The Porch

Our porch needs painting and the steps replaced. It’s happening this summer but I’m in no hurry.  I like the porch the way it is. I’d keep it that way  but it’s not fitting, you know, for a hundred year house to fall into disrepair.

When obligation meets ‘not really caring,’ obligation always wins in the end. We should fix the porch so we shall.

In the meantime, I’ll sit where I sat the night the night I came back from Nicaragua with our newly-adopted 17-month old son, a boy who’d spent his entire little life in an orphanage. Hotter on our porch than it had been in Managua, we sat in the dark, my husband and teenage daughter and I, and we talked about our trip. My daughter and I had gone together to Nicaragua to bring him home. It had been a hard, hot, heavy week and we were full of random details that had to be shared immediately. Nothing would hold until later.

My husband told us that he’d gone out the minute we left to buy a pack of cigarettes after months without smoking. I told him that I’d gotten off the plane in Managua and immediately bought a pack of Marlboros from a boy selling cigarettes and chewing gum on the street. Those were the things we had to say on that hot night, on this porch. Every word still hangs in the air like fireflies.

I see them when I sit here.

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Originally published 2015; just revised