I was on your porch,
the smoke sank into my skin
so i came inside to be with you
and we talked all night,
about everything
We could imagine
cause come the morning ill be gone
and as our eyes start to close
i turn to you and i let you know that
i Love you*
In Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells mentions porch time with special fondness. It doesn't matter, really, if your porch is a cement stoop, or a formal patio, the time there is special.
Porch time with my grandmother happened in front of her house, on the patio. She liked to watch the neighbors come and go – I didn't realize til very recently that she must have felt very lonely much of the time, and this was the only way she knew to reach out to other people, by sitting there, a fixture of the neighborhood, with her red-painted prehensile toes, crossword puzzles, and emerald green glasses of my grandfather's iced tea. (My grandfather made the BEST iced tea, and though I use a recipe he gave me, I'm certain he left a detail or two out on purpose, as it's always CLOSE but never quite right.)
My favorite part of porch time, when I was a child, was when dusk began to settle into night, and the fireflies came out. How innocent we were, running around the neighborhood carrying old mayonnaise jars or coffee cans with holes punched in the lids, capturing the nearest thing most people ever get to faeries.
And how indulgent were our parents and grandparents, back on the porch, who examined each and every bug as if it was somehow different from the last.
*”On Your Porch,” The Format