In this together

In March, my family and I experienced this year’s much anticipated basement flooding. As winter’s record-breaking snowfall was much like the filth of Sarumon – washing away – we had to deal with several hours of vacuuming up and hauling out the water from our house. One of the upsides of having an old school dirt basement is not having to worry about water damage to drywall or flooring. So, it ended up being a fun little adventure in passing buckets of muddy and fungally enough, mushroom-filled water, from one person to another, up stairs and outdoors or down toilets, reminding me of something beautiful and ironic. My cup floweth over.

Since moving in with my mom, aunt, uncle, and grandmother, daily life has hugely improved. Everyone has their chores, which are somewhat divided according to joy and or indifference to the task, so if one person hates dishes but likes vacuuming and another person feels the opposite way, neither person has to do the chore they loathe. It’s a symbiotic dynamic. We each get to play to our strengths and have support with the tasks we’re weaker at. But aside from the practicalities, it’s really just nice to live in a full house.

For much of my life, as an only child to a single mom, home has always been quiet (despite my own propensity for loudness). Because of this, I was told that I would have a hard time adjusting to sharing space, particularly when I moved into my sorority house with eight other young women several years ago. As it turns out, I thrive with company and moving back into a full house has reminded me that this is a completely viable way to live, even after university. It’s worth having the tough conversations that are an inevitable feature of shared and, particularly, multigenerational living. We may not agree all the time, and varying social needs can put undue pressure on the introverts, leaving the extroverts a little dejected. But if you’re open to learning new things about yourself, things that are more readily discovered through the experience of multigenerational living, then you’re in for a wild ride of introspection and self-growth.

Fair warning, this way of life is not for the faint of heart. You must be willing to face hard truths about yourself and what I’ve learned to be the inevitable contradictions between your own personal values. We are all fallible. We are all works in progress. But we can help each other way more than we’ve been led to believe.

The standard expectation of moving out, living on our own until we get married and/or have kids, is just one way to exist. There are plenty of other configurations for living with each other; the only limits are what we can imagine is possible.