I have a job that starts at 2pm and rarely goes past 7:30. I'm paid fairly and get a lot of fulfillment from my position. I'm young and healthy, and I make enough money that I can take a bus up to New York as often as I ever care to. I live in an exciting city and have a wonderful, goofy, positive group of friends. My apartment is beautiful and affordable. I can go out to eat if a friend invites me without worrying about overdrawing my bank account. I have direction and ambition, and I'm in college.
Between the cash-strapped, confused, and depressed years of my late teens and early twenties, and the future I'm confident I'll create with husband, children, and home, I'm in a happy place right now where I'm confident, cared for, well-rested, and independent. These are the years I'll be describing to my kids sometime as those thrilling times one should really enjoy.
But I have a confession. Sometimes, I wish I could hurry this all up. I've never been a fan of the in between times, whether it's between boyfriends, colleges, jobs, or Metro trains. I find myself thinking "I'm so ready for my real life to start! I want to meet the love of my life and start my real job and have everything figured out! I don't want any more mysteries!" Lately I've tried to make a conscious effort to enjoy the mysteries. One thing I like to remind myself of is that when I moved to Washington, DC, following a really tough time in my life, I had no concept of how happy I would be in a few short months. I did not truly believe that it would be possible for me to make a living, return to college, or start over in a new city and even be admired for it. I'm about one wine spritzer away from waltzing around my house in a marabou-trimmed peignoir with a champagne glass lilting "if they could only see me now!" "They" being "me from three years ago." Yeah, you got that.
Right now I can't wait to learn who I'll marry, where I'll live, what inside jokes and funny traditions I'll have with my children. I feel like I have so much affection to give that I nearly throw a tantrum and pout about not having anyone to lavish it upon.
But, that's where I'm wrong. Dead wrong.
You don't have to be a wife or a mother to make a home. You, at this exact moment, wherever you are and with whomever you have in your life, have the ability to be a "homemaker" in the most radical, tender, expansive sense of the word. Being a radical homemaker isn't about picking petals off daisies while waiting for your prince to come sweep you off your feet. Yes, I truly believe that prince will come and that it will be life defining, but the spouse and the children do not make the homemaker. The homemaker makes home wherever she wants it, and in doing so is constantly turning the world into a kinder, more interdependent, more environmentally responsible, more caring, more honest, more welcoming home for us all.
Being a radical homemaker is creating a space where people feel nourished and cared for. I have all this caring energy, and like a lot of people with my personality, I went into childcare. But my affection and tenderness has a darker side. If it feels like it's not recognized, or needed enough, it turns into loneliness and shame, and even occasionally self loathing. "Clearly I'm not lovable enough/not good at relationships/not pretty enough or else I'd have the love part of my life figured out by now" is the general jist of the hiss from the natural homemaker's evil twin. So I'm going to tell you the biggest secret and the realest truth of this situation:
Your life is happening right now. And you can make someone else feel more like this world is his or her home every single day. And once you do that, you're going to feel comfortable in your own skin too.
I make a home by opening my apartment to out of town friends and making sure there's something vegetarian and spicy simmering in the slow cooker when they arrive. I make a home by drawing a comic book for a friend's Christmas present, telling the story of our amazing friendship through a funny fable about a vicious owl/bear hybrid. I buy flowers for a girlfriend who has had a fight with her mother and doesn't know how to start feeling better.
And you know what happens? I end up being cared for in return. Like everything relating to radical homemaking, this is most certainly not a calculated transaction. This isn't tallying up favors and carefully making sure everyone you know is in your debt. This is allowing yourself, as you grow and enjoy different phases of your life, to count on and be counted on. There are always risks in forming interdependence, but these are the dearest risks worth taking.
When I first met a lot of my friends in DC, I wanted people to hang out with. I basically wanted people to entertain me and make me feel less lonely, and I was perfectly willing to do the same for them. But that's not what friendships are, unless they are the most casual and perfunctory types of relationships. When my friendships took root, it was with the folks whose natures and priorities are the most similar to mine, and I realize why. I chose positive friends over negative ones because I become extremely uncomfortable when people are unkind. I chose people who have come to my house in the middle of the night after I hit my head so hard I lost consciousness. I chose people who have instincts toward the forgiving and tolerant - none of my friends is teased or mocked for foibles, and no one feels as though a few silly choices will accumulate into rejection. My friends are mostly young men, who have the added perk of reminding me how many truly wonderful young men there are. They give me a family to care for, and a way to see how far I've come.
My friends have shown me extraordinary care. The love and support I hope to grow with my future family is already weaving its way into my life.
-Chris bought me a thoughtful gift for Christmas (a Dungeons and Dragons starter set!) after hearing me talk about wanting to play (don't make fun).
-Ray drove me from the Orlando airport to Gainesville (100 miles) just because I asked. We hadn't seen each other in two years.
-Andrew helped me deal with a stalker and comforted me through a crisis.
-Jim listened to me freak out over loneliness and fear, and listened. He listened kindly and then said "you know what? You need to come to my church." And I did, and the music made me cry, and he bought me a bourbon afterward.
-Lindsay and Kristin took time out of their busy lives to mentor me through a tough time, and I owe so much of my current happiness and clarity to their help and the work we did together.
-Chris makes me laugh in a way I haven't with anyone else besides Marthe and Eric.
-Meaghan and Marthe give me a solid base to come home to in Florida. I have a lot of fun daydreaming about us all being best friends and seeing each other all the time again.
How could I ever feel like I'm waiting on real love to start?
Make a beeline for the happy. I forget where I heard this line, but it rings true. I don't want to spend any time wishing my life would hurry up. As I told my friend recently "it's easy for me to get baby fever from the comfort of 9 hours of sleep per night and the luxury of all the alcohol I care to drink." There will be time for family, home, and marriage. Right now, I want to (and hope you will) embrace two goals:
1. I want to enjoy the moment. If you have kids, enjoy the ages they are. If you are married, enjoy the person you found. If you're single and childless, you better enjoy that, because I have lots of friends with toddlers who are happy to trade places with you for a week or a month or two. At the very least, I hear a lot of "I wish I'd enjoyed that time more."
2. I want to make a home and demonstrate care for as many people in my life as possible. I want my actions and words to always be ones I'd be proud to be known for. Homemaking isn't reserving your best love and care for little progeny who don't exist yet. It's not saying "I'll start acting better when I have children watching me all the time." It's being the person you are proudest of as much as humanly possible.
At this point, my life is a really thrilling book I don't want to put down. I really can't wait to see how it ends, but I definitely want to savor it as it's happening.
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