I’m watching my 11-year-old daughter, Maeve, play with a young neighbor in the snow from my living room window. They’ve built a bridge of snow over a wooden fence that separates two houses on the block. They climb back and forth over the bridge and slide into the yard as a group of adults chatting in the street toss an occasional snowball toward them. The laughter is hard to pull away from, and though I have work to catch up on this snow day out of the office, I’m tempted to wander outside and join them.
The scene outdoors reminds me of Norman Rockwell’s “Deadman’s Hill,” a vintage painting of kids and dogs playing in the snow. It makes me nostalgic for my own childhood, when I lived across the street from a park that turned its basketball court into an ice skating rink during the winter months. All of the neighborhood kids would meet there to skate and play “crack the whip,” a treacherous game where everyone links hands and skates in a growing circle. The last person hanging onto the “whip” usually ends up airborne. My sister cracked her front tooth during one of those magical, parent-free evenings.
And as the snow poured down for two full days last week in the nation’s capital, it transformed our urban street into its own winter wonderland. Snow-covered cars created a hilly streetscape and blended sidewalks and yards into unobstructed playgrounds. Bushes and evergreen trees, heavy with snow, resembled shapes found in a Dr. Seuss book. Snowmen of all sizes greeted passers-by. My favorite: a snowman wearing a blond wig and necktie holding a sign that read “Make Winter Great Again.” And the best part was that everyone ventured outside.
Snowstorms are those rare occasions when you come together with your neighbors and actually get to know them. Days of shoveling and talking politics turned into evening potlucks and impromptu happy hours. We shared books and movie recommendations, debated the best way to remove the snow and cheered when one of our cars was finally free. We were all in this together, and there was a genuine camaraderie on our snowed in block (and a feeling of relief that we never lost power).
I know the snow will melt and work and school will resume. I know the pile of wet clothes in my front hall will diminish and we’ll return to eating frozen food out of convenience. But for now, I’m relishing the last of these snowed in days, the gift of time when we don’t need to do anything or go anywhere in a society obsessed with being productive. So bring on the extra, guilt-free time to stay in pjs a little longer, chat with neighbors, play backgammon with the kids and simmer soup on the stove.
And to my neighbors, thank you for your generous spirit, and for building relationships that will last well beyond the cabin fever.
