Originally published in LLL US Western Division’s Connections #79, September/October 1998
I am envious of the people who live in Millvale. It’s a small community crowded onto the sides of a ravine above the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh. When I need my typewriter or VCR fixed, I drive down the Glenshaw Valley to a small repair shop there. After dropping off my appliance, I shop and browse on Millvale’s short, snug streets and watch the inhabitants. They walk to their bank, bakery, and ball fields. They can stroll to their little park and sit on benches with their friends and neighbors.
I have no such luxuries. I have to drive everywhere. My neighbors and I stand in the road to talk, and my friends are at least 20 minutes away by car. Picking up my children’s school buddies is a major excursion. The distances, narrow shoulders, and steep hills where I live make walking tedious and dangerous.
Our TEAM Meeting had a bit of a Millvale feel. And, like the fictional Brigadoon that only appeared every hundred years, La Leche League’s little “village†sprang up in Kansas City at this USWD gathering of LLL administrators and was, for a few days at least, a living community.
I swam laps with LLL women in the Hilton’s indoor pool early in the morning. I held elevators open for Leaders and their little ones. I got my hotel room key recomputed at the registration desk with more LLL women. I shopped at Barnes & Noble, went to K-Mart, and enjoyed the airport shuttle ride with women in La Leche League.
I ate breakfast with Leaders, lunched with more Leaders, carried dinner plates for Leaders with babies at the buffets, and passed the rolls and butter to still more Leaders at our seated dinners. I sang and laughed at our Talent show, sat at sessions, and washed my hands in the restrooms, shoulder to shoulder with other Leaders. Wow! Living with this, a group of mothers all of us committed to La Leche League and perhaps a bit giddy with being on their own for a few days, was an inspiring but, alas, transient thing.
Upon getting back hme, for a few days I was still looking for Leaders at my bank and grocery store. They had vanished, Brigadoon-like, and I knew they wouldn’t reappear again for some time. Now it’s back to the postal and e-mail La Leche League community where I function most of the year. The TEAM Meeting is over, but the magic and the personal touch endure. Farewell, Brigadoon. Hello, another inspired year of working as a team to support, inform, and encourage Leaders in their work with mothers and babies.
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