Being Intentional, Rather Than Passive, In Your Life-Part 5
The last part here, is how we became intentional within our social circle. I had intended the post about our village to be something else entirely. However, I’m feeling like this may be the best forum for it. So, buckle in, it’s a biggie.
From 18 to 24 years old, my husband and I had lived in 5 different states, he got out of the military, started one job, and moved to another when we saw the first was closing. There was a lot of change, in our lives and our social circle. We had moved from Western MA which had, surprisingly, a lot of social opportunities. Play times an elementary school gymnasium, play time at a foamnasium for littles, indoor play spaces, you name it. And then we moved to Western PA, and there was none of that. Outside of a mops group, there wasn’t anything targeted towards meeting one another, or indoor social time. And come the summer, the parks were dead and hardly used.
I kept hoping to make friends, for both myself and for my daughter, but it wasn’t that simple. Most people who live here, have been here their whole life. Probably for generations. They have their social circle, and they aren’t actively looking to make it larger. Which is great for them, not so awesome for, “transplants,” as we were named by those who have lived here their whole life.
About a year in, I met someone via a mom’s group who did photography. I had only “met” her via online. She invited me to a free photographers group (funny story, it was hosted by the person who grew up in the house we now own. It was actually through this group we wound up in the house we’re in). I made a few friends with kids the same age as my daughter. Once we moved into this house, we hosted some back yard play dates in the summer months with the trampolines (mind you this was almost 4 years after we first moved here).
I yearned for a group of people. For my own sanity. For my kid. We didn’t have family close by, I didn’t want her to not make strong connections just because we didn’t have relatives around. At the time, she had 1 cousin who was 5 years older than her, so it’s not like she’d have strong connections even if we lived near family. In one of our trip to the library, I grabbed a cookbook, several actually. I picked up Soup Night. Honestly, I just wanted some recipes for soup. What I found was a beautiful cookbook, filled with soup recipes, but with a personal story woven throughout it. It talked about how this small dead end street came together as a community, hosting soup night for the street once a month (or maybe it was once a week, I don’t remember). Everyone brought their own bowls and spoons, and showed up within a window of time. It moved from one person hosting, to people signing up for the year during the block party. A way to know their neighbors, find out who needs help, make connections. Amazingly, I still don’t own this book (but need to), but I would recommend it to anyone looking to feel inspired to create their own community.
Why couldn’t I create mine? Admittedly I didn’t live “in town.” There are 5 houses on my mile and a half long road. 3 of those are on our shared driveway occupying 55 acres of land between us all. It’s not like I can just go rally the neighbor kids to play (there weren’t any in my daughters age range anyway). But, just because I didn’t live near it didn’t mean I couldn’t make it. I had met a handful of women now by this point. All of them amazing in that they shared a few basic qualities. They were real, they were not judgmental or interested in the mommy wars, and they were willing to love on me and my daughter as if we were their own family.
At the time, I didn’t feel like the inside of my home was big enough to host everyone (Honestly, I still don’t, it’s not an open floor plan kind of space, and my anxiety doesn’t like chaos in my quiet spaces). But, we had a local swimming space at the creek. So, I suggested we all meet up there. Nobody tore my house apart when doing a large group, the kids could swim, play in the sand, we could pack a lunch. And if there was someone new, we could invite them without being worried if they would tear my house apart or terrorize my dogs. It worked out wonderfully.
We started hosting meet up time once a month. I would post a private event and invite people. We ended up investing in a 10×10 pop up tent for our beach vacation, and that got its use so hard at the creek. We’d go for the day. Let people know we’d be there all day. The plan was for us to enjoy ourselves. If others could make it, we’d love to have them, if only one or two families showed up, that was okay too. We’d packed a 5 gallon pitcher of water, solo cups, waterproof uno, life jackets, camping chairs, paper towels, snacks (while we packed for us, we packed with extra in mind in case someone came and it was going to be a matter of a hungry kid that kept them from staying longer if they wanted).
During that summer, I found the book The Turquoise Table. If you are wanting a community of your own, a village of people to do life with, I cannot recommend this book enough, Again, what I found was a woman who said, “I don’t have as much as I’d want to create this dream, but I’m going to find a way to create it anyway.” A lot of her conversation centered around living in a town, where people go walking, and you can sit in your front yard and chat with the regulars that go by. Again, I live in BFE, so this idea of front yard living wasn’t really one that was applicable. But what I took from her book was less about sitting and waiting for the world to come to you. What I took from that read was that she made an intentional choice to be available and put herself out there.
