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Hunter and Kai with new baby Pippin

Home was wonderful...

Jon and I packed up the house while the kids ran wild in their hometown. 

We saw them only occasionally, bouncing in the front door, trailing six kids behind them, looking for food or a random band aid or a change of clothes between sleepovers.

Mostly, they prowled the island like feral cats, in huge gangs of kids, all various ages and sizes, all of them as familiar as first cousins. 

Bowen Island is blissfully stuck in a magical time when summers are spent like a summer should be. Ball games go until dark, moms get together everyday at the beach for picnics and coolers, smearing each other's babies in sunscreen and swapping gossip and laughs, local bands play for the dock dance, and volunteer fireman make burgers and serve beer and someone always gets too drunk and falls off the stage. There is "movie night" in the field, when the whole island converges, on a perfect summer evening, to watch a family movie on the  giant screen set up under the stars-babies sleep on blankets, while the parents snuggle and whisper and pretend not to notice their pre-teens wandering off in pairs into the woods....The ice cream store and hotdog stand are the center of every kid's financial universe. Boys swim out to the docks and wrestle each other all day,  girls build forts and sell undrinkable lemonade concoctions on every street.

Kai and Hunter were lucky enough to have not just their doting Nana down the street but also a pile of surrogate moms on the island all as desperate to see our kids as we were theirs. 

There was so much love-and work to do-that we hardly had any moments of sadness about leaving the beautiful house that we had built and landscaped and raised our kids in for six years.

Some of the pain of moving was cushioned by the fact that we have made a radical lifestyle change- and I don't just mean living on a boat.

We decided, with my mom (mutually) to do what other families, everywhere else on the planet do- we combined households.  

Previously, we have always maintained our own houses. We had a mortgage, we were desperately trying to pay down- just up the street form my 70-something mother, who was also still paying a mortgage!

This seemed normal once, back in the days of "I have mine and you have yours and that's how it should be" and we never had to compromise or sacrifice...yet, we were always worried or lonely or stressed.

Now, in today's world of collapsed investments and a shrinking job market and crazy inflation and stupid health care costs...

It seemed downright nuts to us.

But live together...?

Well, if you or your elderly parents are all financially skookum-then, hey, Lucky you, do whatever you want...

But if your like lots of us, out there right now...

Why not?

Share the burdens and the gifts. 

Take care of each other.

And... you know what? Lucky you. You have someone to love and be loved by. 

Sure-sometimes you have to share the TV remote or not walk naked to the fridge but really, these are small sacrifices compared to not living constantly under a cloud of fear that you won't be able to afford your own life anymore. 

I know, our parents are their own people and don't like to be "cared for" but... 

I think this might be more Western thought "conditioning" than the natural state of things.

We see mostly multi-generational households where ever we have been this last year.

It's only our society that shuns the elderly/young family combo so much.

And where has it got us? 

The highest rates of depression and healthcare costs in the world!

Having your granny babysit for you while you're at work and  then making her a cup of tea , when you get home, is a pretty fair deal in anyone's book.

No childcare costs and no prozac bill- everyone wins.

But the taboo, in our culture works both ways. 

Older people say, "oh you don't want to live with your kids" as if it's somehow admitting defeat. Like,  your kid is a loser or you are about to kick the bucket-or that it's only what you'll do when the adult diapers come out.

Why is that?

Why not make it easier on everyone?

Of course you all have to be civil and cool and have great manners to make a household of many generations work but that's all good, right?

You can listen to jazz while you make dinner and still watch football on Sunday...can't you?

You can help grandpa with fixing the roof and then he can take the kids fishing while you have the house to yourselves, right?

You can take a vacation and not have to hire a dog-sitter.

Grandma can take a vacation and the plants won't die.

Grandparents make excellent babysitters and they pick up the mail and they know lots of things about how to take care of a house and a garden and children and us younger people can fix things and work hard and make the evenings a little less lonely with all the laughter and... 

So what's the issue?

You can't make the same jokes as you would if they weren't in the room? That's what hearing aids are for. They are more than happy to turn them off anyway. In fact, they probably already did..

And for them?

So...There's water on the floor in bathroom and socks are hung over the fence and Barbies and Lego are left behind every couch cushion but that's how a young life goes.

Nothing is that big a deal.

And you never have to drive anywhere else on Christmas day.

Privacy is perfectly available- you just have to know where to look for it.

This is our new form of social experimentation.

-even though it's old hat for the rest of the world.

In the future we are sailing and then...

we are trying out co-habitation with others. 

I see one, big, goy-kibbutz in our future.

Our decision has everything to do with discoveries we made while living aboard.

When times are tough and the stress is about money, well, that is just not a happy way to live but the crazy thing is, it can often be resolved by simply adjusting one's expectations and waking up to a more traditional formula for how humans can live a happy, productive life.

ADJUST YOUR GOALS + NEED LESS SPACE( and stuff)= NEED LESS MONEY

Having separate houses is not a birthright...

Having one roof over your head and the ones you love, is.

-and potable water.

I think we all deserve that much.

:)