Flooding the Backyard Rink

My kids have been begging for a backyard ice rink for three winters. This November, I finally gave in. I'd watched enough videos to be dangerous.

My son and I built a frame out of two-by-sixes, thirty feet by twenty, leveled it with shims and lined it with a giant white plastic tarp. Then we waited for the cold. When the forecast showed a week below freezing, we stayed up until midnight flooding it with the garden hose, layer by thin layer, wearing headlamps and three pairs of socks.

My neighbors watched from their windows like I was building an ark. One of them came out in his bathrobe to offer advice. Another brought us coffee at eleven p.m.

The first morning the ice was hard, my daughter stepped out in her skates, took three careful strides and let out a shriek of joy. By noon, there were nine kids on the rink, and the neighbor in the bathrobe was out there too, in hockey skates he hadn't worn since 1985.

We'll be flooding it every cold night until March. I've never been so happy to be up past midnight with a hose.