our neighborhood pack

We have somehow, entirely by luck, landed on the perfect street for unstructured outdoor play. Sebastian and Liesl are outside every afternoon after school, and on weekends would love nothing better than to play on our street with their friends. For hours at a time. And while I usually supervise from a distance, it's safe enough that I can putter around inside making dinner, windows open to hear the chatter.

The street is a cul-de-sac, so the only people driving onto these streets live here. From where we live you can either go around the loop of houses, or down a straightaway street. Our street is an incline, but not so steep that you can't play soccer or baseball - just steep enough that it's fun to glide down on scooters or bikes, and that if you kick a lot of balls they'll mostly drift back to you. The neighborhood is really safe. And all of us have small townhouses, without backyards to play in, and so the children are driven to take their energy and creativity out onto the street. And finally, there are so many children here! Living next door, and on the next street, and everywhere around!

There is Anna, a first-grader in Sebastian's class, and Raymond, another first-grader. There are Oscar and Nadine, 5th and 4th-graders respectively, who over the summer moved into the house two doors down. There is Stella, a third-grader, and Zoe in fifth grade. There are littler kids too, not yet in school - Sora, O.C., and others whose names I don't know. And on the other side of the main road into our development are Morgan, Steele, and Katie. Most afternoons there are at least 5 children running around, hitting tennis balls and wiffle balls with tennis racquets and teeball bats, riding bikes and scooters, building a secret fort and climbing trees, etc etc.

Our house has become the central meeting point for the neighborhood gang. I'm often home, and since Liesl is the youngest I feel compelled to supervise more closely than the other parents. I'll occasionally feed the whole gang some fruit or popcorn.  We have a garage full of toys and other sporting goods that we freely share with everyone. And so I find that when we're home and ready to play, everyone else comes out too. When we leave or go inside, pretty much that's the end of the games. I somehow never imagined myself as the neighborhood mom, and yet most days it's pretty cool to watch them all play and laugh and run (and bicker) and to know that we've created this wonderful community.