Today’s Wisdom: As for me and my house, we are going to serve iced tea and sit on the porch.
Isn’t it interesting how we often take nouns and turn them into action verbs. The one I hear the most today is “google it.”
I just found a new one to add to my collection, “front porchin’.” A lot of older folks will have great memories of an old front porch. In more recent years in our communities, front porchin’ has been hard to do because most folks don’t have one to do it on. However, the popularity of front porches is coming back, and a fair portion of new homes are now constructing them.
We built our home in our city in 1996, and we included a front porch. In retirement, front porchin’ is now one of my favorite pastimes. It is a great spot to read, pick a little guitar, chat with my wife, watch a summer thunderstorm, or just sit quietly and wait for a hummingbird to appear.
My frustration with the front porch though is that too many people grew up never learning how to work with them. The whole idea is that they are a place of people connections. There are a few who get it, and I always enjoy it when my friend spots us from his bike and pulls in to chat. But most folks just walk on buy, with maybe a polite but bashful “Hi” as they pass.
I grew up in a small town where there were at least 30 kids in a three-block radius. My sisters and I were raised by a dozen different mothers, depending on whose house we were playing at. We didn’t get away with anything, and we didn’t need to because it was a great place to live at that age, just doing legal stuff. No one had front porches, but they all had continuous open houses, which was even better.
Today, I really don’t know many of my neighbors. None of them are into porching. I see them drive by most days. Some wave. None stop. They don’t know what they are missing. Life is nice here on my porch – me, a cool drink and my hummingbirds. I’m just sayin’.