Grasshopper New Media Presents...

In our neighborhood, as the weather gets colder, I see my neighbors less and less. We pass each other while driving through the neighborhood or in the local grocery store, but not like during the summer.

During the summer, parents watch the kids as they ride their bikes and scooters up and down the driveways, like an Indy Five Hundred for grade schoolers, while we chat and catch up on what’s happening, who’s going where on vacation, and what’s in store for the next school year. We know what’s going on in each other’s lives in the summer.

But come fall and the start of school, the days shorten, and we all begin to hibernate in our homes, never really seeing each other with the same frequency as our impromptu summer chats. Days and even weeks pass without seeing our nearest neighbors, until the point when a holiday card marks the most contact we’ve had with each other in weeks.

But on a recent afternoon, it started to snow. The kids got excited- almost too worked up to even attempt homework. Snow in our house means sledding on the hill in our backyard. Kids and parents from all around the neighborhood come, meaning hot chocolate and cookies are in high supply and demand, and impromptu parties of kids and adults abound.

The kids were really hankering for a snow day, too. This meant superstitious rituals- wearing your pajamas inside out and backwards, and maybe even sleeping with a spoon under your pillow. (Apparently, the trick only works half-way- they got a two hour delay, not a full day off of school for snow.) Regardless, this mini-respite provided time for both before and after-school sledding for my kids and the neighbors.

The best part of the first snowfall of the year had to be the new puppy’s discovery of snow. She sat outside, playing in it, chasing snowballs, catching snowflakes on her tongue. She had such a good time, she was like an exhausted toddler at night- so sleepy, she couldn’t even get off the couch to go to her bed, and needs to be carried, like a petulant three year old.

So winter time can also be a community time for us. We emerge, as the snowflakes fall, from under the covers to play with our kids and reconnect with our neighbors. This ritual will happen again and again with each new snowfall, until Spring finally arrives, and we all emerge from hibernation again.

I love the fact my backyard has almost as much excitement in the winter as in summer- even though we have exchanged baseballs and soccer balls for sleds. I only regret that the snowfall may not last long, and we’ll all hide away again until the sky brings more white clumps of joy onto the hill in the backyard.

We don’t know if we’ll get a White Christmas or not, right now. What I do know is that the first snow of the year made me feel Christmas-y inside, more than usual. It brings our community together again, one that I’ll see sporadically, along with the snowflakes, until Spring returns in earnest, with longer days, flowers and sunshine. And until that happens, I may be hoping for snow as much as the children- maybe wearing my pajamas inside out would help. What do you think?

by Whitney Hoffman

[tags]home, snow, winter, hibernation, fun, Christmas, outside, kids, children, experience[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by jaxxon, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved