Cult de Sac

My house in red. Cult members in blue.

I live on a corner of two streets that both dead-end. One street ends at an intersection, so you can turn and keep going, but the other is a cul-de-sac. I have a sign in my front yard that says "No Outlet", which I adopted as the name for my garden blog. All of the houses on both streets are tract houses, built at the same time in 1950. They were one story, three bedroom, small kitchen places with one or one and a half- bathrooms, partial or full basements, and about 1300 square feet on the ground floor. Even in 1950, these were small starter homes. When I moved in, 25 years ago (!) there were a lot of long-time residents aging in place. I have survived to become one of the senior folks in the 'hood, as houses have turned over, been renovated, and younger folks have moved in to start new families. The small size of the houses means no large families, and these houses are also attractive to folks like me, single or couples but without children.

The cul de sac next to me is a special place within the larger neighborhood. Most of the houses back on to the stream valley park, and one has a path down into the park everyone on the street uses. When the pandemic started, remember there was a thing about banging pots or singing? The cul de sac started with that, and over the past two years has built up the connection to where they call it the cult de sac. They have a weekly happy hour outside year round, and in (both) summers had outdoor movie nights. They have a very active and funny What's App chat group. They built a little free library, and have three basketball hoops at different levels lined up for the different sized kids.

I think it's the kids that pull the core families together. I went to happy hour on Saturday, after our first two snow storms, and there were four children six and under playing in the snow. I know of at least four other kids not there because they were quarantining (one four-year-old actually had covid). I remember the solidarity from other parents I found on the soccer sidelines, and I think it was no coincidence that most of my parents' close friends even into old age had kids roughly the same age as me and my siblings. During these pandemic times, opportunities for kids have been so limited, so the bonding must be even more intense. There are two families on the chat group that live not on the cul de sac but on the next street, but they have small kids which I think was their entree to the group.

I had been invited into the cult events from the beginning, but have only just started to try to attend. Saturday was sunny and cold, and everyone stood out in the big cul de sac circle bundled up with their own drinks, watching the kids playing in the snow. Clusters of grownup people moved around, formed and re-formed, about ten in all, chatting about nothing and everything. Parents spoke to kids - and I couldn't always tell which kid belonged to which grownup, because they know each other well enough to pick up any one of them that went sprawling on the ice, pat them and send them on their way. 

I'm looking forward to a little more sociability with my neighbors as I get deeper into the cult.