Emerging

It is one of those words that is hugely popular, kind of like hugely. There is the emerging church, a Christian movement to rethink common Christian practices, and light lots of candles. The emerging job market, though it is debated if it will ever emerge or if we'll be stuck in an emerging state for a while. There are emerging therapeutics, or at least there should be with all the pharmaceuticals being peddled on TV, in print, on the side of my gmail account.

But nothing says emerging to me more than stepping outside and seeing our neighbors. Even if we've seen them out there from time to time this winter, it was either too dark to play safely or too cold to do anything but dart to the car. But today there were adults, kids, dogs, bikers out on both sides of the street. One girl climbed the heap of snow by her driveway and slid down, no gloves, no snow pants. Another girl along with her brother shoveled crystallized snow back onto the sidewalk while their dad talked with a neighbor whose dog waited patiently for a walk. I talked with the dog's other owner in between her dashes toward the front stoop to pull her one year old away from the screen door.

The boys tolerated our stop but would have rather kept moving toward the bike path for round two of "dog catcher", a chase-and-catch game inspired by The Stray Dog, a book where the dog catcher plays a minor roll, but for better or worse has become the most fun to imitate. They run and catch each other or I catch both of them (but I refuse to be a dog catcher, just a people catcher, is that any better?). Soon we were off, Dietrich with his ice scrapper and Elliott finishing off a box of raisins. But those few minutes of sidewalk exchanges and seeing the faces of our neighbors in late afternoon sunshine assured me that even in these last weeks of winter, we are emerging.