Villages

     "It takes a whole village to raise a child", the old Nigerian proverb instructs.  In many African cultures, children are considered a gift from God to the whole community, and raising those children is a communal effort.  This same tradition of communal child rearing can be seen in many other cultures around the world.  Yet, here in the good old U S of A, we tend to be fiercely independent, even competitive.  I recently made my dear husband sit and watch a documentary with me on date night (for which I now owe him at least one installment of Rocky).  The documentary was entitled "I Am".  Directed by Tom Shadyac, a Hollywood tycoon turned seeker of divine truth, "I Am" explores the nature of humanity, and in a broad sense tries to pin down what is wrong with the world and how we can fix it.  Of course, these are big questions to attempt to answer in one documentary.  But some of the basic points made therein were thought provoking, if not enlightening.  The main point I took away from it was that as a human race, we are actually designed for cooperation, not competition.  Through misinterpretations of Darwin's theories, many have come to believe that it is human nature to compete. In "I Am", scientists who have studied the behaviors of animals talk about their findings and conclude that by and large, animals are more cooperative than they are competitive.  Kind of throws the whole "dog eat dog" theory out the window.  Scientific findings show that our brains are actually wired to cooperate, to empathize, not to compete, to break down and to look out for our own interests.  This competitive drive is something we create out of misplaced pride and desire for power.  It goes against our natural instincts to be the top dog.  Somehow we, as a society, have adopted the attitude that we not only have to have it all and do it all, but that we have to do it all on our own.  If we ask for help, it is a sign of weakness, an admittance of defeat.

     For some of us, it just doesn't come naturally to ask for help.  My family moved to Virginia when I was two years old.  My parents were born in Idaho, so the rest of our extended family was here.  I can only imagine my grandmother's reaction when my mom told her that we were moving across the country.  I'm sure it broke her heart.  We had a good life back East, and grandparents would fly out to visit for holidays.  We had a few family friends with whom we would go camping or on other outings.  But, most of the time, it was just our little family on our own little island.  There weren't many members of our church there, and we had a cordial but casual acquaintance with the neighbors who surrounded us.  We became very close as a family and made plenty of lasting memories.  When I was thirteen, my dad's contract with Virginia Power ended, and we made the trek back West.  The first few family gatherings were a little overwhelming, being suddenly surrounded by a roomful of boisterous cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, babies, dogs.  It was like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, minus the lamb roasting on the spit in the front yard.  Although, one year, my cousin and his partner did bring a pilgrim pinata to Thanksgiving.  The person hitting the pinata had to don a full Native American headdress and whack at the poor paper mache Puritan with a tomahawk.  It must have been quite a spectacle.  Over the next few years, I grew to relish these activities.  I grew to love the feeling of knowing there were so many people around who loved me; people whom I belonged with.  When I married my husband, I had to broaden my circle yet again.  Dirk is the youngest of six children.  When we got married, his older brother was the only other sibling without children.  The noise and chaos produced by my entire extended family could hardly compete with the hullabaloo which occurred in Dirk's immediate family alone.  What I would have previously considered a family reunion, was a simple Sunday dinner at the Stangers'.  Over the years, the Stanger brood has grown to include 20 grandchildren.  It's amazing how the screams and squeals of twenty children under the same roof can be amplified to sound like at least twice that many.  And the adults give them a run for their money.  Dirk's siblings are as likely to be wrestling and laughing loudly as are the children.  I will admit to being a little overwhelmed by all of this at first. But, just as I did with my own extended family, I quickly learned to embrace the chaos.  It is joyous chaos.  I now know to expect a lot of noise and upheaval at Stanger family functions.  But there is also a lot of food, a lot of laughter, and most importantly, a lot of love.

     Yes, being nearer to family has helped me to realize that truly, "no man (or woman) is an island."  But, yet again, I am feeling my circle tearing at the edges.  Time to broaden yet again.  It is my nature to be a homebody.  I tend to be introspective and even introverted.  I haven't minded at all when friends have asked me to watch their children while they run a few errands or go to a doctor's appointment, but I still feel strange asking them to do the same.  I sometimes get a supermom complex and feel that if I am leaving the rearing of my children to anyone else in any way for any length of time, that I am failing in my duties as a mother.  Not to mention, I really like my friends, and I don't want to subject them to an afternoon of Monster's screaming.  I have noticed, though, through observing the women and friends in my neighborhood, that they have formed a sort of network.  They automatically cooperate in the rearing of their children and in helping one another maintain their sanity.  Recently, I have been trying harder to insert myself into this communal network.  It doesn't come naturally to me. My natural instinct would be to hide away in my little Hobbit hole with my stacks of books and never risk the embarrassment of my children misbehaving terribly in front of others, or of going out on a day when my face has decided it is thirteen again and broken out in blemishes.  But, underneath all the misplaced pride and perfectionism, is a desire to be part of  the village I see all around me.  I am beginning to realize just how much I can learn from talking to other women about their experiences, their ups and downs.  There are days when being a good mom, to me, may mean shutting out the world and spending the afternoon with just my children and a stack of library books or board games.  But, by shutting myself out from the world too often, I wonder what I am missing.  There are things that my mother or my grandmother or my sister have taught my children in a way that I could not have gotten through to them.  I am surrounded by amazing women and I am learning to value their insights and cherish the relationships I am forming with them.  I may not always feel comfortable.  Sometimes I feel out of place in my out of date clothing in a group of women who look like they could have been ripped out of the pages of a fashion magazine.  Sometimes I'm having a bad hair day or I'm petrified that I'll say something stupid and be shunned.  But then I have to remind myself that I am connected to these women by so much more.  We are mothers.  Motherhood is a great leveler.  We all have bad hair days and say stupid things, but we are all connected by the life defining mantle of motherhood.  It is a heavy mantle, one which we can't bear alone.  I for one, am done trying to.  It's time for me to emerge from my hut and embrace the warm, wonderful village that surrounds me.