now, I need to finish packing. The morning light is just beginning to filter through the trees and the kids are being crazy in their room. I think I’ll bring some coffee to Renee’s cabin, across the Land. Today we are saying goodbye to our home.

Because it beats packing.  Actually, this was a few days ago.  I have no life at this moment, other than files and boxes of things that I am sorting through.  Oh, and really interesting people that drive through.  Let’s talk about them later.  But here are more beautiful trees!

That’s one of my favorite ones to look at.  It’s really big.  And the leaves are golden when the sun shines through them.

Here’s a fun path to wander down. 

 

 

I’m smelling something good.  We’ll head to the kitchen.

 

 

 

Where we find Renee making vegetarian lasagna, which is one of our favorite meals!  Yippee!

 

1. It rains and rains and rains.  This is good for the river.

2. I am in a little cabin in the woods with three children, ages almost two, three, and five.  Just, use your imagination. 

3. I am trying to get ready to move.  Our community has been here at this Land for ten years.  There are files in the office from 1993.  I found a 1957 Ford truck manual yesterday.  (Why on earth do we have this?)  I will have to pull out the camera, so I can show you guys the extent of what I believe will eventually make me insane.

4. Let’s see.  Yesterday at our community meeting we discussed: a) Dumpster vs. trash runs, which is basically money vs. pain.  How much scrap do we have?  We can get money for this, maybe offsetting the cost of the dumpster.  b) The eleven vehicles that we still need to deal with.  (Abandoned, not working…) c) What can we sell? Stoves? RV? Chainsaw? d) Which day should we go shopping?

5. Yesterday we also received a scathing letter from someone we haven’t met, condemning our choice to sell the Land.  Where have all these people who care so much been, the whole time we’ve lived here?   I am amazed at the number of people who are popping out of the bushes angrily, like hedgehogs.

6. I love teaching my kids.  It is possibly my favorite thing.

7. Also my favorite thing is Leafy’s new phrases, “HUG!” and “I love you ______” (name inserted)  He yells “HUG” about eighty-seven times a day, and says “I love you” about fourteen times a day.

8.  So, all in all, life is good.  (Just, do you think it’s cruel to make my kids play outside in the rain?)

We arrived home, the night before last, after a day of driving filled with rain, cold, NPR podcasts, (many, many NPR podcasts) and our friends who drove with us.  They were coming from the same direction to visit us at the Land for a couple of days, and we had fun playing with the configuration of drivers and passengers and vehicles. Girls in the van! Girls in the car!  Boys in the car! Boys in the van!  There are endless possibilities.

Our van is kind of funny, with its no heat function, so when rain happens we have to open the vents and the windows to keep the windshield from fogging up.  Choosing between no sight and being cold is easy, we choose being cold.  Choosing between the $1000 needed to fix it and being cold is easy too.  Blankets for everyone!  (I’m going to look into it before winter hits, though, to see if there are any less expensive options.  There is nothing quite like deciding not to go somewhere  because you don’t want to be cold.)  But then the rain stopped and it was sunny in California, and we hit the beach and fed some ground squirrels. 

When we got home, I opened our front door and looked inside, and wow!  I fell in love.  Again.  With my house.  It was so beautiful, the warm wood everywhere, and Renee had cleaned it up for us (she was housesitting) and I felt so, so sad to be leaving.  I went to bed happy to be home.

And then, yesterday. 

I think it took me about two minutes to become stressed out.  So much to do, finances out of control, (I say to myself, I am about to have a heart attack) weeds in the garden (despite Renee’s valiant weeding while we were gone). 

I have not yet complained much about living at the Land.  But right now the burden of these ten acres is pressing down on me.  We handle our finances with the combined contributions of the people who live together.  Right now, as we leave, we have so few people living together that this isn’t working.  Neither is a shared work force, maintaining and improving, since it turns into Chinua and I, and a handful of people, running around the Land in circles.

It’s like a bad dream.  I run and I run and I can’t get it all done.   

I’ve never wanted to simultaneously leave and stay so badly before.  This is my home in a way that no other place has ever been a home to me.  Driving back into the Redwoods was like driving into the womb, or something.  (Bear with me.)  But the situation has become unsustainable, and it is time for the next step.  And this is breaking me, a little more, when I thought I had done all the breaking I can.  There are so many other people who have history here, too, and our leaving has become symbolic to them of the end of something. 

