Downtown Glendale’s Brand Boulevard is humming with life on a Thursday afternoon. Weekly Farmers’ Market is folding up; shoppers and late business lunch parties hurry along the sidewalks. One block east, the city library’s sliding doors are in constant motion.

Two blocks further east is Kenwood Street; behind it, a typical city alley–concrete, surrounded by office and apartment buildings, their accompanying dumpsters. You turn into one of the driveways, and suddenly and deliberately, city becomes farm. Green trees spread over a garden bursting with tomatoes, peppers, sunflowers, squash, broccoli, kale. Hummingbirds and white butterflies dart about lantana blossoms. Your leg brushes the herb garden, releasing the pungent aroma of mint. Then you notice something peculiar. There is a little face in the window, a pigtail on either side, and she’s watching you intently.

"Who’s home?" she interrogates you through the screen.

"Go to sleep, Jamie," my voice drifts through the kitchen window. "Okay," she calls out. Then, "Who’s home?" again. "A friend," I tell her. You laugh as I invite you inside, and we peek in on the babies. Sixteen-month-old Kiera is slumbering peacefully in her crib, cheeks rosy with warm sleep. Jamie, who’s a precocious three, is once again instructed to lie down. She sticks her pacifier in her mouth and hums. We close the door quietly and embark on a house tour. Graceful archways, wood floors, black iron fixtures, tiled fireplace, all mark a house designed with love and decorated with care. I blush and thank you for noticing. We complete your backwards tour with a dinner invitation (bring juice) tonight, and you exit through the "monastery" (the entrance hall), out the solid carved door into the front patio garden. An iron "tavern sign" that reads "The Bilberry" peeks over the bright purple Mexican sage. "Short for Billocks and Quishenberrys," I answer your glance.

The Bilberry is an experiment in community living by a group of young Adventists. It started as a joke about a commune. Four months of househunting and several serious conversations later, we signed the rental agreement. Six blocks south of our church on Isabel, it seemed perfect for hosting young adult activities (vespers, concerts, film and game nights, etc.). Not a bad commute to church, either.

But it’s not just an activity hub. It’s home. Three families under its roof share space, stuff, experiences, good food, many friendships, spirituality, distinct views and perspectives, moms and dads (parents are practically interchangeable by now), operating expenses, jokes, duties. We eat together, work on house and grounds together, raise the children together, hike, run and ride together, attend Sabbath School and church together, tell each other about our days, our vacations, our conferences, our jobs.

In essence, we share life, for now. We enjoy our privacy; retreating to lone spaces with a phone call, a set of feelings to work out, difficulty with a housemate. But we seem to gravitate to the same rooms together, in the end. There’s safety in numbers.

I spend most of my days here, a self-appointed stay-at-home mom, working occasionally as an educator. My days are spent interacting with text, voices on the phone, and household appliances as I juggle caring for small children, my duties as a young adult church leader, and household tasks. In just a few minutes my "other half" is due home for an in-between-jobs lunch. Mike divides his time between a consulting firm and a nonprofit organization aiding youth in the North Pasadena community. Together with Jamie and Kiera, we form the "-berry" sector of the Bilberry.

The back door slams, announcing Mike’s arrival. I hear him clumping around downstairs, opening and shutting cupboards in his lunch prep routine. He wanders upstairs, finds me editing a writing piece at the computer. We exchange mid-day updates, a sandwichy kiss, dinner plans. We celebrate my late brother’s birthday tonight, inviting a select company. I give Mike a grocery list; he’ll stop for supplies on the way home.

Christy, one-third of the"Bil-" in Bilberry, calls from the car on the way to one of her doctoral classes at USC. Her schedule has her hopping between there and Loma Linda University, where she teaches OT classes. Research, studying, and an endless string of meetings fills her schedule to overflowing. Fortunately for us, she unwinds by cooking.

"What can I do to help tonight, Lissie?" she asks.

"Mike’s got the shopping covered," I tell her. "I could use some help making Frito plate (my family’s term for haystacks)." We swap some information, joke around a bit, she promises to help with dinner.

It’s my turn to cook. Every Thursday night is "feast night;" we take turns cooking with our family friend, Elke. This ritual has become essential to the household, as we invite old and new friends to join our table.

A bit later, Paul, Christy’s brother-in-law, calls from his programming desk at Neopets. He moved into the Bilberry from Walla Walla about a month after the rest of us and straightaway became our fix-anything genius and one of our chefs.

"Do we need anything for tonight?" he asks.

"We’re all set, Pio, thanks."

"What’s on the menu?"

"Glennie Frito plate. All you can eat. And birthday cake."

"Cool."

A short while later Greg checks in. He’s Christy’s husband and Paul’s brother and completes the Billock trio. Plugging away at the last of his PhD research, he graduates from CalTech this winter. Nicest super-genius you’d ever hope to meet. "What’s up for tonight?‚" he asks cheerfully. I give him the spiel and hang up to finish my story. The sun streams in the office window as it drops down into the West. Bilberrians begin to come home. Annemarie and Jolene arrive (Elke can’t make it tonight, she’s in DC). Jamie greets you through the peekaboo window, smiling. The door opens and Paul invites you in, taking your juice. Most everyone else is in the kitchen preparing the meal, or playing noisily with the babies on the living room rug. People smile and introduce themselves to you.

I’m upstairs hitting "print," at long last. I rush downstairs to finish preparations and stop short in the dining room. Everything is ready, steaming on a beautifully set, candlelit table. I’m speechless as I take in this gift from my housemates, my friends. We gather around the table, take hands, heads bowed. I utter a simple prayer of thanks, then tell the "story" of the meal. We are to stuff ourselves and to be as silly as possible, in memory of my brother James (Jamie’s namesake). The group "falls to" willingly and conversation ensues, peppered with little girl-isms, laughter and requests to pass this and that, forks clicking, ice clinking, people telling each other about their days, discussing upcoming elections, events, headline stories. Kiera is just short of talking and everyone competes to see whose name she will attempt next.

After dinner, the babies are bedded down, plates are carried to the kitchen. Mike brings out dessert. It’s informal this evening–Moosetracks ice cream, with a birthday candle in each serving. We sing boisterously, eat our ice cream, gather in the living room around the fire. Instead of the usual informal talk, roll-up-the-rug swing dancing, or well-chosen movie, tonight it’s a story of a girl and her brother and what happened when he died. Mike brings out a Kleenex box and virtually everyone dives for it. The story ends with a song, then silence, then reflective discussion. In this conversation, this activity, you get your first sense of what the Bilberry truly is about. This woman’s sorrow is shared by all in the room, and while it is not diminished, it is distributed, each carrying part of the load.

You think about it more as you bid good-bye to the company, get in your car, drive home. This household, smack dab in the middle of the city, has created one family out of many. And this is its foundation: the sharing of the load.