In 2018 we took down the big barn in our backyard. It was falling apart, an eyesore, and honestly, I wanted the yard space. At the time, we had purchased a 15 foot square trampoline from someone on marketplace at a steal of a price, but it was the only thing we could fit in our backyard. So, the barn came down. With all this new space, I had to envision what I wanted to do with it. And only one thing came to mind. Move the village back to the house and not at the creek. Become backyard people. So, we pushed the earth as far back as we can move it (it pays to live in the sticks, turns out you wind up with neighbors who own things like, skid steers that they’ll let you borrow, and eventually let you buy from them). We ordered some hardware to make a swing set with some 4×4’s, and the swing attachments. We bought landscaping timbers and framed in a play space. Framed in a fire pit. Bought a projector and a pop up screen off of amazon. Grabbed a firestick, and a few bluetooth speakers, and set up for backyard parties. Once a month we hosted, treated it as a pot luck. We’d supply the main course, asked people to bring a side or a dessert. Burgers, hot dogs, GIANT pizza from the local pizza shop. We had a super warm October one year and held Taco-tober where we served tacos and watched kid friendly halloween movies on the projector around a bonfire. We dug out our hillside to put in a huge intex pool. Then it rained all summer of 2019 and flooded the space. By the time 2020 came and we were working on it again, so did the pandemic and the world being sold out of pools. So, in the truck and drove to Virginia where a guy was selling one, new in box, at a used price. And instead of an intex pool, he was selling an above ground one. His used price was what we’d already budgeted for the intex one. So, in 2020, the pool went up. We met some new friends. And while the rest of the world dealt with isolation and kids lost their peer base, we were still going strong once a month. There was no anger or judgment if people opted to not come due to the state of the world, we asked anyone feeling under the weather to please stay home. We never had a break out or spread. We did what you did with germs in the 90’s. Kept them to yourself or stayed home, and saw people the next time. Our yard is filled with public school kids, homeschool kids, only children, multiple children, democrats, republicans, libertarians, Christians, Atheists, etc. Nobody cares what your label is. The are only 2 unwritten rules to the back yard.
1.) Nobody teaches or encourages adult words for the children
2.) Provided you are not abusing your child (by CPS standard, not snowflake standard), how you parent your child is up to you.
And you know what? It works. It works so beautifully. It’s amazing. These kids who may or may not be friends if they were all thrown into public school together, play well while they’re here. And we’re not talking a 2 hour visit. We’re talking anywhere from 6-9 hours once a month. We swim, they jump and swing, the run, the go kart or 4 wheeler comes out, food is had, movies come on, popcorn is made, s’mores are brought out. There’s fireworks in July, tacos in October, glow sticks at least once. There’s bubbles, and music, and the beer fridge is filled. And as parents, we all watch to keep them alive during daylight hours, and once the pool gets closed and they all settle in for the movies, we all sit around the fire and chat, and laugh, and remember what it’s like to be more than just a parent, or just a spouse. We find connection, and community. We find emergency contacts for our kids school and medical forms. We find trusted adults whose phone numbers are embedded into our kids brains or cell phones. We’re building a circle of people our kids can call on, no questions asked, when they become teens and need someone who isn’t mom or dad to get them out of a sticky situation. With any luck, we’re building a house where the teens would prefer to just hang out rather than get themselves into a sticky situation.
I remember in 2007, I was driving back to Maine from Connecticut with my husband (who at the time wasn’t even my boyfriend). I had driven down to pick him up after his car broke down and he was going to miss seeing his family before a deployment because he couldn’t drive home. I knew I was in love with him, I knew he was the one, but we weren’t prepared yet to be more than friends. But, for 6 hours we talked (okay, maybe mostly me) about our dreams about life. Not necessarily together, but things we had considered. I remember telling him that I wanted to be the hang out house for my kids and their friends. I wanted my kid(s) to feel so comfortable at home and with their family that they wanted to bring friends home. I wanted to be available enough to know other parents that they could bring friends over. He didn’t have one of these growing up, and I didn’t have the other. Our houses were not the hang out spots come our teen years. I wanted a doorway filled with teen shoes, and driveway filled with $1000 cars, and a mess of teens in my living room (or a bonus room, or a finished basement) who found it more lucrative to show up to a house with a fully stocked fridge and movies to their hearts content over the crap I did when I was a teen. Where there were board games, and yard space, and an open door policy. Where I wouldn’t even think twice if I woke up in the morning and my spare room, and my couch, and whatever else were filled with sleeping teens who had stayed up too late watching movies, and opted to crash the night rather than be on the roads late at night. And knowing those teens and their parents well enough, that both kid and parent knew that a, “Hey, movie is ending late, can I just crash the night?” was in fact what would be happening here, and wouldn’t be some strange ploy for being somewhere you shouldn’t be.
As I have said in every other post in this series. Being intentional is a choice. I could have sat and waited for friends to find me. To find my group of women. I could have accepted a group that was filled with, “not my people.” I could have done any number of things. But, what I did, was dream. And then create it. And honestly, had we not had access to that skid steer, we probably would have wound up staying at the creek. But even then, the kids loved it. And the parents loved the shaded area, the coolers, the food, the hanging out. It’s doable without heavy machinery, it’s doable without space, it’s doable without a yard. It’s all doable. You just have to be intentional enough to create it.