Selfishly I feel like I can’t carry their sadness along with my own.

There is no way to escape this, no other home I can go to, no possibility of getting away from doing what I hoped I’d never do, dealing with the end of ten years of being here, hurting with it.  Leaving the river. 

The only way over this is through it, we have to put things in boxes.  We have to stretch farther than we’ve ever been stretched before, and this is no small thing.  I fret about money and I fret about mess and it has no result. 

And yet, God is here.  He is calling us forward and we look for small miracles in the journey.  I hear Him in the rush of the river and think of being swept over, again and again.  Once more, I am being combed through, and I pray that I will emerge a little more free of burrs, of the stinky me that sometimes seems to refuse to lay down.  I pray for grace, for the ability to be more than me, more than what I am, because what I am doesn’t seem to be enough.

I have these moments with parenting that I feel are absolute triumphs, when I’ve figured something out with one of my kids, or when I know that I’ve made someone’s day, they are glowing with it. And then I have moments when I feel like I’m living in parenting outtakes.

I’ve mentioned before that YaYa is in an interesting stage. Three seems to be an emotional age for her, and I’m trying to figure out which buttons make her work and which ones cause a crash. The other day she was on the verge of a meltdown, (or, in the process, really, she was melting down) and it was happening while I was trying to get the other kids some dinner. We eat together, as a community, for lunch and dinner a few days a week, and she was having a really hard time while I was gathering plates together for the three of them. It kind of sounds like someone is drilling into your skull when YaYa is having a meltdown, which adds a little extra pressure when I would like to spare other people from the strain of having their skulls drilled.

I took YaYa aside for a minute.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “If you can’t eat nicely, you should eat by yourself in the laundry room.” (The laundry room has a desk in it that I use to have a kid eat at if they seem to be unable to focus with everyone else.)

“I want to eat in the laundry roommmmmmmmm,” she wailed shrieked.

“You need some time to be alone?” I asked.

“Yessssssss.”

So I set her up, left the door open so she wouldn’t feel totally alone, and rubbed her back before I left.

“Sometimes it’s nice to be alone,” I said.

A few minutes later Renee came into the room and found her there eating.  “I’m having alone time,” she chirped happily.  And she ate every bit of her lunch, a phenomenon not to be understated. Problem solved.

And why not?  There is nothing that I like better than alone time when I am having a hard day.  The bliss of solitude is rare in my communal, family-oriented, busy-as-a-bee lifestyle.  It is sweet, precious nectar to me.  It appears that my little daughter feels the same way. 

I love it when I can figure out a little piece of the puzzle. 

***

On the road, we are on the second leg of our trip to Canada today, happy to be going, happy to have spent time with wonderful friends here in Eugene on our way up. 

I have this tapestry that I bought on my first journey to India, back in 2000.  I was nineteen and “home” wasn’t even a huge consideration to me, I just wanted to travel.  I knew even then that my mind was most clear when I was in motion.  But I bought this beautiful red tapestry (red is my favorite color) in Rajasthan, and everywhere I went I spread it on my bed.  What we hang on our walls here, people in India use for sheets, so it became the sheet that covered my bed in every guesthouse.  I remember the bed that had so many lumps I had to curl around them, in the cracks. 

That tapestry now goes everywhere with me.  My Superstar Husband and I hung it on the wall in our first home, Cabin A, here at the Land.  We hung it on the wall when we lived in Arcata.  It hung on the wall in our communal living space in San Francisco.  And here it is acting as a curtain in our bedroom. 

I think this is kind of what you guys were talking about.  These things take on more meaning than they had originally, sitting there in the shop waiting for us.  They reek home, permanence, the thing we all long for, no matter how nomadic we are. 

***

And now here is a little tidbit of cooking advice for you.  Our community is kind of building a reputation for its chai, and most of us can make a rip-roaring pot of chai.  But somewhere along the way we discovered this chai concentrate, a combination of spices that you can spray into a cup of regular tea to instantly transform it to masala chai (spicy tea). 

Yesterday I made oatmeal with raisins and apples and cinnamon and maple syrup, and I sprayed some of the chai concentrate into it. 

