Friendship-a reflection of the last year.

We moved to the Gorge area from Seattle less than 1 year ago. Since the move we gave birth to our third child. It has been a great transition for my family. We had been a home school family up until January. In homeschooling I found my tribe in other mothers and fathers dedicated to educating in the world. However, when we moved to Trout Lake, a decade of friendships were four hours away. Further, my sweet newborn/infant has shown us the importance of staying close to home. This has been challenging for me, but I didn’t really understand how it was affecting my 7 and 5 year-old children.

I am naturally outgoing and love people. Making friends has always come easily to me. When I gave birth just 6 months after arriving in Trout Lake, the 3 local women who visited in those delicate first weeks have become essential to my mental, spiritual and emotional health. Not in an every day connection sort of way, but in an overall feeling that I am safe here, in this new place. There are people here who will come to me when I am in need. Needless to say, friendship has become important and new in a profound way. It has also become so much bigger than the very intimate idea I held in the city. My friends here are not necessarily my intimate confidants; they are community members who have come to choose relationship with my family. We are still building trust, still navigating intimacy, but fully grounded in a feeling of connection and care.

Although I had made a few friends, my children were now isolated in a way that had never occurred before in their young lives. They were needing friends as much as I was. For them friends are not people who can help, but people who can enter imagination and play with them. Friendship for them is innately intimate, innocently trustful. Yet we had been in Trout Lake for 9 months and my son had some new friends, while my daughter went along for the ride with no real connections. . A trip to Seattle for Christmas made this void poignant. It brought to light for all of us how small our circle was at our new home. No amount of special time, of school time, of being together could fill the void my seven-year-old daughter was experiencing. She felt to me like a colander when she was accustomed to being a pot.

My husband and I are community people. And, we have been called to this land at the foot of Patoh to build community here. Because of our foundation in community, it was clear to me from her struggle and tears that she needed people—People her own age, people she could play with.

Trout Lake is a tight-knit community in its own right. The public school here is an extension of the community. Further, we had been hearing all summer about how wonderful the first grade teacher is. Despite my daughter’s protests, I told her we were going to just see if the first grade teacher was as nice as everyone had said. If the rumors were true, and she felt good and safe, she could stay. If she didn’t feel good and safe, we would go home and find something else.

She felt good and safe, She felt excited and happy. She has blossomed and grown and is reading and telling time and many more things. Most importantly, she has a friend. She has several friends. She has 16 people her own age to learn and grow with. When I picked her up from her first after-school play date with a friend from her class, I felt my own sense of well being increase. My heart remains full with gratitude for the community in Trout Lake and the friendships each of my family members have made so far.

Now we are moving into our second year here. I am opening a preschool, we are starting a farm, my husband is hoping to help clients build edible landscapes in the Gorge area. We are rooting. The friendships are growing and deepening. I am growing and deepening. My focus as a teacher is on early childhood, from birth until age seven. This time is the foundation of the reality children will create when they are adults. As parents, care givers, aunties, uncles, grandparents, community members, this is a time that our families need the most support and loving kindness.

Rudolph Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, was concerned not only about the physical well-being of humans, but the emotional, spiritual and mental well-being as well. To this end, friendship lives in the wholeness of what it is to be human. Play, likewise allows humans to be fully embodied. These exchanges activate all levels of the human experience-mental, physical, spiritual and emotional. For children, imaginative play with friends, especially from age 3 and beyond forms bonds that reach past the physical reality to build their confidence of spirit and navigation of the emotional world. It is the same for us as adults. The emotional, spiritual, mental and physical support of friendship cannot be understated.

It is in that vein that our offering of an outdoor preschool space is an offering of friendship. My parent taught classes are an opportunity of friendship. My postpartum series is an offering of friendship. And, in this time of isolation due to the Corona Virus, may we continue to offer friendship. May our loving kindness greet the isolated and bring the nourishing balm of well being to all our friends and relations.