I have moved to a suburb with looping roads and cul-de-sacs. Developments curve like waves from the main road here in Gardner. The earlier developments, like the one on Oak Street, have bigger trees that arch over the road and sidewalks. Where I live the trees shade yards but leave the streets scorched.
The houses are depressingly similar in design, so mapping your way through the neighborhood is bewildering at first. Like bushwhacking in Oregon forests, it takes keen eyes to see the differences between one house and another. And like the forests, more is happening than meets the eye. On most of our walks Teckla and I don’t see anyone. Occasionally someone scurries from the air-conditioning of their house to the air-conditioning of their car. We suspect strange and wonderful people live in these pastel thickets.
The lawns in front of the houses are smaller than the ones in the back. Most kids play in backyards or stay indoors. When it is cooler, families grill food and eat outside while the cicada trill away. Backyards are fenced and safe. All is tame in these suburbs until you get to the corner of Dogwood and Meadowbrook where I now live.
Suddenly the streets are alive with wildlife. Cars slow as whiffle balls roll across the street. Whoops and screams of boys and girls fill the air. Girls on roller skates speed down sidewalks. Sprinklers shoot water high in air as jumping kids beat the grass down with bare feet.
Nothing is safe. Bugs bite, the sun burns, and the asphalt bloodies knees and elbows. (A baseball blackened Ari’s eye.) Feuds erupt and friends are lost and found the same day. Occasionally, a voice cries out from one of the houses, “Play nice!” And they do—for about seven seconds.
Whatever obstacles to community (the lack of front porches) suburbs erect are swept aside as the kids abandon their backyards for the front yards, sidewalks, and streets. Ella, Maverick, Theodore, Ainsley, Jack, Ariana, Khloe, Leah, Noah, and Ari are a wild tribe of the happiest kind.
It is summer in the wilds of Kansas.
T