Best bowl of oatmeal in my life, excluding maybe the oatmeal that we make at Rainbow Gatherings, since eating when you are camping is better than any other kind of eating. 

Today I needed to go to the post office and Kid A was playing with his friend who lives here.  This friend is almost exactly the same age as him, and lately they have been inseparable.  These social behaviours of kids are so strange, you know?  I mean, five minutes ago they couldn’t play without fighting, and now suddenly it seems like they have a secret language. 

Also, they make up songs.

They both wanted to come to the post office with me, and I can’t blame them, since checking our post office box is the highlight of my day.  You get to put the key in the little lock and then TURN IT and open that little door and maybe, just maybe, there will be something cool in there.  Or maybe there will be four PG&E bills.  More likely four PG&E bills.  (For some reason that I have never been able to fathom, we have four different accounts for different parts of our property.  When I have politely inquired, Headquarters has informed me that it is in my best interests to leave it alone.  Laissez faire.  Okay, I get the point, I say, but do you really need to be all mysterious about it?)

Anyways, I was in a fun mom mood, so I threw a couple of booster seats in the back of the car I was driving and we drove up past the honeysuckle and around the corner and onto the highway.  On the way there the boys amused themselves immensely by pretending we were driving off of the cliff and into the other cars and stuff.  Great fun. 

On the way home they amused themselves (and me!) by singing this song:

“Get up, stand up- stand up for your rice.

Get up, stand up- don’t give up the mice.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.  Not only was it a Bob Marley remake, it involved both rice and mice, two very cool and important nouns, which deserve more lyrical attention in my opinion.  They sang it all the way back down the highway and kept singing as we took the crazy left into our driveway, past the sign, around the ponds, and back home. 

What could someone be searching for when they google “poo filled diaper”.  I’m always amazed by how many of the searches that reach me have something to do with poo.  Once someone searched for “taking a poo on the toilet”, and found me.  You know you’re profound when the poo searchers are hitting your site.  But really, what are they trying to research?  Which reminds me that once I got a couple of comments from a highschooler who was trying to research amoebas and reached my post “the amoebas are lovely under here“, only to find that it wasn’t about amoebas, and use three different names to comment that I should have posted about amoebas.  I thought it was pretty funny.

Oh, and by the way, if you are ever in doubt about whether racism is alive and well today, just check out the comments on any Youtube video about any racially potent topic.  Good GOLLY, people say some wack stuff.   I get so used to the respect that commenters have in our blogging community that I am always shocked by the comments on a lot of news sites or Youtube.  One time I tried to enter the fray because I was all riled up, only this was about child-hating, not racism, and against my husband’s advice I entered a conversation with some really hurtful people.  DID NOT WORK.  I saw right away that I should have taken his advice.  And I was mad, so my comment was sarcastic, but basically some people were making very rude statements to the effect that parents shouldn’t take their kids out based on their inconvenience to other people.  I think they used words like “snotty-nosed brats”, and “little animals”.  So I just sort of made the point that maybe we should start a society where we remove all inconveniences, like those bratty little kids who can’t keep their annoying voices down, and yeah, while we’re at it, elderly people can’t seem to pull their own weight, either.  And what about those disabled people? If we get rid of all of them, we’ll have a great time!  No one to inconvenience us.

Yes, I realize that my comment was slightly inflammatory.  And it made not a whit of difference to people who already had their minds made up.  And the ringleader of the mean people said that I called him a nazi.  Which I guess I did, in a way.  But he was talking like a nazi!  You can’t call children little animals that should be kept in cages and insinuate that mothers should stay inside with their children for the first five years of their lives without running the risk of being called a nazi!  Thus, my first and only foray into a comment beat-down. 

But isn’t it true?  There is a bell curve in the village that is society.  In the middle are those who have grown up, who can keep their noses clean and make their own beds and grow food for all of us to eat.  On either end are those who take more care, who need help and nurture.  On the beginning end are those who are being raised, who will one day turn into the food growers.  And on the other end are those who should be reaping the rewards for their years of labor, who deserve to have their bed made for them and even to be tucked in between clean, fragrant sheets.  I think that as long as our culture is youth-driven and self-serving, these people in our village will be disrespected. 

