The Search For Community

Have you ever heard the hollow sound of leaving a house? Empty, it is left as it was found, without a trace of someone coming back. The indentations in the carpet show ghosts of the furniture. The nail hole dotted empty walls remember everyone’s conversations. The memories of important moments just hover there and remain in the echo. When you close the door and leave a home, where do you belong?

My mother would unfold the Sunday paper, like performing a ritual, and scan the rental columns through her glasses perched at the end of her nose. Sometimes she used my stepdad’s but she would always see things through rose colored lenses when seeing life in the next place. As though all prevailing problems would be left behind with the final sweeping.

I learned to stifle the loss of friends and familiarity. Eventually the act of leaving transitioned into the anticipation of starting again someplace new. In each new school I would enter the social activities for my appropriate age groups like Girl Scouts, drama clubs, and after school sports teams. Rarely staying long enough to become a contributing member or develop close friendships, I existed in a state of waiting for that looming abrupt exit. I was an outsider just passin’ through. I recall one teacher’s comment on a report card that said even though I had only been in attendance for six weeks, I had been a positive addition to the class. She had chosen words of monumental validation.

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I don’t think l questioned my mother but I know I grew tired of the constant interruptions in my life. Through my grade school years I was not old enough to comprehend that my step father was chasing work to support us and we couldn’t always pay the rent. When I was fourteen he left and we moved in with my grandmother. One roof was much too small for those two women so the stay was brief. The challenges Mother faced as a single parent spit us out of the expensive Seattle city limits and I faced my first encounter with rural life. For this change of environment, I will always be grateful. Mom and I landed in a small moss enveloped house in the dense woods of the Olympic Peninsula. The absence of sidewalks and street lights was strange to me. I kept expecting Little Red Riding Hood to wander up the path and a bit suspicious of the fireplace hearth and chimney, but I knew the Big Bad Wolf would not have a chance of getting past my mother. She always had a gun under her pillow even in the city. She seemed amazingly adaptable and dressed in plaid shirts and mens pants now in her new environment. The truth was she was comfortable because she had spent her childhood in the rural farmland that once existed south of Seattle. She was at ease here. She whistled through her days and revealed a happy side I had never witnessed. She fed the squirrels and the birds and the neighbor’s dog if he wandered over. I vaguely recall a visit from a bear that was too much for me to calmly accept but she acted as though he was welcome. Before the end of the school year, Mom had made a few good friends but had to admit she had not found any decent work and we were packing boxes again. She heard of a possible job opportunity in Eastern Washington. WHOA! The small town of Bridgeport was a drastic contrast to anything I’d known. Granted at the age of fifteen I was not well traveled but the drive over the Cascade Mountain Range and a little farther northeast led us to a sage and sand landscape that I had no idea existed in the State of Washington. Had I missed illustrations of this in my text books or slideshows explaining the geology of my surroundings? Did I miss a semester? Before standardized curriculum, this was a likely possibility for students that changed schools as frequently as I did. I am sure that my mouth hung open as we drove across the bridge just downriver from the Chief Joseph Dam and followed the “s” curve through town. Passing intersections of dirt roads and sparsely spaced houses with big yards and shady porches, I could easily see the defined edges of town and felt the simplicity of what you see is what you get. The business district was home to a post office, a hardware store, a grocery store, drug store, restaurant, and a few empty storefronts. To sell me, Mom drove up to the outdoor public swimming pool, notably within walking distance from anyplace in town. Say no more, I’m on board! Parked at a small motel I just sat in the car with the door open to the view of a well maintained running track just a few yards across the nicely mowed grass at my feet. There was no fence. There was no building. Just a big oval track and some weathered high jump pads. Could I adjust to this free and open country? The air was strangely dry and had a hint of something wild that I could not identify. I could not find a traffic signal or sign to read as far as my eyes could travel and the horizon held only dotted orchards and bare brown hills. I am sure that I visibly relaxed my shoulders as my thoughts calmed. I painted myself into the serene landscape.

