The Front Porch

In a recent interview with Southern Living, musician and Southern-stamped, soul-food-loving Zac Brown, gave the following quote: “In the South, you gather around food.  Your kitchen is your living room, whether you want it to be or not.”

The kitchen, indeed, is where it seems I grew up. Pushing around the spinach in hopes that my momma would think I’d eaten at least half. Getting up on Thanksgiving before the sun to preheat the oven, grease the pans, and start on that dessert that needed to be chilled for 6-8 hours. Fighting, laughing, hugging, talking, celebrating, growing, living.

But even more than the kitchen, which I might say was indeed the soul of our house, our front porch--two-storied, with white columns, two porch swings, eight sets of double French doors, Louisiana-style--was the heartbeat. It was as if the bare feet that kicked the swing into motion were the ventricles and valves pumping, beating, moving us through our childhood and into times when our own children carried the blood flow back--still pumping and swinging on the same porch swing.

We didn’t care about mosquitoes, and we were hidden enough behind the Japanese maples and oak trees that the few cars that would drive by wouldn’t wake us. For while we were busy with the business of life in the kitchen, we were settled in the dutiful Southern ways of talking slowly on the front porch--our conversations only punctuated when someone would stop by to say hi or a firefly would wing close enough to tempt.

It is no surprise to me that my own son loved that porch swing, loved that porch, from the time he was an infant. Almost, it is as if he knows his momma’s own bare feet graced those worn bricks--running up the steps from school, shuffling awkwardly after a date knowing Daddy was watching somewhere somehow, and still--talking about something as serious as who on earth remembers what.

The thing about our front porch, about all front porches, is that it tells you about the people inside the house. It tells you to slow down, to turn off your phone, to forget about television and air conditioning and everything that makes you rush over the threshold. Stop and tell your story. Ours are alive in this place.