The conversation I was part of was about the child-free movement.  I don’t personally have a problem with people getting together with other people like them.  If there is anything that I’ve learned from community, it’s that it’s hard for single people to live with us, these big crazy families with all the poo.  But we’ve seen that it IS possible, that you can live together in love.  And I DO have a problem with hurtful attitudes towards the ones who should be cherished and protected in a society. 

Chinua and I take great care to cultivate our kids’ respect of adults and behavior in public places, and I totally understand that it is really hard to be around little energetic beings who have no governor on their emotions.  But I think that all it takes is a little bit of teaching and a little bit of grace.  Wait, make that a LOT of teaching and a LOT of grace, I’m sorry, I forgot what I was talking about for a minute.

And wow.  Rabbit trail.  I love coming here and just letting my mind run.

***

I realize that I kind of left you hanging with the whole Turkey thing.  I was left hanging there for a minute, wondering whether I would be able to go or not.  And, unfortunately, this time it’s not.  I will continue to hope for the future, though, that Chinua and I will once again be able to run around the world together.  He is flying out tomorrow, leaving from here today, and he’ll be gone for two weeks.  Oh, my Superstar Husband.  I will miss him. 

I’m heading up to Canada to visit my family within the next few days.  I’m driving by myself with the kids, which many people have expressed shock over, but we’ll take it in two chunks with a long stop in between, and have you ever tried to make it through airline security with three little ones?  Plus, I love driving, love the stretches of field, the road long and wide.  The kids do really well, too.  It feels like an adventure. 

(You know what doesn’t feel like an adventure? Packing. Groan.)

So I really wish I liked shopping, just for the record.  Sometimes I make an attempt to go looking for clothes for myself, but as soon as I step into the store I feel a familiar pang of fear… what monster lurks behind the clothing rack?  And then I flee.  Every so often I have a lucid day.  I have certain places that I feel safe in.  The Thrift Store in the town just north of us, for one.  Because, you know, you can avoid shopping for yourself, but those kids grow so darn fast.

And shoes.  I don’t deny that I like shoes.  I have certain shoes that I ogle at outdoor stores.  Keens. Campers. Uggs.  No woman seems to be exempt from the great shoe love.  We watched a Dora the Explorer show with some of the little friends here at the Land, and our little friend Bria spent the entire time after Dora turned into a True Princess trying to catch another glimpse of her SHOES.  “WHERE ARE HER PRINCESS SHOES?” she asked, in the one decibel level that she has.

You all guessed right, however.  And I hoped to have more to tell about the possible upcoming trip to Turkey, like a definite yes or no, but the truth is that I’m still hovering, mid-air, trying to play Memory and hoping that the pieces are going to start matching up sooner or later.  I feel like I have eight cards turned over and none of them have matches, and I’m staring at the board trying to decide which piece I will turn over next. 

One thing I know for sure.  My Superstar Husband is going.  He has a ticket out of San Francisco towards the end of May, at which point I will pack up the kids, rustle them into the van, and head north to Canada, my home and native land.  At that point, I may or may not leave the kids with their wonderful, strong, capable (I’m rooting for you guys!) grandparents for a week and fly out of Vancouver.  But there are issues like funding and passport stuff and tickets to work out. 

So, my brain is being stretched again.  And I dream of a bus ride in a foreign country.  There is a gathering that we’ll be going to, focused on Peace.  Israelis and Iranians and Americans and many others will be there, it is a Rainbow Gathering, and last year my Superstar husband had a really good time.  We love the Prince of Peace, so it is the kind of event that we love to find.

Last night we had a small farewell/blessing party for the friends of ours that are moving away for a time.  It was really fun, and we were able to talk about our friends and how much we love them.  They have been in our lives for a long time, and they are like wedding twins with Chinua and I, since they got married only two weeks after us.  We played music at their wedding and danced like we were dancing at our own.  We spent a lot of time together in those first months, lived next door to each other in our cabins (we were living at the Land then, too) and I was able to be with them when their first daughter was born. 

The sting is going out of it, a little, for me.  I am feeling less sad and more excited for them, for what the next few months will bring for them. 

Like the Irish Blessing says, “May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and the rain fall softly on your head.”