In youth, the spirit is so alive with contagious energy. Everything I experienced was magical. It was like my sense of smell was awakened the first time a warm summer rain released the fragrance of the dry sagebrush. Still unforgettable. But the way we were welcomed was the biggest contrast to a crowded city. They literally approached me with a smile and an invitation to join them walking around town. I immediately felt like I fit. I had friends. It led to my daily routine of congregating in someone’s yard or the park, just sharing the summer days and laughing together. I had been influenced by previous peer groups that the exclusion of grown-ups was imperative to the development of “coolness”. As if puberty did not hold enough emotional challenges, the door closing to sound wisdom and advice seemed a bit self-sabotaging but I had embarked on the risky road to rebellion. This was derailed upon seeing that the lifestyle here was inclusive of all age groups interacting easily and fondly of one another. The family values there were admittedly a priority. When young folks of any age came by our house they politely included my mother in conversation. Our two person family began to grow with each person that entered our house. I did not feel like an only child. Late one summer night I wandered to the kitchen and saw the form of a man sleeping in our backyard hammock. Waking mom with alarm, she just replied it was probably the drifter they called Pineapple and he was welcome to it. I thought of her acceptance of the bear back in the house in the woods, and agreed this was not a trespass issue if she was ok with it. I was able to begin to put away my fear of people that I had developed for city survival. This brought it home that life here was not going to be the same as in the city. I enjoyed the slower pace that people moved through the day, taking time to be kind to one another. I really wanted to be a part of it. It was my first experience of community and that summer remains in my memory like it was yesterday. In the fall, the school year began with notable adjustments. The total number of students in my class was thirty. My previous school was eight hundred. I felt invisible there. I now had a support group of friends in each class. The support for small town sports was also a new experience. I was overwhelmed at the first game, right there on the field with the lights, the pep band and enthusiasm of everyone’s relatives there to share the glory and the defeats. It was nothing like that in the city, where there were events held and no one to fill the elevated bleachers. Most of the seats were always empty, like they got the day wrong. I soon knew everyone on the field and every family cheering them on. My mother’s job opportunity was to repair and furnish several small abandoned orchard workers’ quarters outside of town. Half way through the project, the owner reneged on his promise to pay her and she had no recourse. She knew I was really doing well and tried another crazy gamble. There was a small diner on mainstreet that was possibly functional under a thick layer of dust covering everything inside. She had experience running a small cafe in the industrial district of Seattle in the 1950’s. It was a favorite spot for the hungry truckers. (She continued cooking like that throughout my life so my idea of an average portion is a very full plate.) This diner was going to be a gathering place for my friends so I was drawn into a delightful partnership with Mom. She promptly put paint brushes in the hands of my friends and I, who she referred to as “all of my kids” and we-

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-painted the interior back to life. She contacted the right services and had the walk-in cooler, the soda fountain, the grill and the steam table all shiny and working in very little time. To target the audience she wanted, she got a large, free standing jukebox delivered and a pool table and my friends and I now had our hang-out, complete with the sign “Mom’s Cafe”. I noticed some patrons not approving of the pool cue coming so close to their plates of food which no doubt cut down on the clientele. This and the selection of music I put on the juke-box was probably what led to a profit of about sixty dollars a month. So another page in history was turned. I loved my mother for all the work she put into it and for taking such a risk. She had a propensity for doing things just because she wanted to. She had no regrets. But without a means of income, we were going to be returning to the big city. My diary recorded the focus of this wonderful chapter of my life: human interactions. The one I still recall most clearly was sitting around a tiny campfire on the opposite bank of the river, gazing at the lights reflecting on the water from the town they called home. There were snowmobile rides through empty, leafless apple orchards, tightly clutching the driver, sparkling crystals of snow flying past the headlight. There were stories shared around a snapping campfire of the “Prop Men” that haunted the abandoned orchards, walking on their tall stick legs and seeking humans trespassing on sacred ancient grounds. There was dancing together and there was crying together. There was an account of a bad rollover car wreck on the highway, and how we rushed out into the night to see our classmates emerge alive in the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. There was an adventure of being stranded on a remote dirt road sixty miles from town when a car just stopped running. Daylight dwindling, discussing how we could survive by catching fish in the stream or eating berries, there was the welcome sound of a car driven by a thoughtful older sister, on the road that she knew her brother would be on, tardy in his return. There was a constant sense that someone was looking out for you. My life intermingled with others’ and my spirit was fed in the sharing. I really did not want to leave that feeling of fellowship. With tears of regret, I harbored a mountain of mis-directed teen-age resentment toward a mother who I knew was trying her best. Leaving before the end of the school year, I was promised a school yearbook would be sent to me, and it arrived with autographs and long comments from everyone. The time there is framed in those cherished pages and some of the bonds have remained throughout my life. Life back in Seattle was like one big mixed media presentation. Constant images were flashing of where I had been and where I was now. I saw all the great music legends live, but wished I was listening to them on an album with those friends who wanted to know me. I attended a city high school that funneled three grade schools I had attended, yet I was not admitted into any of the well established cliques. I was the transient, the drifter just passin’ through, warranting fear and guilty of vagrancy. I chose to isolate myself in my room a lot, complete with black light, posters and incense from the “very happening“ University District. The hippie movement was beginning to fade but had shifted into the fashion trends. I was at an awkward age. Making a wild child statement with my beads and bell bottoms my mother was worried about me. She forbade me to wear my “hippie moccasins” out of the house so I would simply drop them out my bedroom window and retrieve them once out of the house.

