Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: COHOUSING-L digest 106

[Lori A Llewelyn (lorillewelyn]

Hi!  I'm new to e-mail but relatively old (3.5 years) to co-housing.  I
am one of the "new" households (i.e., not original) at Muir Commons in
Davis, CA. I'm responding to Brian Sullivan's request for "some stories
of the good life in cohousing" from someone who's living it.

I moved here with high expectations, and they have been met.  It's
amazing to come home from work, hang out with the kids and the spouse
(and the neighbors) for awhile, then sit down to a great meal, with no
prep work and no clean-up.  And this is the norm (15-18 days a month),
not the exception.

I have young kids, and the kind of spontaneous social life that we have
here is far superior to organizing things in advance with friends, then
having the kids (or parents)  be tired or in a bad mood when it's time to
go.  When I feel social, my friends are next door or in the common yard,
and, when I don't feel social, I stay in my house.

The friendships among the children are wonderful to see.  Barely a day
goes by when the neighbor kids don't show up at our house before it's
even time to go to school.  The boys here, ages 4-12, are more like
brothers than traditional friends.  (I can speak for the boys because two
of them are mine; it appears to be the same with the girls.)  My older
son (age 7) prefers to be home, at Muir Commons, to anything else,
including vacation, unless it's a Muir Commons group vacation, and his
friends are there, too.

We still have some organizational problems.  We're currently in the
process of trying to revamp our decision-making process, which is
cumbersome and frustrating for most of us (we just did a survey), and
alot of people drop out of the process before decisions get made.  But
the formal organizational stuff feels like only a small part of what it's
really all about.  

Common meals ... happy hours ... birthday parties ... game nights ...
movie nights ... "Women's Night Out" ... "Men's Weekend Out" ... song
circles ... planning and planting our gardens together ... decorating
Christmas and Channukah cookies ... carving Halloween pumpkins ...
barbecues on warm summer evenings ... tie-dye workshop ... meditation
group ... yoga classes ... hanging out on the "nodes" ... going for walks
together ... dancing at dawn in celebration of the equinox ...
friendships with a lot of wonderful people ... it really is "the good
life".

Lori Llewelyn


>
>Finally, a plug for a third area of topics. I'd like to second others
>suggestion to write down some stories of the good life in cohousing.  
>Tell
>us who don't live there yet what it's like once you're in.  We hear so 
>much
>about meetings and busy schedules,  will some lurkers get scared off?  
>So
>in theory we hear about dinners and community sharing, etc. Did you 
>get
>what you were hoping for? I believe these stories will do much for 
>building
>people's confidence and interest in cohousing. (Note this is similar 
>to my
>scrooge "feel good stories" request in Dec 95 which had great 
>responses.)
>
>Brian Sullivan
>
>
>Brian D. Sullivan, Lecturer
>Department of Architecture
>Chinese University of Honk Kong
>email  bdsullivan [at] cuhk.edu.hk
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>