I think one of the scariest parts of my marriage, for Andy, is the knowledge that I am always four seconds from being ready and willing to move to a commune.
I blame my parents. There are entire photo albums of me laying on patchwork quilts on the grass next to five or six other babies, or being cradled and snuggled by different sets of strange long haired couples smoking joints. I spent a good part of my youth assuming I had been abducted and purchased from a traveling hippie stolen baby ring, but later learned, that’s just how my parents’ friends were back then.
They had friends, and their friends had babies, and they just all loved each other so they hung out all the time and wore tight jeans and grew long mustaches and partied.
Is it weird when I’m out in public with my parents and they ecstatically drag me over to the equally confused thirty year old in the frozen food aisle of Kroger, and re-introduce us as the friends we once were, and then we both awkwardly stare at each other holding our iphones? Yeah. It kinda fucking is.
This is Erin, Mark’s daughter. Do you remember her?
No, um. Sorry, I-
Sure you do, you used to spend summers together playing on the bank of that pond, you know, the abandoned one we had cookouts at every year when you were little?
*blank stare*
It used to be an agricultural fertilizer mill or something?
Do I need to be genetically tested for something!?
It was a simpler time. It’s why the “earlybird” instagram filter even exists. And, I miss it sometimes.
Especially on days like today, when I text Andy all, it’s summer solstice! I’m making a maypole! A giant phallus for our front yard to celebrate the longest day of the year! Also I started my period! I’m a Goddess shedding her spring lining! Yay Summer!
It’s like I’m selectively pagan.
It usually ends abruptly when my herb garden dies (check) and my underboob gets too sticky (check check).
Andy wouldn’t fare well on a commune, at least not at first. He’s an indoor kid, so aside from growing a Bon Iver beard, his hippie skills are limited. He also hates chickens, and I feel like they are a commune deal breaker.
What no chickens? This isn’t a commune, it’s a subdivision, stop thatching your lawn, Gibbons, you’re embarrassing us.
Endless eggs means endless quiche… and cupcakes… and eggnog… and… eggs? That’s a lifestyle I can get behind.
It’s in moments of great stress or life obligations that I find myself hiding under the clothes in my closet, emailing him real estate listings to house my imaginary village of semi-off-the-gridders.
We can take our friends and other chill people, and like, move into our own little community, and live off the land, and raise each other’s kids, and sell goods for money, and play instruments around fires for fun, but still totally have wifi!
It’s the perfect dream.
We could even have a menstrual hut, because I feel like those should make a comeback. A safe haven for women who need to spend 3-10 days secluded in a heavily air conditioned environment, filled with Funyuns, Taco Bell and Colin Firth movies. We could bring back the happy period. The secret isn’t Midol or white jeans, it’s food additives and sedatives and cycle aligned friends.
Cohabitation.
I know it sounds orgy-friendly, but it doesn’t have to be. Plus with so many friends at arms reach, you can even pawn your kids off for thirty minutes or so, so you can have sex without having to stop half way through, explaining what penetration means and then finishing standing up in the half bath.
Collective.
Yeah, so I don’t have the mental or emotional capacity to homeschool, but maybe someone in our commune will like kids and possess qualities like patience or empathy or daytime sobriety, and we can pay them in eggs to do that for us. It takes a village.
A village of people who want to hang out all the time, strive toward a common good, and split a mortgage and wireless internet bill.
Who’s in?
You think about it while I look up less group-sex/cult sounding words for “commune” to put on the flyer.
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I love the idea of communal living. Pals to chat to all day while you’re stuck at home with small children, sharing all the tedious chores. What’s not to like? I live in the UK though, but an American commune sounds infinitely superior!
If you ever start a commune – I am totally moving in.
I live in community now! it’s urban community, called co-housing. move to boulder! so, no wife swapping or joint accounts, but common meals and shared things. not like STDs, but like the lawmower. It’s not always easy, cause people are still people, but we like it.
can’t write a legnthy response. i’m busy packing 🙂
i am so in…
I live in a trailer park in Ohio…. other than the menstrual hut we’ve got most all that. Since I moved in 4 years ago, I’ve had people bring me home made cookies, fudge, surplus veggies and fruit that they grew and I hardly ever see my kid if its above 50 degrees outside. It’s a very small park but everyone here is awesome. I accidently stumbled on to Shangralai in NE Ohio, lol. Now I’m singlehandedly trying to change the collective opinions on “white trash trailer parks”! Love it here and wouldn’t live anywhere else! ( Except in a commune with y’all of course!)
I am so in, you just described me perfectly!
TOTALLY in….love the menstrual hut!
I am so totally in… I could help with some of the teaching of the older children, say ages 8-13; any younger and I may lose my patience and any older, I’d probably end up punching them and/or forgetting that I was supposed to stay sober during the day! Keep us posted on the progress of your grand plans!
hilarious. you are such a good writer. i truly hope there is a book in your future.
I have chickens!! Count us in!
Totally sold my 7 year old on this idea when her dad & I were splitting up a few years ago. She loved the idea of having lots of kids around but was hesitant about the whole “everyone works” thing. She was really born into the wrong (e.g., non-royal) family…
Our new neighborhood, which has kids and a commune-like aspect, seems to have satisfied her, but she does still bring it up now & then (be still my hippy heart).
Let us all know if you decide to do it. I can’t sign on for kid-duty either (alcohol + impatience + a Darwinist belief = social worker visits), but would be happy to cook and collect eggs every morning.
I second the trailer park – you need a summer trailer. we spend summer weekends at a ‘trailer resort’ on a lake where everyone has nice air conditioned trailers with decks. Its like a commune but without dirty feet, (blatant) spouse swapping and pot. We look out for each others kids, have potlucks and get drunk around a campfire. Every weekend. And it is awesome. There is nothing quite like having a dozen of your closest friends cheering on your kid as he learns to ride the ‘magic’ bike that 8 other kids learned on. Or a herd to envelope you at the end of a rough week. It’s the epitome of community. With air conditioning.
You had me at menstrual hut.. where do I sign us up?
i’m glad i’m not the only one who had parents who took pictures of us and all our ‘friends’ when we were little – running around the yard half naked while all the adults had their fun.
The men also need a menstrual hut (why does that not look like the right spelling of that word??). I swear my Andy has a period every fucking month. Also – we can send their game consoles and loud music to their hut which will be lined with sound proof walls and be below ground so that the one fucking night my child decides to sleep I’m not losing sleep because he’s having concert night at our casa (or because it’s thundering outside and our dog spazzes out).
Or is that just my life?
Oh god… This sounds like heaven.
This sounds scarily like my husband’s plan, except he wants to live with all of our relatives. Every once in a while he talks about if we could just buy a big piece of land and a big house and get all of our grandparents and parents and cousins and uncles and aunts and live together….and that sounds terrifying to me! We actually live next door to my uncle and his family and a half mile away from my other uncle and his family so I already feel like we live on a family commune.