With a total of thirty moves in my twelve years of public education, I graduated as an average student in a class of over one thousand in the Seattle Coliseum. It was a spectacle. When it was over, it meant nothing but the end of an ordeal. I was invisible even to myself, but I was a high school grad and headed out on my own. I chose to believe I had life by the tail. I worked in several apparel stores for a year before attending community college and after collecting an associate’s degree, with no guidance to pursue higher education, I found myself back downtown in another retail position. I had very little in common with my co-workers and difficulty forming acquaintances outside of work. I would sometimes treat myself to lunch at the nearby Italian deli or the Greek cafe in the Pike Place Market. The heart of the city had an incredibly vibrant and colorful atmosphere. There were pockets of people interacting in a setting of dizzying chaos. The handsome fishmonger throwing slippery salmon might loudly ask the white coated chef eyeing the catch of the day, “Carl, how was that halibut last week? I know you want some more of that!”. Vendors in messy aprons, men in suits, young urban professionals in short skirts, and braless bohemians from the many esoteric shops all smiling and enjoying their lunch and conversations. It was common to hear them greeting each other by name, revealing familiarity from frequent encounters. The Ukrainian baristo could be heard hollering over the people at the crowded counter, “ Hey there Mick, so when are you going to meet my cousin? You’d like her. You need a woman!” Years later, I would think of these scenes when hearing the theme song of the tv show, Cheers; “Where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” A nameless extra, I was just passin’ through. Riding the city bus home from work each night to a dark studio apartment by the Ballard locks was profoundly lonely. The tall vapor street lights highlighted the pouring rain and I imagined even the rats at the nearby shipyard looking drowned and soaking wet as they crept closer and closer to my basement apartment. One of those lonely evenings, I stepped into a streetside telephone booth with rivulets of rain cascading down the glass sides and flipped through the hundreds of white pages of the thick, hinged and bound Seattle phonebook. Certain to find names of old classmates I could call, I found none. In a sea of thousands of people, I was alone. If I had life by the tail, it had snapped me out into the cosmos in a mean game of crack the whip. In the chaos of the big city, something in my being was screaming, “I am not the right species for this habitat!”. What had happened to me was simple. I was without community.

I recently asked some acquaintances in Palouse what words they thought described elements of community. They are good ones. Let me ruminate on them;

Sense of self As much as this sounds like being self centered, it is not. It refers to your perception of your character and abilities that define you as a unique person. With a secure sense of self, it is easy and enjoyable to extend time and talent to those around you.

Sense of belonging Acceptance allows the boundaries of age, abilities, and background to dissolve. There is comfort in the feeling you are compatible with your neighbors or your surroundings. Abundance I think this can be a term associated with fulfillment in one’s spiritual realm, but I cannot deny the reality of abundance as I depart from a friend’s farm with arms full of produce.

Interacting This is key to forming networks of people to do the same things you like to do, joining organizations or clubs, making acquaintances you like to converse with or can call upon in time of need.

Balance I see this as being mindful of each of our essential needs like career, friends, family, and health (mind, body, and spirit), and devoting time and attention equally to each.

Tribe I love this reference. It suggests a group of diverse members creating its existence. In the book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, the author Sebastian Junger simply notes “Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary.”

I think a sense of community is something very precious. It allows a person to be the best version of themselves. Personally, I think it is even more important than our other senses of sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. As a teen in that small town, I was absorbed into the pack, and it offered me a safe haven to thrive. But in a large city, I could not find a place to fit in. I am not certain if that was because I did not have things in common with those around me or because it just takes longer to locate a needle in a haystack. Perhaps something can not be acquired if it is not offered. Remember that hammock?

As life transported me to new places, I became a part of, and passed through a variety of unique communities, like the crew of seasonal employees at a ski area, a co-op of mothers of toddlers, a small niche of researchers of a university, the small farm vendors attending the local farmers markets. It is even possible to find a community that extends across miles, like the rural librarians of the dozen small outlying branches or throughout several counties, as I found with the Asotin, Latah, Garfield and Whitman County Master Gardener programs. All of these clans opened the door to me with a smile and a greeting and made me feel welcome. We did not have similar appearances, backgrounds, education, or income but there were commonalities that allowed us to develop a closeness and created a community which in turn nurtured our genuine connection.

In today’s eclectic and ever increasing population, similarities can be hard to find but our invitation to include each other could begin with our common ground as human feeling beings. A “community” is a place and its inhabitants. A “sense of community” is a treasure. I will be traveling to Bridgeport this summer for the 50th class reunion. I am looking forward to thanking them all for sharing their treasure with me, unknowing of its worth. If you are in possession of this good fortune, I hope you will also share it.

smile