Yesterday I talked to a friend from Illinois who was one of these kind. She and her husband took my boys all day when I was having a baby. And they would've kept them longer if needed. Our friendship grew because we had the same number of kids who were about the same age, we were homeschooling, and did NFP. Five years after moving from Illinois we're still in touch. She is recently recovering from cancer.
This weekend, I talked to our friends from Virginia who are the next best thing to relations. They, too, we met because we were homeschooling kids about the same age and were open to more. We're planning a camping trip to Tallulah Gorge in Georgia in a couple of weeks. Can't wait. If I died, these friends are the type who'd take in all the kids.
Now here we are in Mississippi. Last night at the park, just as we were about to leave, my monkey boy jumped/fell off the slide and cut open his head on a bar. The park we were visiting was right next to the fire station, so we were able to get a little clean-up and bandage work done by the EMT's before heading off to the hospital to get staples (his 3rd set). And fortunately for me, we were also near our new friends' house, friends with kids about the same age, open to inviting 5 more in, so I didn't have to corrale them all at the ER for 2 and a half hours. It is reassuring to know we have friends to call on in a pinch. I am grateful.
Community isn't always just the place where you live.
"A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves." - Wendell Berry in "The Loss of the Future" from The Long Legged House.
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