A Rocker and the Front Porch

          I love my front porch. It is a special place. It is a place to go to relax, drift away and see things. It is mine, and maybe it is special only to me, but it is special.

            It is ordinary in appearance, a typical southern veranda, or if it were on a bayou in Louisiana, it would be the gallery. It is wide and long, running the length of the front of the house. It is screened in, as any good, special porch should be, and is situated geographically in such a way to catch most any breeze blowing except from the north, which wind you do not want anyway. The breezes aid in cooling, but in the hot months, the porch has ceiling fans, two of them, big ones.

            I am writing this while sitting in the rocking chair on the porch, and it is taking me forever. For one thing, the rocking chair is not conducive to work, nor for that matter is the porch. There are too many distractions. The hedges on three sides do not grow high enough to block my view of the yard, the creek that feeds the big pond, and the street way out there somewhere. If I turn my head slightly, I can see the little pond, the azalea bushes, and through the trees, the neighbor's house.  There is always something going on.

            Sitting here, I’ve watched squirrels, blue jays, mockingbirds, Great Blue Herons, hawks, Odessa the owl, an eagle once, and in the winter, little chickadee like birds.  There have been raccoons and opossums, roaming the creek and the yard, and on one occasion, a fox with a rabbit in its mouth.  I won’t be watching that rabbit again.

            The porch is accessed from the house by three doors, one from the family room, one from the master bedroom, and the front door, which opens to the rest of the house. In spring and fall, both days of either, we open all these doors making the house an extension of the porch, which I am not so sure was not the original intention of building the porch in the first place. I often get the feeling that the porch was constructed, and then the house added as an afterthought, a support system for the porch.

            The house is confining. It is not so much that it keeps me in; it is that it keeps life out. In the house, you don't get the wind and rain, the smells of the earth in spring, the radiant, often oppressive heat of summer, and the deadening cold of winter. On the porch, you are part of these. The porch is a magic place. It is a place I go to get away. It is a mini-vacation if only in my mind.

            The rocker I sit in is part of the porch. Other than rocking, it doesn't move much. It is an old, maple, hardback rocker. It has changed color over the years from a light blonde, to a deeper brown. I have rocked thousands of beats in that chair, and it has carried me that many miles as I sit, rock, and read.

            The chair has been a ship on the high seas in calm and in storm, a camel along caravan routes, and has taken me on foot as a prisoner and slave. It has been a horse on the plains of the west, a jet fighter of modern age, a bunker in combat, a rice paddy in the orient. It has taken me to the moon, and beyond, to the tops of Mounts Everest, McKinley, and Kilimanjaro. It has been a wonderful conveyance. It has propelled me thousands of miles, but has moved only inches.

            It is on this porch, and in that chair, that I have gone on other trips too, trips that did not require imagination, or the aid of a book. There have been many times when the reading, the hum of the fans, the calls of the birds, the gentle breeze, the nearness of a sleeping dog have robbed me of wakefulness. It has been in the in-between state of awake, and asleep that I have gone places, and seen things. The place is the same, I don't leave the porch, but the colors are more intense, the smells more fragrant, and each thing I observe is sharper, more in focus.

            I have seen the land as it was before with oaks older than the Spanish and French that walked here. I have seen the First Nations people pass this way before them, all moving along the expanse of my mind's clearer eye. I have seen the settlers come and tame the land, the street beyond the porch but a dirt road with wagons pulled by horses. Rows of crops growing along the land have swayed in the breezes, and I have been transfixed by the passing of generations marching before me.

            It is a good land, this place that we now call Lower Alabama. It has served many before us, and will serve many more after we have left our mark. I wonder, is it a good mark, or will our progeny call it a scar and work to repair it?

            As the street out there is now paved and people pass too fast to wave to me in the chair on the porch, I realize one day, they too will be no more. The thought makes me a little sad, but it is the way of all things. Time marches on, people and places change, but as long as I can have a chair and a porch, I will remember and enjoy the moments come rain, wind, shine, or cold. It's just a special place.