Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: The Cohousing Crunch

[Denise Meier & Michael Jacob (dmmj]

Oh, Sharon, your post brought back memories. Now, having been in a year,
let me assure you that it really is worth it. But oh, last summer! One
of our families was expecting a baby in September, and as the move-in
date slipped from June to July to August, we were getting more and more
nervous. The plan was that they would stay with us in our house (we had
some renters coming in, and had to keep stringing them along, too). They
weren't planning a home birth, but still, it was uneasy. Well, they
moved in in mid-August, and all was well.

At the lovely naming ceremony they held for their daughter in our Common
House, Wendy recalled the upset and worry she carried all summer. And
then she said that the baby was being named after her husband's recently
deceased grandmother, who, when SHE was 7 months pregnant, left Austria
with her husband and daughter and got on a train to Siberia to escape
the Nazis. She said it gave her a lot of perspective.

(Sometimes for me when things are hard it helps to think about people
who are (or have been) worse off. Sometimes it doesn't, and it pisses me
off when others tell me these quaint little tales. So I hope I haven't
angered you. )

You are embarking on a great adventure - all along in our process we
likened it to giving birth, and the pushing phase is the hardest. That's
where you are now. It's difficult, and will remain so while everyone
gets settled and figures out where they're going to keep everything and
gets used to having all these people they KNOW around them all the time,
etc, etc, etc. But it will settle down, and hopefully, it'll be
wonderful...

Take care, keep us posted.

Denise Meier
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, California