The Power of the Porch

Last year I decided to start a blog.  I’ve always been a frustrated writer and figured a blog would be a good creative outlet.  I titled my blog “A View From the Porch,” which reflected an old passion and a new possession.

Donna and I have been married for 37 years, and counting.  We have lived in 9 different residences over those years.  I've always wanted a screened in porch.  I like sitting out doors and I don't like being gnawed on by bugs and other creatures, so a screened porch has been on my radar for a long time. 

Since I'm obligated to some degree of full disclosure and subject to the "truth in blogging" laws, we did have a screened porch in our last house.  However, it went largely unused because of the "fish bowl" effect.  We had neighbors who stared at us when we were on the porch - sort of like living in a fish bowl - it just wigged us out, so we abdicated the porch - then moved.

The porch is a place of solitude.  It's a place to think, read, reflect, meditate, talk or just vedge.  Come to think of it, you can also take a nap......  You get the privilege of observing and listening to life go on around you.  It's also a place that you can shut off that constant flow of life and hold a conversation with God.  

We had porches growing up.  Turns out they’re hereditary.

In the late 50's and early 60's, I remember my mom feeding "hobos" (the archaic word for “homeless”) and snapping beans on the parsonage porch in Argos, Indiana.  Many wanderers showed up at the house next to the church and got a hot meal for their body and food for their soul at the preacher's house.  I suspect a lot of counseling took place on that porch,   I still remember quiet voices filtering into my upstairs bedroom window when my parents talked late on summer nights.

I recall the steady low squeak of the porch swing in Spartanburg, SC.  I can still see my dad sitting late at night in the dark, watching the cars go by on the Asheville Highway.  I know he was thinking about his work and his flock.

That same swing hung on the California version of a porch in two residences in Fresno as my dad served out his last full-time pastorate.  

Those porches were his refuge - I believe God resided on each of those porches and it's where my dad met with his Boss to talk about his day.  More quiet conversations.

In his final years, my dad spent hours on his little back porch in a condo in Simpsonville, SC.  I built that porch swing and he worked hard on wearing it out.  Like the sacred “dad-recliner” in any family room, the porch and that swing were his special place.

Last year, in an unusual fit of coherent thinking, we added a sunroom to our home.  Under the sunroom, which is on the second story, we added a screened in porch.   My "porch experience" is shared mostly with an unending supply of squirrels raiding our bird feeders, starving birds, and an occasional deer wandering at the edge of our woods. 

As I write this, we are on vacation on the Isle of Palms, SC.  I'm sitting on the porch enjoying a nice breeze and blogging away in the passing company of Donna, daughter in law Michelle, son Steven and, the closest thing to royalty I've ever met, granddaughter Sophie.

I do my best thinking in three places, on my bike, behind the lawn mower and on the porch, hence the name.  I always have Company on the porch.