Welcome to the new Cafe au Play blog! We wanted to take a minute to tell you about who we are, and what this blog is all about.
We are parents and grandparents. We are parenting alone and with partners. We are writers and builders, teachers and artists. We work in bookstores and on building sites, in our own businesses and in nonprofit agencies, in schools and in universities, and we work without pay at home. All of us are working together to make Cafe au Play a reality.
We’ve come together from different places. Some of us are involved because of the values our parents instilled in us. For Abigail, the chance to create positive change in the community is a chance her parents expect her to seize: My mother told me not too long ago that she was disappointed in my generation for not standing up for our freedoms and protesting everyday for a better government, better communities, just a better life. Is it apathy? I don't know. What I do know is that my mother was right. I am 28 years old, and raised by loving parents who taught me that even the smallest contribution can mean the greatest change.
For Charles, too, the impulse to contribute and to seek contributions from others stems from the experiences of childhood and the expectations of family: My parents ran a small business in a rural community. Asking neighbors to contribute to a building fund or selling tickets to a raffle was simply a part of their way of life. We expected and received support from each other. Creating obligations and connections is an important part of living in a supportive community.
Some of us are involved because parenting changed us, and we longed for a place where we could connect with the person we had been. Traci remembers, Once I became a parent my needs as a person changed. I suddenly needed to carve out a space in my life to talk to grown-ups! And not just about things like sore nipples, but also about things I used to talk about in my pre-parenthood life, like politics and music. I needed an environment that would welcome me both as a person and a parent. Like many parents, I have created that in bits and pieces, but it has been difficult. I look forward to the opening of Cafe au Play to fill the needs of parents like myself who struggle to stay connected to all of the things that make us feel whole.
Parenting also opened our eyes to the ways in which people grow, adults and children alike. For Kristin, the potential of Cafe au Play is the way in which even before the doors have opened, even before the first pot of coffee has been brewed, it has become a place where people can rely on each other: I never thought that getting Cafe au Play off the ground was going to be easy, but I had no idea how many lifelong friends I would meet along the way. Getting to know each new person has reinforced for me that connections are crucial for positive human development. I see that we all face challenges as we grow. It is not easy to face them alone. But when you have someone there to talk with or walk with, your ability to sort out how to move forward is transformed. What keeps me going is the hope that Cafe au Play will be a place where people can grow because they have one more person ready to listen or lend a hand.
And why am I, Lisa, involved? For too long as a working parent, I felt myself torn in two--work demanded all my creativity, while parenting was regarded in my work community as fundamentally uninteresting, a characterization that didn't correspond to my experience in any way. Cafe au Play offers me a place where I can marry my creative energies to the experience of parenting, and to the creation of community. At Cafe au Play, I can be a mother and a writer, I can share what's easy for me and get help with what's hard for me, in a place where I can be wholly myself.
As the children of our parents and the parents of our children, our needs have brought us together. Although our stories are different, we share a common vision, of a place where all of us are welcome, of a place where we can meet with old friends and new, of a place where we can be ourselves, even and especially when that means something different to each of us.
And this blog? Each of us will posting on issues that are meaningful to us, from the parenting issues that confront us daily to books we love for children and families, from the challenge of creating family friendly cities to tips for green living. We invite your comments as part of the developing conversation that will be taking place both at the cafe, and here online on the days that we can't get to the cafe to connect with friends in person. We invite your stories, your problems, your passions. We invite you to claim your place at the table.
Welcome to Cafe au Play!
