On the Porch

A curl tickled my mother’s frown while the breeze wound its way through porch posts of the oldest house I belonged to. My aunts were making fun of her - as usual. But she was the youngest and used to it. I was ten and not paying attention. Higgins, the best cat, was standing in my lap. Orange, enormous, and mostly feral, his feather duster tail twitched across my nose. He was clearly about to murder something. I looked to see what was about to be hunted. Around the corner a chicken was running down the street. Scooped by neighbor who, as a lady can, captured the hen while smiling and shouting pleasantries at us at the same time, Higgins was denied his prey. As he settled in my lap I sipped my ice cold coca cola and delighted in the warm little wind. Truthfully, time gentled. Muggy, stuffed, sleepy and delightful, I saw the world slow in a palpable way- explained only by the theory of relativity, a North Carolina summer, and Bojangles biscuits.

It was hot and I was so comfortably sleepy. My family was digesting an enormous lunch on the porch of the family homestead. My Uncle George, staunch academic prone to grammar corrections while you spoke your mistakes was on the other side of the porch. He was living in unbridled delight while he teased my younger cousin about his twang.

“What comes after nine Reese,” he would ask, fidgeting in gleeful anticipation.

“Tayain,” my seven year old cousin stretched with his drawl.

“Karen! four syllables!” He called at my aunt, through wheezing laughter.

“Stop it George, " she scolded, which my uncle fully ignored and went right back to gently torturing my cousin. Reese was perfectly happy to oblige.

My older cousins had fled, teenagers needing to escape the nightmare of sitting on a porch with their parents. Alex, my idol and Reese’s older sister had stormed off earlier in an unbelievably cool perfect teenage tantrum I wanted so badly to one day emulate. She was mostly mad that she had to entertain me and that I was sleeping in her room. We ended up doing donuts in her Ford Explorer in the K-Mart parking lot. It was the best night of my life.

The house was haunted. My great grandmother’s ghost was still there, stomping up the stairs, disapproving of how dirty her grandchildren had let the house become. Mr. Magoo, a one eyed Pekingese, was conscripted to come with me for midnight pees. Higgins, the traitor, fled.

I spent the summer jumping off the porch with an umbrella pretending to be Mary Poppins. I walked around town fully unsupervised. My eldest cousin Bart, functionally my older brother, tried to kill me in ever evolving creative ways. He howled as I was thrown off a bootleg tube float attached to the fastest but structurally questionable boat. “I found it,” does not inspire confidence in a tin shell being seaworthy. My mother saw me fly through the air. She just waved over a white russian and yelled, “YOU’RE FINE,” while I spluttered and tried not to drown.

“HOLD ON,” and cackles were the only warning before you had to cling to the frame of Bart’s world war two frankenstein motorcycle boat airplane nightmare creature of a vehicle he had gleefully glued together while speeding through the every forest, street, mountain and body of water.

On weekends we drag raced my mother’s car. My mother whooped in glee - laughing until out of breath while I had a tiny kid heart attack in the back seat.

At home, neighbors would walk up and sit and talk for hours. It was often about very important town news. They had to take away Louise’s BB gun because she was too old to hit the squirrels and was becoming a menace. Bart had to keep sabotaging Great Aunt Mary Jo’s starter so she couldn’t turn on her car. She was 82, nearly blind and a danger to herself but no one wanted to tell her. Everyone in town just conspired to keep her in car troubles instead.

But Alex was my hero. I was her full time shadow. She had boobs. She knew boys! She could drive! She had mosquito netting, incense, and cool band posters in her room. Alex had one million awesome pets and she snuck out in the middle of the night. I was obsessed. She just tolerated me while I tagged along to get pizza. The pizza was awful. Alex made it cool.

We all grew up and old, but every summer we came home. I raced my mom’s car. I snuck out with Alex. I bought moonshine from Cletus, the tiniest Santa in a John Deere shirt and sat on the porch drinking it with my cousins. Reese was a teenager and my Uncle still mercilessly teased him. Then immediately would scold me for ending a sentence with a preposition. I would silently mouth at my aunt “how did he even hear me,” while she rolled her eyes and made me come help her with the deviled eggs.

It seemed ordinary. But fools are made from the fun hubris of the now. I was so wrong. I missed it. I didn’t see the the magic. That sneaky slowly spun delight in the memories you are not aware are forming. The happiness that so quickly expires into nostalgia. I, for one, loved that life too late.

Uncle George died first. I wanted so badly for him to meet my daughter. Though an established curmudgeon he was a grump with the biggest soft spot for babies. A brilliant, articulate professor of southern literature - he became giggling jelly around small children. He died on my mother’s birthday.

“Well now my birthday is ruined forever,” my mother told me, matter of fact, over the phone. Jarring to most, but for those who know, normal. My mother is autistic. She lives on a different emotional spectrum. I just consoled her and hung up.

Alex died next.

She was thirty eight. Ovarian cancer and right after Uncle George. She had just knit tiny leg warmers for my brand new daughter.

I raged, lived in my fury about the healthcare of women and cried when my mother barely made it through telling me she was dead. Thirdhand hearsay-because Covid and my newly minted child.

“I’m scared, - Is what she said to the doctor,” my mother whimpered over the phone.

“The doctor told her to have all the whiskey and ice cream she needed if she was scared,” my mother softly choked.

I screamed into a pillow until I was hoarse.

I cried to exhaustion while I remembered. I remembered that lazy happy magic of a summer breeze and family, warm and alive. Joy of family is not always momentous or poignant. It is the laughter of aunts. It is the admiration of a teenager burning rubber in a parking lot. It is shitty pizza and an older brother cousin laughing while you drown. It is in the delight of a mischievous and grammarly-judgmental uncle. It is a giant orange cat, a runaway chicken, blind dog, ice cold soda, and a soft breeze. It is in the unacknowledged beauty of a porch in the summer. Mundane -but quietly and profoundly open, welcoming, and loved.