Family connexions were always worth preserving, good company always worth seeking. ~ Jane Austen, Persuasion, 1818
For years I’ve coveted the custom, lifted from Jane Austen novels, of extended stays in the homes of friends and acquaintances. Up rolled the carriages and out flowed the people for a week or more of dinners, recitals, game-playing, riding, conversation and quiet time spent in the company of others.
Yes, I know they had large homes, plentiful servants and ample spare time as part of the leisured class. But what they knew – and what kids everywhere fundamentally grasp – is that sleepovers are a ton of fun.
My mother was the queen of hosting overnight guests. At any given time, we had as many as ten people sleeping at our place, eating bacon and eggs off tv trays perched around the living room and sharing a single bathroom. No one was ever turned away. In the summers, we spent time at my grandparents’ house in Kamloops, bunking in with our maternal cousins. What a difference it made to wake up to companions, to hang with them at the corner store or the park, to dance to ABBA in the screened porch, and play blindfold tag in the cool, dark reaches of the basement. We escaped our parents’ attention, busy they were with the aunts and uncles and friends – with more children! – who dropped ’round for a visit.
It was impossible to be bored or lonely.
When I met my husband and moved from Vancouver to Ottawa, I accepted a life adventure in trade for my “connexions” – immediate and extended family, personal and family friends, business contacts and acquaintances. What I felt most painfully, particularly as I began having children, was the lack of opportunity for roadtrips, the dearth of friends and family to visit for companionship and a much-needed change of scenery. I felt lonely and isolated.
As the kids grew, and became more independent, I began to take them travelling myself. As adventurous as that was, it didn’t always address my need for boon companions. As adults learn, compatibility is one thing, availability of friends quite another. It’s tough enough to book a dinner date with friends, never mind trying to coordinate vacations with whole families. Work schedules, budget limitations, kids’ activities and individual needs and wants make it almost impossible.
But what we have managed to come up with is a satisfying solution to getting together with other families that would make Ms. Austen proud: family sleepovers.
We’ve done exactly three to date with great success. Packing up the barest of travel necessities and a bushel of food and drink, we’ve loaded up the van, driven 20 minutes up the road, and moved in for the night with friends.
The kids disappear almost immediately. Dinners (and clean-up) are communal, drinking is relaxed, pajamas are encouraged, and dancing, game-playing and satisfying conversation are the norm. Couches are employed, sleeping bags are rolled out, and when the time comes, we drift off to sleep. In the morning we rustle up a big breakfast and, at some point in the day, pack up and head home, filled to the brim with happiness.
Just think, I tell my friends, how awesome it would be if only we lived next door to each other…
2 responses to “Sleeping With Our Friends”
What a pleasure to read this, Andrea, and to remember my own family’s trips across Canada — my father was in the navy and we moved from Victoria to Halifax, then back again two years later — and how we “bunked” with various military families along the way. Somehow there were always companions and friendships formed so quickly and easily. Some of those same families bunked with us in Victoria and Halifax, in turn, and if it was summer, my father put the tent up in the backyard. Instant guest quarters! (Don’t ask where people peed…) I have to say that I love people coming to stay with us, I love to wake first thing with the knowledge that every bed (and more) is full, and that pancakes will be a perfect breakfast.
Hi Theresa –
I think the topic really speaks to how we live now – bigger houses, fewer occupants, moving cross-country or across the world, the facade of independence vs. interdependence, globalization, embrace of a frontier mentality and our North American view of physical space. I personally find the emphasis on the nuclear family unsatisfying in many ways. I think it is way more fun – and we are all more ‘ourselves’ – when we’re surrounded by a variety of people we like and love (and complete strangers for that matter). These people can just as easily be friends as family. But I think tradition and culture play a big part in how we organize ourselves, often to our detriment.
I remember being younger and loving to stay at youth hostels because there was always someone (new) to chat with and go out with. We often lose that openness and flexibility as we grow older.