Ecosystem

These summer days it's like a chalk line is drawn around our family, or a bubble. We are our own ecosystem.

The word has been bubbling up because at our house homeschool goes year-round. This means that the girls learn things and work on projects with the support of Nathan and I even though the official school year has ended because, well, they want to! Sometimes this is difficult and insane. Like the other day when all three had their poster boards spread out - all three needing help at the same time, and all three bothering the others with their comments and personal commentary. Their individual topics couldn't have been more varied: blindness and deafness (Echo), crows (Xi), and reproduction (Bella), but as they worked they talked about subjects they'd like to conquer as a team and ecosystems popped up.

As we talked about what an ecosystem is, and as we trundled about on our summer days, the more I felt the word hanging over our heads. We are our very own discreet unit.

In the mornings, when the sun starts to heat up we close all of our blinds and shut all the windows, making a sort of "country air-conditioning" system that actually works. We cluster inside in the dim cool working on our tasks. Nathan and I bounce back and forth between our two computers and phone calls and the girls bounce between the two kid rooms. I work on Feeleez and book cover designs (I'm designing books!), Nathan works with clients and marketing, and the girls work on Fashionista- their magazine starring Xi and Echo in outfits styled by Bella. (Can you imagine how badly I want to post those pictures?) And during these times the dim shade in our house feels like a bubble preserving this little ecosystem.

Around six pm we head out. We've all grown in our independence so at this point each family member rides his or her own bike. Except for Henry who rides in the bike trailer like the baby he will always be. But we still cluster. In the summer Missoula is quiet so our pod of cyclists moves in a chatty pack through empty streets. Sometimes I feel like we are the only humans around. Our river spot sits on the bank in the middle of town and although folks in tubes and bikinis drift past us I still feel utterly independent, camouflaged even. It's as though there is a veneer between us and them, a trick of the light that bounces off the river ripples and keeps us happily isolated. We throw rocks, dunk under, scout for floating trash that Henry can retrieve, and then cluster our way home again. 

On the weekends our ecosystem literally fits within a ten-by-ten square drawn on the pavement. The Feeleez/FairyFood booth holds our entire family and everything we need. Of course we interact with vendors and customers and our eyes drink in the rich people-watching available on these days, but somehow that chalk line remains clear. Our unit hugged by a perimeter.

Even holidays. This fourth of July we had a personal party and really it didn't occur to us to plan for anything else. These three girls, though they love their friends dearly, provide enough friendship to last a lifetime. They made a list of necessary party supplies which really was endearingly simple, and American. Marshmallows, glow sticks, chocolate - you get the idea. We roasted tofu dogs because we are hippies but countered that with jumbo gmo marshmallows and classic graham crackers. When the sun finally went down the girls cracked open the glow sticks. 

I wish you could have been there. 

Somehow I became the cameraman as the girls cranked that "I like to move it, move it! I like to move it, move it!..." song by that lemur guy in Madagascar (A techno cartoon song.) and busted serious dance moves with glow sticks. I think they imagined a masterpiece worthy of YouTube but what I saw was pitch black with wiggling glow sticks and lots of sibling chatter. Not YouTube worthy but ridiculously endearing! And somehow even with these rudimentary tools our little ecosystem under the montana stars became a european disco.

Party in a yard.

Family as an ecosystem.

Love.

Comments

[Jessi Crago]

Somehow I have always pictured your tribe as its own little ecosystem...a thought that has always been ever so endearing to me because I too tend to live in my own little bubble. I have jobs that require me to be so overly social that I usually veer towards a small social bubble of my close friends and family during my down time.

I have often dreamed that once I have a baby, a family of my own, that I might find other little family-ecosystems to interact with - yours being top of my wish list - that I will participate in more community events such as market and the summer festivals...but part of me knows that I will more frequently tend towards the bubble I so fervently enjoy now. :) Especially because I am blessed to enjoy such a loving, supportive, and happy ecosystem of my own.

Sending love and light from one ecosystem to another!