Borrowing Neighbors' Reserves
"Can I have a cup of flour so we can have a baby?"
My book draft has been turned in! My baby is cluster feeding.
My physical therapy will start soon, and I’m hoping to be back on my bike next week?
And, in the meantime, my reading has been wedding vows, dog shows, and… an essay I really enjoyed from Other Feminisms reader!
Mary Ellen Mitchell cofounded Lydia’s House, a Catholic Worker house, and she wrote recently in Comment on “Are Children a Good Idea?”
Here’s a section that stood out to me (emphasis mine):
My own children have been raised in what, at least for white Americans, is an unusually large community. I co-founded Lydia’s House, a Catholic Worker house that invariably enmeshes our family in all kinds of comings and goings…
As I consider what a better way might look like here in Cincinnati, I’m reminded of a new couple who are living and working with Lydia’s House. Having spent their formative years at an intentional community called Jesus People USA in Chicago, they became accustomed to children roaming in and out of their apartment. When they moved into our neighbourhood, they wanted to show my children their musical instruments, build scale models of houses with my architecturally interested seven-year-old, and drop off granola for my kids’ breakfast. They aren’t formal or paid child-care providers for us, and their own children are in college, but they are enriching and concerned adults. I hope my children, too, enrich them and keep them agile as they experiment with the freedom of their post-child-rearing years. Wanda, my baby-gazing neighbour, also shows me glimpses of another way, using my children as tasters for her recipes and inviting them to play Uno. My husband helps her move heavy things, and I bring her items from our food-pantry excess.
This network is not perfect, but had I experienced these small examples of the beloved community earlier in life, and known support to be consistent and reliable, I would have considered a larger family. If support and shared care were the norm, not the exception, I think many more well-off young women would think children are a good idea.
And I’d love to follow that up with a little poll:
For my own part, I’d say I’m lucky to live in a community where I can knock (or, in good weather, see people outside and invite myself in). But I prefer to text to ask if it’s a good time. My neighborhood has a mix of WFH and SAHPs, so there’s a pretty good chance of finding someone at home somewhere during the day, but they might be tied up by a deadline, a meeting, or just nap-trapped by a baby.
It’s the frequent, casual shifting of both light and medium loads that makes it more possible to imagine taking on a heavy load. We’re about a week or two from the end of our twice-a-week meal train deliveries from the neighborhood, and every drop-off comes with the chance to pray together and ask after any other needs.
It’s easier to take risks the more commonly needs are shared and met and the more often you get to invite others into the joys they’ve facilitated.
Where have you most casually shared need?
Where is your family extended beyond the nuclear?
What prevents you from knowing your neighbors or making your existing friends part of your neighborhood?
Socially I've always been the introvert who relied on making a few extrovert friends who dragged me into social groups on their coattails. The only time I ever had a really thriving social group of my own was in college where everyone lived on a small campus and it was easy to run into people without much effort and to have those daily interactions which made socializing almost effortless. I stayed near campus after graduation and continued to have that circle of friends who had done the same.
Then moving to Massachusetts from Texas when I came here for grad school was a culture shock. I had lived in a community where I had friends who just dropped by each other's apartments at a moment's notice after work. And my first few years here were incredibly lonely. I lived far away from campus and my classmates and commuted (because I couldn't give up the cheap rent). When I wasn't going to classes my classmates were really too far away to casually drop by. I tended to hang out with my roommates and they were very nice people, don't get me wrong. But somehow the dynamic was that I could go with them to hang out with their friends, accompany them to parties, go to movies and restaurants and concerts and such; but somehow their friends never became my friends. If my roommates weren't around, their friends didn't invite me to hang out or do things. I always felt like maybe I was doing something wrong.
Once we were married my husband's friends did adopt me and we had a bunch of mutual friends in the young adult group at our parish; but then we moved to the other side of Boston and had to start over again at a new parish where neither of us knew anyone in a small town where everyone seemed to already know each other and few people seemed interested in adding us to their circles.
Now I'm sure a lot of my isolation is because I'm an introvert and sometimes rather shy. But I did try. I went to library story hours and women's groups and church. And somehow none of those people moved from acquaintances to friendships. Even when our kids were old enough to join scouts, I found all the other moms knew each other through the schools and we were the homeschool family in a town where no one else homeschools and again we never moved past chatting nicely with each other on the sidelines at meetings to invitations to other people's houses.
I tried to be friendly to our neighbors, but no one seemed interested in going beyond very casual waving. I feel like I just don't know how to progress from that to something more. All my small attempts were rebuffed by people who didn't seem to want more. And I like a shy snail just pulled more and more into my shell.
The like-minded homeschoolers I've met over the years somehow all live far enough away to make going to meetups an endeavor of Herculean proportions. At least half an hour to an hour and a half drive to get anywhere. No one close enough to us to just casually drop in on the way to somewhere. And as school became more intense I found it hard to choose between having a consistent school day that let me get academics covered and having social time with these people who it took real effort to meet. Somehow I never figured out the secret that other people seem to have mastered of doing it all. I could either have educated kids or socialization time for myself, but not both. So we retreated to scouts as the primary socialization for the kids, which satisfied their needs, but not mine.
Lately the younger kids have found a tribe of neighborhood kids to run around with and play with. But again I cannot seem to connect with the parents of any of these kids. This grandmother tells her kids that homeschooling is bad though doesn't seem to prevent her kids from running around with mine, these immigrants seem happy to have their kids play with ours, but don't seem to want to socialize themselves. No one seems eager to connect and I don't know how to overcome the combination of my own shyness and their reluctance. I need an extrovert friend to be the bridgemaker.
I guess since moving here I've lost the trick of attaching myself to the extroverts who bring me into the social circle? Is it because there are too many small cultural differences between Texas and New England? Maybe? Is it because of the stage in life where people are just too busy? Is it the greater geographical distances between people that make it harder for communities to form? Is it some combination of all of the above? I don't know. I just know that I don't know how to create the kind of community that I crave and at this stage in my life I've come to an uneasy resignation that I might never recover that golden age of my youth when my college friends just dropped by on me and I just dropped in on them.
We’ve met many neighbors since moving into our house 2 years ago-mostly through casual daily greetings (with those whom we have adjoining yards -we both do tons of garden/yard work) and walks through the neighborhood. Even amongst those who are willing to meet, it is so so hard to coordinate even a simple dinner when everyone has different work schedules, children’s bedtimes, etc. -we had one dinner meeting that took months to find a date that worked. I think there’s just not enough regular communal routines that put us all in the same spaces without the pressure of logistics and planning, which suck so much energy out of everyone.
But the largest barrier to getting to know a lot of our neighbors better is...dogs. Pets have become such a casual fixture of modern life that people are pretty lazy about using leashes, fences, locking doors, etc., and I frequently find myself in the awkwardly infuriating position of feeling like I’m expected to apologize for my small children being scared of strange animals instead of dog owners taking responsibility for their animals. It makes the few ripe opportunities for neighborly interaction, like Halloween, very tricky to navigate.