Yesterday, I took the boys to the local library to do their homework to break up the kitchen table routine. On the way there, the kids said that they needed a snack first, so I drove to the Wendy's, which is smack in the center of the town. I ordered some ice teas and frosties for the kids, and a Caesar side salad for myself. The boys ate their mysterious white gloop and watched one of the five large screen TVs, and Jonah swiped my salad. Growth spurt on the horizon.

Since it was three in the afternoon, the usual hungry families coming back from basketball practice weren't there. The other customers were old men sitting by themselves drinking coffee. The windows of Wendy's provided a nearly 360 view of our snow covered town. It was oddly beautiful.

At the library, Jonah ran upstairs to the teen floor to work on his math. Ian and I stayed on the kiddie floor and did math problems. Jonah's best friend and his mom came in to pick up a book on the Holocaust for Hebrew school, and we chatted briefly.

With the horrid weather this winter, we've all been entombed in our homes. I don't think I've seen my neighbors in weeks. I promised Jonah that we would go back to the library again tomorrow.

It would be nice if there was a place, a building, a facility that provided a place for the old men to drink coffee and watch TV, where the kids could do their homework, where the old men and the kids were mixed up a bit, where a daycare could operate next to a senior center and a cooking class.

YMCAs provide that mixed-up community life. Ian takes a swim class at a Y twenty minutes away, and I'm continually impressed with their acceptance of kids with special needs. I just wish that there were more of these organizations, and they were more widely used. Those old men in Wendy's need some place to go.