How far back do I go? How many threads do I try to tie into this tapestry of a story?
Well, since I don't really know of a particular time that I would consider the pivotal moment- a fulcrum in time that redirected our path, I can only weave in some large themes, to try to make sense of the last couple years of our life…
When Barbara and I met, we were in our late twenties, and our cultural clock was ticking. She was already the owner of a little condo on Utah St. in the Normal Heights area, and I, after having recently graduated from college, was living at home. Barbara’s condo was a cute little place, 2 bedrooms, with a house mate to help pay the rent, as well as friendship. It was in a “fair to midland” income area, with Lopez Market – a house converted to a farmers market with fruit bins made from an old wooden fence; a Soul Food joint that served on cheap paper plates on their back patio; a combined tattoo and guitar repair place; antique furniture stores and various bars and restaurants owned by individuals that still worked there. It was her place - she had made it happen on her own. To Barbara, it represented stability, safety, achievement, that she had arrived in a place of self-sufficiency and control.
Barbara was going back to school to get her Doctorate in Psychology. I was starting my career as an electrical engineer. We had a lot in common, really enjoyed each other, and fell in love… From there, we both got sucked into this vortex of societal expectations, and for a while, followed on cue.
There were forces at work that said that we were supposed to get married – that somehow being in love, and living together not only wasn’t enough, but was actually wrong... Somehow, going through this legal ritual legitimizes and purifies a couple in the eyes of society and church, so that even though we do the same things, and are really the same people as we were before the marriage, that now it’s all good. There is a magical hue cast on marriage, as if it transforms one into a different, better person. It goes so far in its “stage setup” that the woman is supposed to “change” her name – POOF! She’s obviously a different person, since that name wasn’t applied to her previously… But in contemplation, what is the intent of marriage really? It is a statement of love certainly – but so is handfasting and many other lovely rituals. It proclaims “this is it – the last person that you will ever need”, yet the “forsaking all others, until death do you part” clause is broken more often than not, as people in this mobile culture either divorce or find “another” (most often illicitly) – or both. From societies perspective, marriage it is a tidy way of defining how property changes hands, and who responsibility lands upon. But perhaps its largest effect is as a social “flywheel” – adding momentum to things, making it harder to stray from the course – for better or worse.
We are still married, and still glad to be married. But what it means to be married seems like it should be ours to define, not someone else. We have seen many friends divorce for various reasons. Sometimes they changed. Others probably shouldn’t have married in the first place. Some were too young to know what was “out there”. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t get married, but that something should be different – either on the inside, in terms of expectations, or perhaps the concept of marriage needs to change with the changing times. Should it take itself more lightly? More seriously? More rigid? More flexible? There are those that would argue any or all of those options. I do know that people change, and that saying you won’t change doesn’t stop it from happening.
A laundry list of other social expectations came to us next, including “get a bigger house”, “have a kid”, “get a nicer car”, etc., each of which we answered in time, in our own way. Some of them were really tied together in our minds for some reason. Conventional logic said that we needed a bigger house before we could have a kid, so we started planning. At that time, in the late ‘90s, the market was down a bit, and basically Barbara’s condo was worth what was owed on it. In retrospect, we should have kept it and rented it out, but for whatever reasons (20/20 hindsight not included) we didn’t. There are other stories there which I will leave untold for now – but suffice it to say, that we had heard these tales about how great suburbia was, and we drank the punch and walked away in a stupor.
With help, we were able to buy a “technically lovely” three bedroom house in Stonecrest. It was a great buy at the time. When we first moved in there were some fun people in our cul-di-sac which promised a social support system, it had great amenities – a “community center” with a pool, cooking classes, gym, close to a shopping center - a long list of reasons to love it, which for a while we did. We moved in with the help of friends - moving the stuff from the condo to new house (almost twice the size), left the third bedroom unused. So, soon we had friends move in with us – which in retrospect was some of the nicest times at the house. We settled into a new groove, as Barbara graduated with her Doctorate in Psychology, and took on several gigs including teaching at a community college, and clinical psychology.
After a while, this nagging “we’d better get going with having a kid” started to set in, since we were already mid-thirties, and I was born later in my parents life, so I had some worries about wanting our “would be child” to get to know them before they passed. Both of my parents had had bouts with cancer, and I knew that they wanted to see a grandchild from their union. From todays perspective, there are different memories and different weights to what happened along the way, but the facts are that about 8 years ago Barbara got pregnant with Delilah. It was a very difficult pregnancy for her, with at least 6 months of pretty continuous morning sickness. Even for that, she managed to keep her job until a month before Delilah was due.
