Their house is dark but for the faint glow from the front window, the activity and the movement all in the back of the house, where the kitchens were typically found. The children have no doubt that the bikes will still be there in the morning, not yet versed in the duplicity of man, those raised to simply take without effort that which they have not earned.
Let them enjoy this idyllic time, the days of doubts and of cold, dark nights would come soon enough.
Porch is derived from the Greek word portico and the Roman word poiticus, both meaning the columned entry to a classical temple.The porches here are much less stately, but there are no less important. There is more than one American flag that hangs from them, proud symbols of a nation born into or adopted as ones own. There are an equal number of yard gnomes and Virgin Mary statues, both often bearing the same swatches of fresh color.
The houses themselves are grey, white, brown or brick, no trendy Victorian doll house colors, no urban renewal shades of yuppie reclamation. The houses and porches are the shades of time and shadow and quiet murmured voices gathered between columns, as if time and breath had made them all one quiet color, a hushed vestibule where all is forgiven.
Officer Friendly : "So, do you know this woman?".
Partner: " No, she just broke into my car to paint her nails".
Me: "Seriously, I know his girlfriend, she's actually sane".
Much laughter about it, small moments in a small town where everyone knows one another, and the porch lights are usually on as a welcome.
You rarely see porches any more, except for old historical and artsy neighborhoods in the city, farm communities and the occasional vacation cottages. Most suburban houses any more are monopoly game house squares of plastic and cheap lumber and wasted spaced. What wood is there is usually laminate, the walls not thick enough to withstand a really good storm or the thump of a neighbors bass played too loud. They look OK now, but I can't imagine what it will take to sustain them 100 years from now. But they are big and "New!" with three car garages full of a lot of things that aren't paid for yet, the neighbors house so close you can't swing a tax assessor without whacking it.
Porches reflect the personality of their owners, warm and inviting, playful, classic, a sense of fun or a closed silent front to the street, those dark old houses that as kids we whispered about at Halloween, hesitant to ring the doorbell should bats fly out of the rafters.
The porch were an additional room, just just a covered entryway to a home. In my grandparents day, families would escape the heat of the home and the kitchen when summer came, breathless and sultry. Children played quietly on the wooden steps while adults sipped on tea and shared the stories of their city, their world, the words of their experience and not simply what was reach across an anonymous screen. Young adults courted, fell in love, and started their own lives, their own families, on other porches, likely not more than a few miles away. There was a sameness to it, a safe continuity, an opening with each other and their world.
Some porches were screened, "sleeping porches" an idea dating back a hundred years where families could sleep in the coolness of the night air without being bothered by insects. Mom's relished the escape from the kitchen where the flurry of motion was not breeze, the kids treating it like some exotic camp out, whose imaginations running wild with the sounds of the night while adults contrived some coolness from the motion of wind, the scent of flowers on the wind perhaps taking them back to their own courtship.
He never had to use that firearm for the purpose, the only time people around there even locked their cars doors in his little town was in zucchini season when neighbors would dump off unwanted bags of the prolific veggies on porches, front seats and milk boxes. But he had a love for his country and family as sincere as his own unfeigned and honest soul. Both of those meant to him what God means to a believer and if they were threatened he would not hesitate to pick up his truth and ready his sights.
But back then, I thought it was what I wanted because everyone told me that is what I wanted. So I stood in that house the first week I owned it and felt like a stranger in a place where people's reaction to the customary was different than what I'd assumed as frankly, my house was a perfect carbon copy of every other house (no one dare incurring the wrath of the housing association by painting their front door Winchester Repeating Arms Red). Colleagues gushed about my 20 foot entryway (make sure you don't look at it in the light so you can't see how crappy the drywall work is), the fancy roof (done by the labor of those I'm certain were not legal laborers) and the plastic, cheap fixtures that had all the personality of a Stepford wife.
I never really fit in. I didn't have a husband, or even an ex, an SUV and kids. I came and went at odd hours, sometimes gone for days at a time. I had no desire to go to Zumba or Yoda or whatever they called those exercise classes the women went to in their designer yoga pants. I didn't want to flirt with their husbands and when the guy two doors down banged on my door one night when I was sleeping about joining "Neighborhood Watch" I simply handed him one of my targets with the heart and brain blown out and closed the door.
I just wasted meant for modern suburbia.
I'm now sitting in a small place, one bedroom, a bath and and sort of a half with some more plumbing work, an office and writing den where the second bedroom would be, built in wood bookshelves and wood beams a hundred plus years old, wood that has been polished and cared for by several generations and will be maintained long after I sit here for the last time. People would look at it and think it odd I am so happy when I am here, without the excess trappings of consumption, happy to have shop space, room for a little garden and plenty of storage downstairs. It's not fancy, but it's a welcome rest stop in a days journey that is equal technology and mayhem.
I had my very first Mint Julep on this porch, I got to know the neighbors down the road, I know who is sick, who needs help with shoveling snow due to an injury or age. We don't socialize but we're social, hard working people that simply want to pull their own weight, keep their family safe, and live our lives based on what we know is to be right, not what we are told is best for us.
I'm sitting on the porch, the sound of a neighbor's mower from a distance, the comforting sound of someone I know working close by, another neighbor across the way answers the door to someone bearing a covered dish, with exclamations about ham and potato salad, an offering of food perhaps for someone in the house that was ill.
It was not run as in I'm late and I'm going to get grounded or I am going to try out for track, but the fleeting steps of one wishing to be gone before detection in an area he clearly didn't live in, dirt flying from beneath his fleeing feet.
Barkley was on a zip line with a harness to stop him without hurting him, so he could not make chase past the driveway, but it startled us all.
Cities sprawl out to the suburbs, which sprawl out to small towns and villages, bringing with it crime and change. Nothing remains the same, and wishing for the past often means just wishing for the best parts of it, which isn't always the reality of it. So, like my father, I still have a means of defense within easy reach. But I'd not trade this life for a fancy McMansion with shuttered windows and a houseful of things of which the possession impresses only the shallow. I'd rather live simply, looking at my world head on, not shuttered and hidden inside, standing firm on a hundred year old porch, under the shadow of an American flag.
- Brigid
