The long-delayed training baby post

[kiya]

For the longest time, the more plausible the concept of having children in the imaginable near future (as opposed to the imaginable far future, in which all things are not only possible but easy and a pony too) got, the more agitated I got about it. I knew I wanted to have children, but the actual practicalities of the thing was completely outside of my scope of comprehension.

Then I started reading wiredferret's livejournal, while she was in the process of research and development for offspring. And she wrote, regularly, tremendous quantities of research about the medical processes and her condition; she wrote about experiences and worries and noted triumphs. And I felt better: someone I knew had been through this, there was a sense of the knowledge in community.

I didn't grow up with the knowledge in community. I was the training baby for my neighborhood -- all the other kids on the street were at least three years younger than I. The parents all about my parents' age, with a few grandparent-age families there, their own children grown and moved away and only around for visits. (I adopted some of them as extra grandparents, actually.) But the knowledge of how human families build from the ground up wasn't there; the community had three heirarchies of ages, and by the time I was old enough to learn about how young children were taken care of and retain any of the knowledge, there were no more young children. The closest I got was taking care of one of the youngest to the extent of watching her, playing with her, and keeping her from wandering into dangerous areas of the house while her mother (a freelance graphic designer working at home) worked, and calling upon said mother for anything that required knowledge.

A few more people I knew started in on that R&D process -- mostly folks I know from alt.poly, like porcinea and ailbhe -- and the sense that the whole pregnancy thing was something that was plausible, that happened to people I knew, increased. As well as my sense that my community has, historically, been pretty broken, that I didn't have any of that to work with before.

Then meranthi became a tremendous local pioneer, as she and thastygliax became the first of my immediate local community to start towards parenthood. (And I've mentioned to her before, and I will mention again, that I'm really grateful for this, because being the first in the community is scary. ;) ) Which meant observing the process in a different way than reading wiredferret's detailed reportage could do.

And then seeing how this local community reacts. Seeing that meranthi and thastygliax can still come and spend time with people at games night and continue on with having a life that isn't entirely isolated from the rest of us. Seeing that people -- including myself -- are willing to help look after baby, hold her and sing to her and play with her and keep her from eating the ethernet cables, that the job of taking care of her does spread around at least a little. Learning some of the hands-on baby-care things from people who have at least a little more knowledge than I do, and learning that it's possible to know them. And knowing that I don't want to have children outside a community that's willing to do that much, and knowing that that community exists, that's worth so much to me.

I want my family all together, not stretched out over distances and stress. But I have an extended family too, and it's here, and I'm a crazy auntie twice over (once even in a way that most folks would recognise as a family tie), and it's not that scary anymore. Because there's the meshwork, the interlacings of community, the knowledge of the structure of ma'at underlying and knowing of family, of community, of strength.

I'm not alone. It's vastly reassuring to know that I'm not alone, that there are others before me, there will be others after me, there are others around me. It's vastly reassuring to have a home and a community. To know that when the time is right and my family is near me, that I will not be left alone, that my children will have crazy auncles, aunties, uncles, spare parents . . .

Ma'at is the principle that gathers people together into communities.

Bugger the nuclear family. Give me enough real people to be safe and not go insane.