I've never been a big fan of our front yard. It's smaller than our back yard, the grass is two steps closer to death than in the back, we can't really have the dog out the front, my landscaping there has been minimal to nil, and it gets wicked hot during midday. My time spent there has been proportionally little.
Despite this, I've always rather lamented what I perceived to be a lack of family front-yard activities. From the tales I'd heard from my parents, the front yard or the front stoop (were you lucky enough to be blessed with a stoop) was where it all went down back in the day. People would drift street-ward after work, clad in something with suspenders, clutching a can of beer, and begin trading wavering opinions on Nikita Krushchev or Elvis or whatever populated the newsies that day. Kids ran through the streets, unopposed and maniacal, games of stickball breaking out suddenly and without warning. This is how I imagine anytime before 1982, back to and including 3,209 B.C. It's just easier on my brain that way.
These days, and in these streets, there's just not an enormous amount of action happening streetside. Granted, half our block is taken up by a church, and the other half is only sporadically occupied with breeding folks. Still.
I was served up a slice of self-awared hypocrisy only after I started observing some neighbors across the street hanging out with their kid in the front yard almost every day. We barely know the couple, two very nice women who had their girl Ruby the very same day we ushered the twins into our mortal coil. As spring slowly took a toehold, I began to see Ruby and her moms out front more frequently. Eventually I came to realize that never spending any time in the front yard meant I was really not part of making a better, more social neighborhood.
I am going to hang out with the girls in the front yard more often. We'll mix it up a bit, because I love the back yard like a misfit third child, but the front is going to come into the rotation. We started tonight after dinner; headed out, sat in the grass, ate some sticks, and even got to see Matt and Jen from down the street, something that would never have happened in the back yard. So we're already winning...go team Gels.
Now I just need to find someone with whom I can discuss Elvis. Or Krushchev.
Day seventy eight.
I try to hold myself back from commenting every time, but sometimes I can't help myself. I wish we had the old neighborhood thing going here, but it's even less that way in the 'burbs! Still, you do see neighbors sometimes if you hang out in the front! I love the kids!
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