This winter we’ve all become sort of pleasantly agoraphobic, passing entire days at home, inside.

By 3 p.m., I feel like I’ve been watching the daylong rehearsal of the new, hip indie film – you know, the one that has two actors who perform 30 acts in 17-minute segments and you don’t really understand anything but you appreciate the passion of the artists.

Rose: “Let’s say I was your puppy.”

Col: “Yeah, and you wanted to go to the museum (pronounced mew-sem). But then I say: ‘Puppy, you aren’t allowed in the museum!’”

Rose: “You don’t say that to your puppy! Puppies can’t hear that.”

Col: “Sorry, puppy. But you can’t go inside.”

Rose: “Ruff ruff. That means ‘OK.’”

There’s a scene change, and Rose is now the director of the museum, clickity-clacking across the tile floor, headachingly, in her tap shoes singing, “I can do anything you want in a jiffy!”

Seventeen minutes later, Col is in his room snapping Legos together and Rose is settled on the couch reading Wizard of Oz, her particular version peppered with copious verbs and adverbs, exactly what I warn my writing students against: “And then she said happily, ‘Why don’t you come with us to beautiful Kansas City to get a brain?’ It was so sparkly bright that he jumped up excitedly and said, ‘Let’s go!’”

And then, apropos of nothing, Col comes out of his room wondering about circuses. “Because,” he starts, “when are we ever going to see a circus?”

Me: “Maybe this summer. Daddy and I saw one at the fairgrounds before you were born. They brought in a big circus tent and we sat in the bleachers, and ... ”

Rose: (sarcastically) “Oh right, and then they just suck your blood.”

Me: “Suck your blood?”

Rose: “Right. The bleachers.”

Me: “You mean leeches?”

Rose: “Oh yeah.”

Then the kids do a five-minute play with their snake and mouse puppets, consisting entirely of the sounds “eek eek” and “sssssssss,” which, as you can imagine, is riveting.

And despite wondering about the effects of all the fresh-air deprivation, I love all this playing. While I drink coffee and read the paper like the personification of a boring grownup, Col and Rose plumb the depths of their creativity by just doing what kids do best. They’re so passionate and silly and unselfconscious and agendaless about it, it’s like the secret handshake of childhood, the ability to blink away the world we adults live in and tumble into the realm of pirates and fairies and puppies.

Recently, we were at the pool where scores of kids were ecstatically shrieking and splashing, chasing each other and doing multiple underwater somersaults in a row. The building was humming. And I wondered: If you could bottle this energy and exuberance, how many pharmaceutical drugs could you replace?

These kids, they’re onto something.

Reach Rachel Turiel at sanjuandrive@frontier.net.Visit her blog, 6512 and growing, on raising children, chickens and other messy, rewarding endeavors at 6,512 feet.