Day 7 Walkabout- All over the place!

The Rose Ceremony is a Waldorf Education right of passage. Most Waldorf schools go to grade 8. When a new batch of grade one students ruck up to the school in September it is the grade 8’s that welcome them in. These older students each take one of the younger under their wing and become a mentor to them through out the school year, the ritual which starts this relationship is called the Rose Ceremony. A Rose is passed to the grade one student by their grade 8 mentor in front of the whole school on the first day of classes. Then at the end of the year the same ceremony is done in reverse, this time the grade one students give a rose to the grade 8’s as they say good bye to their school, and most often to Waldorf education all together since there are few high schools which follow the Waldorf curriculum. It is an emotional ceremony made that much more so this year because our family has Miss Rosemary going into grade 1 and Miss Ayla in her last year of Waldorf education in grade 8.

In true Raabis fashion we added to the emotionality and adventure by showing up for the ceremony with the whole family, and by this I mean the WHOLE family. My mom, my partner, and my husbands partner went to watch our daughters in this moving ritual. This was the first time I had stepped onto the school grounds with Michael. Chris had been with Kelly to pick up the kids a few times last year but back then they called themselves “friends”.

I experience the Waldorf community to be quite conservative. This is not to say that they ARE conservative, “conservative“ is a relative term, most of them seem more conservative than me. To be more truthful, I admit by conservative I mean I am afraid that they judge me. Stepping into that parking lot was not easy, holding Michael's hand while sitting next to Chris, was not easy. Being there with the support of Michael and Kelly though, that was easy. Having four adults care for 3 children brings things back into balance.

I used to joke that I didn’t know why on earth I had three kids, that Chris and I had out numbered ourselves. When Chris was working 60 hour weeks I was definitely not enough parent for all three of them. Now there seems to be enough support and time to get done what needs to get done, this was not my experience before Michael and Kelly came along. Our lives look different from other peoples lives in that we have a alternatively configured family, and different in this sense means easier. Believe me there are other ways in which it is not easier. One of my friends daughters asked Michael if he loved me in the ”want to marry her“ kind of way, he said he did, but that this was not possible, and even illegal as it would make me a bigamist. Being in a polyamourous flavoured polyfidelitous relationship with a family of 7 has its ease and its difficulties, just like all relationships...huh... not so different after-all.

I had a talk with a friend today, one who I dearly love and supports me with completely unconditional love. She asked to have tea, she wants to talk about what is going on in our family. Her daughter is one of Lily’s best friends. She wants to be able to support all our children in this transition, hers and mine. She wants to ”normalize“ what is going on in our family in order for the kids to see that the parents get it, are not afraid and that we all support each other. I love her to the bottom of my heart. It couldn’t have been easy for her to call up and ask me this, and she did anyway. Pam I love ya.

Pam’s call for more knowledge and transparency got me to thinking that this blog is a great vehicle for more clarity around our particular flavour of Polyamory and polyamory in general. So I am going to be talking about Polyamory a little more on the blog in the next little while, dropping links and suggestions of books and really opening up about this part of our lives. The following link is just your run of the mill Wikipedia link, it is a good one, which surprises me because often Wikipedia is a little lacking. This entry though is very informative. I mention Polyfidelity above, the term is explained in the link...I will be talking about it a little more later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory

Whew...what a long rambling post! And to think the post that I started with, and then deleted, was dead boring!




”Is there something you would like your family or community to know about you?“ is the question in 12 days journal #148