Co-op Reunion



I've mentioned the Kids' Co-op on this blog once or twice before. Enough to say here that it played a big part in the life of my family when the boys were little, and that friendships and connections formed in Co-op days have stayed important.

Yesterday we had the first ever Co-op Reunion. Roughly 50 people, parents and former 'kids' gravitated to a little tent pitched in Federal Park, Glebe, bringing food and a capacity to enjoy the brilliant sunshine and each other. we'd advertised my mobile as the one to call in case of difficulty finding the spot, and I did receive a call an hour or so after people started gathering: one of the parental generation couldn't find us, he said, even though he was standing right at the spot indicated on the map he'd been emailed. I went searching, and indeed he was standing no more than 20 [years] yards from us, had walked around the group twice and not recognised anyone. All of us had variations on that experience, especially of course with 'kids' we hadn't seen for decades.

I had one gratifying fogey moment. A young woman introduced herself to me, and I exclaimed, 'I remember when you were born,' restraining myself from being even more fogeyish and telling her what I'd said when her parents told me what they meant to call her. This is the gratifying bit: she said, 'Yes, you warned them not to call me xxxx, and I wish they'd listened to you.' As soon as I'd heard the name 20 something years ago I'd thought of an obvious, unkind nickname, and behold that nickname had come to pass. However, the scarring can't have been too severe, as she made the remark without noticeable bitterness.


Here's me holding a child-sized version of the T-short produced to mark the occasion. We have some left over; drop me a line if you want one: $20 for adult sizes, $12 for children's.

A number of the 'kids' have kept in touch over the years. Others know and even work with each other, but only discovered that they have Co-op experiences in common when the reunion was being organised. There were quite a few people I didn't know -- we were involved in the Co-op for maybe five years altogether, with a gap in the middle of those years, and it ran, we learned yesterday, from 1977 to 1991. The consensus is that it wouldn't be possible these days: just a bunch of parents getting together in a barely habitable building and looking after the children on a roster -- one half-day shift a week, two adults for however many children were dropped off. We came from a wide range of backgrounds, marriages fell apart and their members found other partners among the Co-oppers, not always without acrimony. We took each other's children home, listened to each other's struggles, assisted at births, argued and fought and made mistakes small and big (one of the 'kids' recalled -- in what I hope is a memory that has grown more dramatic with the passage of time -- coming back to the Co-op from an outing to find one boy sitting on the compost heap, crying, having been accidentally left behind alone for the whole day). We didn't have qualified childcare workers, except perhaps by accident. What we did have was the commitment of parents to our own children, which stretched and transformed so that all the 'kids' became 'our own'. It was such a joy to see them grown into a wonderful mob of twenty- and thirty-somethings.

And then the southerly arrived unannounced and blew the tent apart, so we knew it was time to go home. At least one person wants to make it an annual event. Why not?


Posted: Mon - September 29, 2008 at 01:05 PM           |

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