When my parents were younger than me and had a lot less money, they did an incredible thing: they packed up everything they owned into a blue Volkswagen bus and drove, with their kids (a two-year old me and my five-year old brother Dave, not to be confused with David, my husband), and another couple with their 2 children, roughly the same ages (Heidi and Johnny).
They drove from Los Angeles, CA - where the two couples had met in UCLA married-housing, location of my father apparently giving up on his dream of being a professor, because no one was hiring white men doing African History any more, and the dissertation was too hard to complete while working to feed a family - to Seattle, WA to start a Catholic Worker House.
http://www.catholicworker.org/historytext.cfm?Number=4
Growing up, I took it for granted that my parents had done this sort-of weird thing, in their mythical hippy past, back when they didn't have wrinkles or IRAs and probably smoked something called "grass" - but now I'm amazed by it, what bravery it must have taken, what faith and belief that they really could change the world with their actions.
I wish I could have witnessed the conversations leading up to their decision, how they planned it all out, or didn't - maybe they just went? What were they thinking though, as they left L.A., what did they think as they drove all that way on Interstate Highway 5 to Seattle, how were they imagining this was going to work out for their young families, did they think that if it went bust oh well, we have time to figure out some alternative? Legend has it that I pulled poor Heidi's hair the whole trip up there - between that and whatever else four young kids can dish out, plus the usual road-trip frustrations, I don't know how they made it.
They arrived late-summer 1974, in pre-Microsoft Seattle, before a Starbucks on every corner and McMansions springing up in the ever-expanding suburbs. I picture it all pioneer-rough, the air smelling of salt from the still pristine Puget Sound, with way more trees and overall "green space" than exists now. When the guys at Pike Place Market threw fish because it was just what they did, not because tourists stopped and took photos, or anyone had written about it for a business book parable. A new place, and one hospitable to young people with ideals and the energy to make the much-talked-about actually happen. But admittedly, some or all of this could be my own romanticization of the past...
In any case, with some help from the local Jesuit parish, they found a large house in what was, at that time, a slightly marginal section of the Capitol Hill neighborhood. There they created Pacem in Terris ("peace on earth" in Latin), envisioned as a "house of hospitality" for the hungry, the poor, the sick and lame, for battered women and their children, for those down on their luck and even just the lonely who wanted to serve; "what Jesus would do" for people, if he were alive and owned a house, basically.
And a soup kitchen in downtown Seattle, called the “Family Kitchen” was soon to follow. There are photos of me having my third birthday party there, standing up on a chair with ice cream on my face and cake in my hair, grinning without restraint, among Seattle's homeless. I don't remember much, not the peace protests or strange transient men or communal masses, but I remember drinking powdered milk (it was awful), and the produce from their dumpster diving, gathering fruit flies in the room off the kitchen (kind of awful also, but it was cheap and therefore fit the mission).
But it wasn't sustainable, at least not for my family, or not for my father. We moved out after about a year, to rent a house a few blocks away that my parents eventually bought and in which my mother still lives. I don't know why we left exactly but it may have had something to do with what's mentioned in this excerpt from a 1974 Seattle Times article -
"The Ray-Keils and the Hirnings decided to pool their resources and try communal living in Seattle, on Capitol Hill. They freely admit the still young experiment has not been all roses. 'The thing is that Larry and Alice have moved a lot further from consumerism or middle class lifestyle than I have.' Paul said. 'Intellectually, I’ve reached the same conclusions they have, but I’m finding it a lot harder to adapt my life.'"
He went on to talk about how hard vegetarianism was for him, how he couldn’t give up meat, but I think it was more than that. I think it was a lot of things I would love to be able to ask him about now, but mostly I think it's like my friend Heidi (still my friend, despite all the hair-pulling) says:
...here you are, thinking in some ways that quitting your job and looking for a new better way to live is giving your dad the F- you, or defying him, or letting him down somehow – but really, you’re living the life he couldn’t maintain. One he could intellectualize but couldn't risk committing fully to. The life he wanted when he had young children and he was dreaming of the future and wanted to make it right for you.
Don't know what my life would have been like, had my family stuck it out at Pacem in Terris. Heidi has her own story to tell, as part of the family that stayed, but we were the family that started it and then went away. Even so, I love and admire my parents for trying, for doing something incredible with their lives, that I get to inherit, and fully appreciate now. As Heidi also remarked -
Maybe they didn’t make huge change in the world like they tried. Maybe there is still injustice, and war and nuclear weapons and overwhelming poverty. But the one thing they certainly changed was who we are. Maybe that’s the real change they accomplished, and what they should be most proud of, in some ways. That's the you that's willing to give yourself to this new life -- and not let fear stop you.
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The Catholic Worker movement has a long and illustrious history which this post can't hope to encompass, see links below for general info, but in terms of the specific Catholic Worker house I experienced, this was all I could find online (a very cursory search):
http://www.pieandcoffee.org/2005/06/09/catholic-workers-of-the-pacific-northwest/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Worker_Movement
http://www.catholicworker.com/
http://www.catholicworker.org/communities/volunteers.cfm
http://lacatholicworker.org/
http://www.occatholicworker.org/
http://karenhousecw.org/
http://www.geocities.com/casa_maria_worker/
