Page 7 - C.A.L.L. #28 - Spring 2007

the commune: three couples, two of them with two daughters each. The clan of four daughters
developed a community all our own: we ran barefoot in fields and stole strawberries from farms,
devised games with sticks and baked mud-pies from scratch. As the oldest daughter at the com-
mune, I acted as the ringleader for dress-up dance productions and ploys against the parents. We
even started a commune newsletter, "The Household Times," which featured highlights such as
new pets and recent dinner parties. Our community fostered creativity and communication and
supplied us with a strong feeling of kinship and connection with those around us.

As we grew older, with more visits to friends' two-story houses in ostentatious neighborhoods, we
began role-playing games where we pretended to live in conventional nuclear homes. We would
envision future lives for ourselves: a husband named Chris, a black lab named Midnight, and a
house all our own at the end of a cul-de-sac. We would play "neighbors" (which we didn't have) and
ask each other if we could "please borrow a cup of sugar because we had just run out and we had
already started baking cookies!" The lure of normality became a source of inspiration for our antics;
a touch of longing wove itself into our make-believe. We became mildly obsessed with things like
fences and sidewalks, things we didn't have on our rural chunk of land on the hill. Sometimes,
when raccoons scratched anxiously under the floorboards as I tried to sleep, I longed anxiously for
the suburbs.

Yet despite youthful longings for two-car garages and next-door neighbors, the commune kids
grew and evolved in the communal setting in a very natural way. Living as a part of a community
was all we knew. Enormous feasts infused with conversation and interaction were what we came
to expect from a nightly meal. Interacting with multiple sets of parent-like figures was organic and
unforced. We knew nothing of borrowing sugar from neighbors because our sugar was already
shared. These things, although they required explanation to friends from traditional one-family
houses, were our way of life from the start. Our parents had been the visionaries, the seed-
planters, the innovators. As their children, born into this environment of interconnected houses
and relationships, we were raised feeling that it was the natural way to live. We became active
participants and respected members of the commune. We had our own slots for mail,
responsibilities around the house, and places to voice our
opinions at the dinner table. We were born into a vision
that had already been realized; for us, that vision was our
home.

I often find that people consider communal living to be
overly utopian or painfully idealistic, concerned with
concessions of personal space or freedom. But La Selva, a
leaf clinging to a weathered branch of idealism, is just one
Sister Grace, commune sister Annie, example of a community idea that has remained a working
commune sister Maddy, and author reality. It has no religious philosophy, no intensely
(right)
structured organization, and not even perfect
communication among members. What La Selva does have, however, is flexibility. It shows that
communities can grow together, adapt to changes, and move through generations. The sea turtle
was eventually removed. The commune girls, college-ready, eventually waned in numbers. But the
lasting members of La Selva remain, eating dinners together, making decisions, and acting as an
example of co-existence.

In my college years I return to the commune every few months. I bring friends with me and give
them tours of the buildings. "This is amazing," they say. "What a great way to grow up." I now
understand that it was great, and I was indeed part of something important. On the tours, I
proudly lead my friends to the remodeled shower room; it is now my favorite room in the house. I
tell them with a chuckle how there used to be a four-foot-wide sea turtle bolted to the wall,
looming like a shadow over the shower. They laugh with me and don't really understand.

Molly Prentiss was raised in La Selva commune in Santa Cruz, California, and is now attending college.

Reprinted with permission from Communities magazine, a quarterly publication about intentional
communities and cooperative living in North America. Sample US$6; subscription US$20.00. store.ic.org.

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