#PorchSeason

My parents built the house in which I grew up themselves. Construction workers put up the frame and other major components, but my parents chose the plot of land, my father designed the house, and my brother and I passed many restless nights trying to sleep to the sound of my parents hammering. Before we put up the drywall over the entranceway from the foyer to the living room, we all signed our names on the header.

Long after my brother and I were grown, my parents decided to move out of Illinois. Of course, I wanted to buy the house. It needed a ton of work, but to me it would’ve been worth it for my kids to grow up in the idyllic locale and preserve our family home. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

My husband and I did move back to our hometown of St. Charles, however. (We went to high school together). Besides number of bedrooms, bathrooms, etc., there was one wish list item I kept in my heart. If I couldn’t have my parents’ house, I longed for a house with a porch. My parents had a wraparound porch with a porch swing, and I spent so many happy days and evenings on it, gazing out and dreaming up poems. Of course, I knew that our finances would limit our options, but months into an exhausting search, a house popped up on the MLS with a wide front porch and a swing. I knew it was meant to be ours.

In 2018, the night before we moved into our house, my husband and I put together our new porch swing we ordered online. From that day forward, as soon as the weather gets nice, we spend as much time out there as possible. I write, read, listen to the birds. My husband and I put the Cubs on the radio and have an after-dinner drink. The kids and I have painted art under its roof. We’ve trained our dog Daisy to sit out there with us and not step away. We’ve marveled at rainstorms and stayed dry. We’ve watched the girls make snowmen on the front lawn with mugs of hot coffee to warm our hands.

A few years ago, I wrote a poem called “The Porch” as part of Poetry & Art Day at the Yorkville Public Library where I used to be the facilitator of their creative writing group. The premise of the event, put on by the Kendall County Arts Guild, was to write a poem which would be given to an artist anonymously, and then the artist would create a work based on the poem, with the poetry and art revealed to one another for the first time on that day. My friend Joan turned out to be the artist, and I was delighted when she gifted me the piece. It hangs in our foyer.

Every May the lilac bushes bordering the porch burst into bloom and perfume the house through the open windows, just like the ones at my old house did. There will always be a part of me that yearns for my childhood home, but this is our kids’ childhood home. It’s a reminder that things don’t always turn out the way we expected, but sometimes they work out the way they were meant to.

And for that, I am grateful.