I didn't move here with the intention of joining someone else's family. It was clear to me in my initial conversations with Peter that I was requested to participate in one shared meal a week, to essentially participate in whatever communal gatherings were occurring as he slowly created an intentional community. Great! I love sharing meals, hell, I'm a gregarious potter who loves to cook- absolutely I want to share meals! this is what the good life is about...
so I'm rolling into the end of a week unusually full of friends and sunshine and cirque du soliel, anticipating a bit of vacation with my long-distance lover and it is time for the weekly gathering at the DuDank farm. I bounce up the front stairs. Peter is the first one that I see: his hair is gathered in bands that make little poufy trees of decoration adorned with flowers and - what is it- something vaguely like a doily around his whole head- immediately my heart remembers decorating my dutch grandfather with christmas ornaments as if he were a tree, a photograph is how I remember, since he passed long before I was grown.. he had a little paper flower over his eye, and was gamely saluting in his tasteful floral-printed shirt. Peter is slumped on the couch, and merely smiles at my delight. His little boy Yohann is similarly adorned- three gatherings of his longer blonde hair replete with daisies and grass and grape hyacinth- he is unbelievably adorable and quickly crawls into my lap where I can't even yet process how precious this moment is and just hold him as tightly as I possibly can.
The girls who ostensibly initiated this wonderful nonsense look relatively normal, fresh as they are from a visit to mexico with their grandmothers, and the evening dissolves further into laughter over april fool's jokes and a colorful slide show of their adventures.... it's just ... it's almost too much, too good... like the bottom is going to fall out some day and I will be left on the rocky beach in my leather jacket calling to Poseidon for his endless churning grace...
meanwhile, my brother sends me a link to a little video of him wake-boarding behind a catamaran sailboat- some rich man's toy so tightly tuned that it was hauling ass at 20 knots in 40 knot breeze in the bay of virgin gourda - filmed from a few angles and nicely edited, it reminds me of his adult choices and circumstance: he also has fallen in love with a family he did not know as a child. He is employed by a family with 5 kids that owns a pleasure yacht, and he adores them, all of them. I have my opinions about the entire structure that yields his career, but there he is, happy for the first time in a while, to serve a family he loves. I, new resident of someone's barn, cannot throw stones. We are adult humans without children of our own- the void is filled, the need is served. love knows no rules. it will find its own path.