Good community can help you find your way home

I recently had the opportunity to meet two young distant relatives of mine: an almost-3-month-old and a just-turned-2 cutie pie. 

These tykes are brothers. If I am counting generations correctly, their great-great-great-grandfather and my great-grandfather would be the same person, a fact that carries little weight with the diaper-wearing crowd. 

The baby doesn’t play a big social role at this point. His main job is being passed from doting adult to doting adult and occasionally dishing out a charming smile he’s only recently discovered. 

There are a lot more layers to my 2-year-old Little Cousin. 

When I met Little Cousin, he was with his grandmother, and he was immediately overcome with what I am told is uncharacteristic shyness. 

He did what toddlers have been doing since time began. He retreated behind the safe barricade of his grandmother’s legs, wrapped his arms around her knees, and then peeked around to see what kind of danger I might pose. 

It reminded me of a time when I tried that same move and got a surprise. 

I couldn’t have been more than 3. We were in the original community house at Milnesand — a drafty, repurposed military barracks that was illuminated with bare bulbs and infested with enough wasps to keep the grownups busy with swatters and the children shrieking. 

There were a lot more community events in those days — baby and wedding showers, 4-H meetings, pie suppers designed to lure us out to listen to political candidates, wienie roasts, anniversary celebrations. 

There were also a lot more of us living here back then, so a gathering in Milnesand could draw a good crowd. It wasn’t uncommon to need every chair in the place. 

It was at one of those standing-room-only events when I was quite small that something frightened me — maybe a wasp (or maybe an unexpected encounter with a distant cousin I didn’t know…). 

I pushed through the crowd to my mother and wrapped an arm around each of her legs. 

And then I looked up. 

And it wasn’t my mother. 

In my haste to find a safe harbor, I had mistaken someone else’s polyester-clad legs for those of my mom’s. (It was an easy blunder. Polyester was all the rage in that era.) 

To be fair, this was in no way a dangerous scenario.  

While I may not have known the face towering over me, quite likely that woman knew me (or at least my parents), and quite likely it was that same woman who reached down a hand to take me to the legs I was looking for to start with. 

Watching Little Cousin peer around his grandmother’s legs reminded me of the overwhelming sense of relief I felt that long ago day when I was reunited with my mother. 

It also made me think that there are still occasions now and again when I wouldn’t mind having a benevolent giant nearby, one I could dart behind for a moment of respite from reality.  

Enjoy it while you can, Little Cousin, but learn this from your much older kinswoman: Don’t forget to look up when you duck for cover. 

But also, this: Plant yourself in a good community, because then even if you do happen to end up behind the wrong legs, they’ll belong to someone kind who will help you find your way home. 

Betty Williamson had forgotten how much fun it is to hang out with munchkins. Reach her at:

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