Sometimes, after a long day alone with my young children, I
wonder what life as a mother would have been like a long, long time ago, when we were cavepeople.
While it certainly sounds unpleasant to cook squirrel meat over a fire,
hide from wooly mammoths, bathe in a cold river, and make clothes out of coyote fur, what sounds appealing
is the cavemama communal living. Maybe
the phrase “it takes a village” originated then: a time when mothers and sisters, aunts and
cousins, helped each other with daily child-rearing and cave-hold duties.
In a world where so many of us find ourselves hundreds of
miles from our own mothers and sisters, it’s oddly comforting to picture myself
as a cavewoman, stirring a pot of bison stew with my nephews while my sister
straps my baby on her back to forage for berries, and my mom potty [bush?]
trains my son.
