This past weekend we went back to the Joshua Tree Music Festival in the Mojave desert.  The festival has become a bit of a Grim family tradition, with this edition marking Jade’s fourth trip to the event and Sebastian’s third.   What a difference a year makes, though, especially for my small kids for whom 12 months still represents a significant portion of their entire earthly existence.  While Jade has always been precocious, this year I watched as she asserted herself more fully, introducing herself to others on her own volition and even talking her way into her first paying job!

It was also an entirely new experience for me given that Tania had become ill earlier in the week and by Thursday was physically unable to attend.  While the idea of camping out in the desert and attending a multiple day music festival with kids always seemed a bit ambitious, Tania and I have made a habit over the years of extending our comfort level in order to incorporate our children into things that we otherwise wanted to do.  That said, we’ve always been able to rely on each other and our unique strengths as a parenting team to make things work.  Truth be told (which is kind of the idea of this blog), a lot of our adventuring has relied on Tania’s tireless ability to keep the kids both nurtured and sufficiently entertained in almost any situation.  Deprived of our anchor and secret weapon, I wasn’t sure that Team Grim would be able to pull the whole thing off again.

Another element to this year’s campaign came as a direct result of this blog!  After reading about our experiences at last year’s festival on the Grim Truth, my dad told me that he wanted to get in on the act in 2017.  I encouraged him at the time not really believing that he would end up pulling the trigger, but about a month ago he called to tell me that the tickets were booked and that he was in.   I imagine that I would have taken the kids without Tania even if my dad hadn’t come west for the festival, but now that he was here, the decision was basically made for us.  I was taking my 6 and 3 year old camping to a desert music festival as a solo parent, with only the help of my 68 year old father who hadn’t camped at all in the past 30 years.  Yikes.

Despite my clear sense that the festival would be a wholly different experience without my wife’s help with the children, I never really allowed myself to get too worried about any of the myriad prospects for disaster.  First off, I obviously had my father with me to help.  Secondly, we would be camping with several good friends, all of whom knew my children and were helpful people by design.  Finally, and most importantly, the process of parenting over the past six years has taught me to have faith in the so-called village.

This is a strange concept for me as an agnostic who has always thought that I lacked the capacity for faith.  I know certain things to be true, I would tell people, but if you ask me to just believe or to go on faith, you’ve basically lost me.  All of that said, after six years of parenting, I’ve come to know that there is a village of fellow humans at any given time that is fully prepared to help.   All you have to do is show people that you need help –  that you are temporarily vulnerable – and helping hands materialize.

I never knew this before becoming a practicing parent because I so rarely found myself in the position of literally not being able to handle a situation on my own.  Even on the rare occasions where I would actually need help back in the day, I would usually just pretend that I was fine rather than appear weak or needy in front of other people.  But as we experienced in Europe earlier this summer, there are times when two sets of hands can’t handle four bags and two kids running in opposite directions.  In each of those desperate moments, some stranger stepped in to help in some small but totally obvious way right at the moment it was needed most.

One such helpful person was running a crystals shop at this year’s festival.  Jade was immediately drawn to both the product and proprietor, and kept asking me if we could go back to look at the crystals.  Sebastian was not quite as enthused, so on the third or fourth trip back into the shop on Jade’s insistence, Sebastian turned and sprinted back to the playground area.  The proprietor’s name was Lorena, and she immediately saw my dilemma as I turned to run after Sebastian just as Jade had wandered into the back of the store.  “Don’t worry” she said, “I’ll look after her for a bit while you go and get him.”  Relieved, I thanked her and headed out to give chase.  By the time I got back a few minutes later, Jade was helping to put price tags on new crystals that were being taken out of inventory.  Lorena told me that Jade was doing just fine and that I could go back out to the concert area if I wanted to.  Kind of amazed at the apparent partnership that my daughter had struck up, I headed out to catch some music from a vantage point that allowed me to still look in on her in the shop.  Everything seemed to be going well, and by the time I got back there to grab her, Jade informed me that she now had a job!   Over the next couple of days Jade spent several more hours in the crystal shop, learning not just about crystals but also getting her first tastes of customer service, inventory and price labeling.  Clearly, the crystal lady’s initial offer of help was based on my temporary vulnerability.  Ultimately though, she ended up keeping Jade around because of the relationship that they struck up individually, and everyone benefited from the arrangement.  I got help looking after my daughter, the shop got a natural marketer and customer charmer in Jade, and the little deal maker got her payout in lumerian crystal.  Win-win-win.

It takes a village to adequately raise a child, but it also requires parents to have faith that villagers will be there to help.  The truth is, most of us spend most of our time tirelessly insulating ourselves and our families- through money, career, paid help and possessions – from the prospect of ever needing to ask for assistance.  Not only does this independence limit one’s sense of what is actually possible, it designates the exchange of goods and services with other human beings to the commercial realm. The great thing about help freely given and accepted though, is that it feels positively wonderful to both offer and receive said help.  Why do we deprive ourselves of this essential joy of human existence?  To continue to appear strong even if we may not be?  Please.  On the other end of that pride is the pleasure of the interconnected village.

Obviously not every person is going to step up and help every time, but I’m here to say that there will always be someone in any given group who will.   That faith feels good, and is re-affirmed in joyful places like the Joshua Tree Music Festival where people celebrate their interconnectedness over a long weekend in gestures large and small.

See you next year?