The Tribe

Tribe:

  • An affiliation of families and clans sharing common values, customs and traditions, and regarding themselves as a tribe
  • A social group that has a strong sense of identity and may have a family arrangement as its core.
  • A community of people who live together with a shared way of life
  • A type of society consisting of a community that occupies a common territory and are related by bonds of kinship, language, and shared traditions
  • A political organization with no central leader but in which the subunits may make collective decisions about the entire group.
  • In common modern understanding the word tribe means a social division within a traditional society consisting of a group of interlinked families or communities sharing a common culture and dialect. In the contemporary western mind the modern tribe is typically associated with a seat of traditional authority (tribal leader) with whom the representatives of external powers interact.
  • The archetypal symbol that is the essence of who you are in the Dreamspell astrology. additionally, it is one of the twenty day keepers of the sacred count to the tzolkin.

Mallow – She would have been a tall, raven haired beauty were it not for her shortness and red hair. I had heard of her before I met her as John’s wife but any more intimate descriptive memory has faded through time and familiarity.

Most people first meeting herponder her name, “Mallow”. Like marshmallow? Thus, usually the first sharing above a superficial level is discovering that she took the name of the town in Ireland where her mother was born. This may be a true fact but it doesn’t really matter, it is her story. This, of course opens up more questions like; what is her real name? Why did she change it? Can a person just do that? Is this whimsy, or is there some deep psychological factor involved here?

She describes herself as “introverted” which is not how the world sees her, but then how many of us see ourselves as the world sees us? She is usually the first to introduce herself to strangers or make a statement “I’m here and I have something to say.”

I think Mallow would like to be an artist. She sees colors and is able to use form and shape and does crafts well. She only lacks the pathos and emotional struggle of a quintessential artist. That may come, she is still searching.

John – John was one of the first memorable people I met on the Psychiatric Ward. His eyes shone with intelligence and joy. He had an easy smile and playfulness. He is in constant search for the meaning of things of the spirit, but that knowing of him came much later. For me, back then, he was an easy person to like. We played on the ward together and tilted at institutional windmills.

Then he was gone.

He would reappear now and then, in a comment by a colleague, or an occasional party hosted by mutual friends. I was never quite sure he remembered who I was or that I liked him.

Then he was there again, with Mallow, and somehow we had become my friends and then intimate tribal members, and changed our lives together.

John is a spiritual catalyst of the tribe. In his unobtrusive way he holds our spirit together. His search for meaning guides us in our own unsubstantiated need to believe there is reason among the madness.

Adrienne – Adrienne is order and organization. She is an ever-turning colorwheel of emotion. She is our grounding of reality. I sometimes think of her as bird that would fly free were it not for her cage, self-imposed or circumstantial. She has become to take forays however. She has developed a recognizable skill in pottery. She has become a kayaker. She can be extremely witty and often catches us off guard.

I have known Adrienne a long time now. We have shared intimacies. We have found each other maddening at times. We have laughed a lot.

Damien – Damien took John’s place on the Psychiatric ward and we became friends. Casual friends at first with easy laughter during work related social gatherings. Then bridge parties of two or three tables. Occasionally more intimate dinners with Damien and his wife and I and my girlfriend Betty. I loved Damien’s mind and we would take talking points to levels of absurdity.

We would come to live together. Women passed through our lives over the next decade or so but we remained friends.

Lisa – Lisa first entered my life as a nursing student rotating through the Psychiatric Day Treatment program where I was working as a Recreation Therapist. She took away my breath then my heart. She was told to stay away from me due to a lechery factor. Luckily this only enticed her.

After finding much in common and living together for three years Lisa and I were married and she inherited my friends. As the tribe formed, she became an integral member due to her intelligence and goodness of heart.

Damien met and married Adrienne, I met and married Lisa. We gathered in John and Mallow and moved to the Northwest. We became the tribe.

Moving North

Somewhere among the years Damien developed a wanderlust and he would spend time looking at potential places to live as Sacramento began losing its luster. He surveyed Ireland, the Carolinas, various California foothill or coastal environs, and the Northwest. Lisaand I would occasionally join Damien and Adrienne on these sojourns. These trips were delves into fantasy but gave us a focus for our vacations together.

We had narrowed our focus to the Northwest. The air was clean. There was lots of available land, more beautiful than Sacramento and much cheaper than California property.

Then my mother died and suddenly there was nothing to keep me in Sacramento any longer. So, Lisa and I decided to make the move.

This sent a ripple effect through our friends and family. We had to help them work through abandonment issues. Lisa felt bad about leaving her family, I just wanted out.

Damien had looked at a lot of property in the Northwest and was very much on the verge of leaving California. Adrienne… not so much. Her family wasa generational resident of Sacramento and she was very involved in the care of her aged grandmother. Damien had made up his mind and made it clear he was going to move even if it meant that Adrienne would stay in Sacramento until her grandmotherpassed or beyond.

Then, John and Mallow said they were going to move also. Our other friends were shocked. One friend with whom we were quite close, felt we were abandoning her in particular. This caused an emotional rift that would laterexpand into a chasm.

Lisa and I began looking at houses on the Internet focusing on the KitsapPeninsula southwest of Seattle. We put our house up for sale and it sold in a week.

It was like someone threw a bucket of ice cold water in our faces. “My God, what have we done?” We booked a flight to SeaTac, grabbed our list of 23 potential houses realizing we had three days to find a property and make an accepted offer if we were not to be homeless at close of escrow.

The first day we scouted the properties on our list to weed out the ones we didn’t want to waste our time on. Towards the end of the day we drove up a winding little road and found our house. This house had a bank of 14 windows with a wonderful view of Mt.Rainier and Colvos Passage on Puget Sound. It was also more than twice the square footage of what we were looking for, but it had a greatroom with wonderful acoustics for our fantasy of hosting house concerts and the price was within our range. Our offer for the asking price was accepted and the migration was begun.

In late September we packed all our possessions into blue container boxes. We stuffed everything we couldn’t fit into the blue boxes into our two cars, squeezed in our two Westies, and drove north.

A few weeks after we arrived, Damien made an offer on a house about 10 miles north of us, having given up his search for a buildable piece of property. This he did without Adrienne having ever seen the property. It was still not quite clear if Adrienne was going to make the move.

She did and just after the first of the year I flew to Sacramento to help them drive their U Haul containing their belongings to their new home.

John and Mallow began their search. Unfortunately each had different opinions on what the new home required. John wanted a house that was secluded and featured a meditative view where hewould peacefully contemplate and write. Mallow wanted a community where she could garner new friends, socialize, and join groups for quilting and other crafts. She envisioned a house where happy children would stream through the neighborhood on Halloween,a house ringing with the laughter of friends and family on holidays and wonderful dinners.

It took them a long time to find this house. They finally settled on a house on FoxIsland that had a panoramic view and writing room for John. They converted the bottom floor into an art studio and theater for Mallow. Other than being further away than the rest of the tribe would like, they seem to have found a home that offers each of them what they were looking for.

After three years we seem to have settled into our lives. Lisa and I have begun hosting house concerts. Damien and Adrienne have redesigned and have nearly finished remodeling their house. John is in the process of finishing another book. Mallow has joined some organizations and a Mahjong group with Adrienne. They have had numerous parties where laughter has rung through the house. Unfortunately few children choose to traverse their steep driveway for Halloween.

The tribe continues.

This was written in 2005… Much has transpired in the Tribe’s journey since then. The narrative will continue.