I’ve been thinking about sharing recently. I suppose not entirely unusual for a kindergarten teacher. It’s practically my job to teach people how to share. This week I witnessed an interesting interaction. During free time, four of my students chose to work with our pattern blocks. Blue rhombuses, red trapezoids, yellow hexagons, orange squares, green triangles, each student may take one box to use and be responsible for returning. All four students grabbed their box and headed to the same table where they could work together. Three of those students immediately took their boxes and dumped them all together in the middle of the table. They began to discuss how much they had to work with and what they would create today. Those three also noticed one student still had all his pattern blocks in his box. They discussed the situation with him. “Put yours into the pile too. Look how much we’ve got! If you put yours in we’ll all have even more.” He looked back at the three not quite sure how he felt.
I find that kindergarten children are often very good at teaching me the life lessons I need to be learning. I have heard this invitation from time to time as well. Join in! Together we accomplish more. Take your pick. I’m sure you’ve heard the cry as well, perhaps in different ways throughout your life. Sometimes I’ve learned to jump right in. Other times, just as this little guy is with his pattern blocks, I’m hesitant.
This time the question has been floating around in my mind about living in community. When Adam and I first got married we were introduced to the idea of living together with other folks, sharing a living space, money, food, and responsibility. Sure, I had seen young, single people live together. It made sense to me. But once you were married you lived on your own. That was my idea of the way it went. The idea of families cohabitating sounded overwhelming. I knew lots of families who had trouble getting along and living together. Adding more people into the equation seemed like asking for trouble. Over the next few years I watched folks who were doing it. I decided to get my feet wet. We invited some single folks to live with us for a period, try it out for a bit.
Now our housemates have moved out. You know what? I miss them. I have loved living with people. It’s been a wonderful blessing. In the meantime, we’ve met this wonderful couple. They have two wonderful, beautiful little girls we adore. Over the last year their housing situation has been transitional. Adam and I have also been thinking about what is next for us. We’re just ready to look for a house and move. We found this wonderful house we love… With a yard! Imagine such a thing. It has grass. I can plant in the ground! This house is big. We’re talking six bedrooms. And it’s only the two of us. We share one bedroom. It’s big enough to share.
So, we asked them to move into this house with us. Live together. Share money, food, responsibility, and care for one another. They agreed. I am so excited, and SO scared. I know this is going to be hard. I haven’t lived with kids since I was one. And we don’t all know each other nearly as well as we knew the other folks we asked to lived with us. So it will be hard. All the best things I’ve ever done have been hard. I trust this will be no different. So I’m throwing myself in.
He threw his into the pile as well. The pattern blocks. He thought for a minute or two and saw all there was to be gained. The abundance of pattern blocks and fun and all the possibilities of what they could do together with all they had collectively. How about you? Where can you join in with what you have to add?