I ran into my old friend Carl the other day. He's gone the corporate track, working with computers at a large locally based company. When he mentioned that he'd just gotten a promotion, I teased him about being seduced by the corporate culture.
Sitting in my disheveled living room, sipping iced coffee, Carl admitted that all was not well in his new corporate lifestyle. He and the woman he's been living with for two years were breaking up. He clearly felt sad about this development, but he also talked about feeling elated.
"It's this mobility thing," he kept saying. "I feel like this could be a good thing for me."
I can remember times of feeling as Carl does, longing for the wind in my hair, the open road, music blaring, at least metaphorically. But I have recently been surprised that, though I do not long to run away as much as I have in the past, I do have a distinct feeling of being mobile, of moving, of change. The mobility I feel I think may be best characterized as intra-community mobility.
Carl and I met a few years back when he moved into a house in which I was living. We both rented rooms there from Susan, who lived in the house with her son and her father. Most of the time, Susan had three housemates living there besides her own family. This was the only group living situation I've experienced, and it was quite an education.
For one thing, I learned how interesting old men can be. Besides Susan's father, we had for a while another roommate, also in his seventies, Doug. Doug had had quite a life, spending a good deal of it on the sea, and had a lot of storied to tell. He was admirably energetic and charming, socializing around town, often with young women, sporting his silk cravat. He lived on social security and left for Florida when the weather got cold.
Living in that house with all those unrelated people was an experience in mobility. I was transported into people's worlds that I would not otherwise have known. We had a sense of community as a household and frequently helped each other out with one thing or another. We did not usually share cooking, but we occasionally had three or four people sharing the kitchen at the same moment. It could become quite the ballet.
When Nancy and I realized that we were really going to have a baby, one thing we agreed upon was the need in our child's life for adults other than ourselves. Role models. Buddies. Confidants. A child, we agreed, needed to know intimately that there are ways to be besides those of her family. Towards this end we tried to include our childless friends in our pregnancy and birth as much as we could, hoping that they would come to feel a connection with our child.
I've heard it said that in some Native American groups there is a tradition where in the uncle plays a highly important role in raising a family's children. It is said he provides an alternative to the parents, both as disciplinarian and as role model. Whether this is a romanticization of native culture or not, it sounds good to me. This is essentially what Nancy and I talked about cultivating for our kid.
So far, however, our cultivation has born few fruits. It is quite possible that it is far too early to pass any judgment, after all Emily is only four months old, but it appears to be more difficult than we anticipated to build a community for our daughter.
With this in the back of my mind, I was struck by a recent radio news report that our local Big Brothers Big Sisters program had run out of Big Brother volunteers and so could take no more applications from boys in need. This is a particular shame given how many boys are growing up without men in their households.
A quick call to the director of the program confirmed my guess that this was a nation wide problem, not isolated to our area. She ventured three possible explanations, that men feel they have no time, that men fear being falsely accused of child abuse, and that it is still more difficult for men to be available emotionally than it is for women.
To address some of these concerns, many local Big Brother/Big Sister programs have reduced their time expectations for the volunteers, from one visit a week to once every two weeks, and are seeking to reassure potential volunteers that they will have the supervision and support of the organization, not to mention their liability insurance, to prevent and deal with any problems.
As an aside she noted that a social worker of her acquaintance, who has had much experience in urban settings, was surprised to find that rural family life was in some ways more difficult than the urban experience. In particular, rural families appear to be much more isolated than their urban counterparts who may be living on top of each other, but at least have each other there when needed.
Nancy and I have talked occasionally about one day living in a more communal setting. One of the obvious benefits would be to bring more people into our family's life each day, maybe promoting some of this intra-community mobility stuff. But that fantasy remains far off.
So far, the intra-community mobility I have experienced has taken the shape of feeling a new bond with friends who are now also having their first kid, and feeling a new kind of clarity about my role in my community now that I am a father. I have yet to sense that we have found "uncles" or "aunts" who are going to play an important role in Emily's life.
I worry about the creeping isolation of our society, all the "lives of quiet desperation." I wonder about the childless in our communities. Are we making clear that there is a invaluable role that they can play in our families, both formally, as through Big Brothers/Big Sisters programs, and more informally just through friendships? I admire Carl's adventurousness and willingness to change his life. I hope he and others look for ways to grow and change within our communities. Perhaps he'll decide to spend some time with Emily.
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