People ask what it’s like to have a child. The best explanation that I’ve ever been able to come up with is “it amplifies life. It makes everything more.” More joyful, more complicated, more fun, more of a pain, everything takes longer and costs more, but it’s more satisfying. It changes everything. Everything takes planning now. The free-spirited quickly find their wings tied up with diapers and baby bottles, unless they are either fortunate enough to have some social support such as very local or live in family, or enough financial wherewithal to support a nanny. As with many, that wasn’t the case for us. Barbara chose to try the “stay at home mom” gig for a while (which honestly surprised me, but which I supported and deeply appreciated), and tried to make the story play out. She tried mommies groups, and found over all a bunch of exhausted, frustrated, adult-time-deprived women, often feeling that they are barely keeping it together, but that can’t admit that they might be having a hard time of it because, well, that’s how moms are supposed to be. And even there, she experienced several stunning examples of non-inclusion; of not being allowed to join certain groups, even that had friends in them, because the kids were a little different age, or were “full”, or when she went to join them, no-one else was there. Then there was the episode where she talked with a church leader of what we thought to be an open-minded and progressive church, about creating a “spiritual mothers group” and including mothers from other faiths in the gathering – the church had done community projects with Temples and Mosques before, so it seemed a natural fit. Somehow the inclusive intent of the group got shot down, when it was learned that they didn’t explicitly use “Jesus’s name” in a prayer.
A few thousand years ago, we would have lived in a small group or tribe. We would have lived intergenerationally, with grandparents and children, we would have been closer together in age (since life expectancies were low), and there would have been strong social bonds. That wasn’t happening for us.
So somewhere along the way, little bits of the “us that didn’t fit the mold” started to bubble to the top. We started to realize that our neighbors, while “fine people”, weren’t really social at all. They would wave as they drove past us, pulled in to their garage, and lowered the garage door before exciting the car, to avoid any danger of social interaction. They provided little support beyond occasional feeding the cat while we were away for a weekend, and asked little of us in return, even though we often offered. We found that the strip mall that we were so conveniently located near had no soul – it was just another cookie cutter mall, a Wal-Mart, a Vons, Payless shoes, Dollar Store, McDonalds, Starbucks, a cell phone place – it was the same cast of characters that is stuck into a thousand different but otherwise indistinguishable malls across our nation. If Dorothy had landed at that mall, she could to this day have been living under the illusion that she was, in fact, still in Kansas. So the concept of this supportive, interesting place to have a family wilted slowly over the years.
We talk a lot. We talk about our days, our dreams, our frustrations. More and more, we discussed the “what’s wrong with this picture”. Were we living in the wrong town? The wrong job? The wrong belief system? We wanted to find these people that actually wanted to be an integral part of our life – not just pleasant acquaintances, but people to live with, to wrap our lives up in. My sister lives in a Christian Community which has a community living arrangement, similar to the co-housing movement that we looked into. We visited a few of co-housing places in California, but wanted to broaden our search, see what else was out there. From childhood, my family had gone on these road trips most summers, spending several weeks to months wandering the states in our camper van. I wanted to relive this, with the intention of looking for an answer to a question that I couldn’t quite form.
A few years before, Barbara had had a terrible reaction to a prescription drug that she was on for a while; fortunately they figured out the problem before permenant damage was done, but it took several hospital visits, painful tests, and weeks of pain before it was resolved. She received an award from a class action law suit against the manufacturer of the drug, which it turned out hadn’t disclosed all the nasty side effects very well. The check allowed us to make this road trip to help find “the answer” a reality. It was the difference between having just enough cash to make our lives work, with a few weeks of vacation to recharge every year, to allowing us to go for 4 months on the road.
Those ensuing 4 months, are the beginning of this blog, but you see, only the middle of the story. We discovered many thing, saw many things, spent much time, energy, and intention along with most of the money doing this grand thing. And in the end, we came back to San Diego, deciding that it wasn’t about the town, as the community; not so much about the people, or the job, but how you weave it all together.
So instead of moving at that point, we branched out. We started our own co-housing meet up, which ran for over a year with little success, beyond meeting a few remarkable people. We made new friends in new circles, explored new communities, found new joys and passions. We discovered a community of creative, accepting souls in “The Burning Man” and similar groups, which has given us yet other great souls to add to our collection.
Finally, about a year and a half ago, upon returning from Burning Man, with all its grand acceptance and adventure, upon re-entry into our former community, we had several things happen over a short period of time that convinced Barbara that it was time to finally be done with that place, and find something else. We knew that we needed to have cash in hand so that we could make a bid that wasn’t contingent on the sale of our house, so Barbara contacted a great realtor, and just 5 days after listing, we had sold our house. The second place we looked at was this house – but we were just a little too late. Someone else put a bid in first. But, there was something about that place that just seemed “ours”, so we told the realtor to keep us in mind, just in case. Then, Barbara called in the psychic warfare squad… We never stooped to spells, or jinxes or hexes, but we had a number of people come by the property and “ground it with our energy”, “set the intention” that it is our, even a Thai healer came by a blessed the place for us in absentia. In the meantime, the “would be purchasers” mysteriously had no end of troubles, including a former partner of the then current owner that wouldn’t release claim, even though he was off the deed… So, we moved out of our house, put our stuff in a POD, and moved into the RV again, as per later blog posts. Eight weeks later, as hope was giving out, the initial would-be purchasers backed out, and we swooped in.
Which brings us to the next phase…
