Our porch

I've been meaning to write about our porch for a while now.  Pretty much every time I walk across it recently, I've imagined writing this post.  Then I go inside and get hit in the face by life and the words and the time disappear.

But it is Friday and I am tired and I don't feel like folding that laundry, so instead I will write about our porch.

I fell in love with the porch first.  I remember that first day we toured the house, how solid the porch felt.  How rooted.  How sheltered and gracious.  We walked inside and were blindsided by woodwork and bay windows.  But the porch is where we lingered, sitting on its low walls with Melinda and Will, imagining futures bordered in yellow and brick red.

The porch welcomed our first furniture to arrive-- a porch swing of course-- and then my plants, and then a collection of scavenged chairs and side tables (carefully arranged), and candles, and company.  We would adjourn to the porch and sit to talk late into the night, that first summer, back in the day when our friends could stay later than 8:00.  Soft and candlelit, the porch had room for all and held us close.

The porch,  festooned with hanging baskets and a wreath on the door, announced to the world that someone loved this house again. Neighbors complimented it, said how glad they were to see things looking so nice.

Then life changed.  Our "Stay in it" house welcomed a baby.  And then another.  First to go were the ferns, then the potted flowers, then any semblance of careful furniture arrangement.   Late night lingering fell to the wayside in favor of sleep when we could get it.

The porch still greets us every day-- we always come in the front door-- though these days it is more a hallway than an outdoor room.    It still has those perfect, hugging-the-earth proportions,  the calm, wide walls, the sense of shelter.  Even if it seems to be sheltering nothing but wheeled conveyances for our children.  The porch does not seem to mind the fact that there are currently two strollers, two bikes and a wagon taking up most of the floor space.  Because it knows they are parked here to be used, every day, by the two little people who are growing up taking the porch for granted.

The porch will wait.

It already has, for 90-some years.

It will only be a moment in this porch's life, before it will be a gracious social center again.

And I will miss all the bikes when they are parked somewhere else.

I love our porch.  And right now, I am loving the way it reminds me to savor the now of my life, every day, when it welcomes me home.