Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: July 31. Aging in Cohousing (David Entin)

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

I agree with your point about not waiting for others to figure out what you
want - one of the things I've learned from living in cohousing is that
others that care about you are often quite happy to help you get things that
you want/need.

However, my community neighbors still cannot read my mind and rarely
anticipate what I want/need when it comes to irregular events, milestones,
etc.

Songaia does celebrate everybody's birthday with 1 or 2 monthly after-dinner
events (the birthday questions and desserts).

We ask each birthday celebrant four questions:

(1) How old are you? (the easy one)
(2) What was noteworthy about your last year? (the person asking the
question can personalize this as they wish)
(3) What do you look forward to over the next year? (ditto)
(4) What can your community do to support you?

This has come to be a very meaningful, valuable heart-felt exchange for many
of us that helps us keep in touch with those we don't hang out with more
regularly. Its particularly wonderful seeing the children grow into this as
they shift from being coached by friends/family to fully addressing them.

Songaia does often do larger events for the BIG NUMBER birthdays, e.g. I had
a spectacular 50th birthday celebration in 2007 - but to get a big party
really requires you to tell others about it.

Our latest big celebration was for Fred and Nancy's 50th wedding anniversary
- a great model for those of us with briefer marriages (Karly and I have
only been married for 29 years).

Craig Ragland
Songaia Cohousing

On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 8:00 AM, Monty Berman <mberman116 [at] hotmail.com> 
wrote:

>
>     I used to wait for others to initiate my birthday celebrations but,
> beyond the ones my mother did for me as a young child, this rarely happened.
> So, these two opportunities for me to express my talents in workshop design
> have resulted in two absolutely soul-satisfying party experiences---and I
> have the scrap-books to prove it (put together by a couple of the
> participants.)
>
> Monty Berman  EcoVillage at Ithaca, NY
>
>