When we moved to this house I was most excited about the porch. I imagined lazy, sunny summer days sipping lemonade and playing Scrabble. I pulled my Mom out to the porch and told her about the pinochle games and cold beers we would share. Her health was never great but those were things that were simple enough to accomplish and would bring her much pleasure. The first year we cleaned it together. We moved her wicker furniture out there. I loaded flower boxes with dripping vines and an array of colored blossoms. We hosted a wedding at the house and that very porch is where the vows were exchanged between two people just starting their journey together. My mother and I would meet out there at the first boom of a thunderstorm to watch the light show and smell her favorite scent...the rain. We were given a porch swing as a thank you for the wedding and my mother and I would swing on it and talk.
Each year as her health worsened...the porch was still the one thing that would get her up and moving. In the spring I would clean and scrub and spruce it up. I would load up the flower boxes with the new batch of flowers in the hopes of topping the year before. She would get out there and smile. In the fall I would change the boxes to an autumnal show full of gourds, pumpkins, mums and kale. It would make her that much happier and keep us out there a tad longer after the warmth had left the air.
Two years ago I went so far as to repaint all of the furniture. I made the wicker a sunny yellow and the wooden bench and rocker a pale green. They complimented the happy stripes on the new swing cushion. Flowers stretched beyond the boxes and filled pots along the steps and on the antique chairs and tables. She watched as her grandchildren played with the croquet set in the grass. We still waited for storms and chances to talk whenever we could. That summer was the hardest yet. My life was falling apart around me and the swing on the porch seemed to magically take me to a place of calm even if for just a few moments. Last summer there were new hopes of card games, morning cups of coffee and meals with music and lanterns and the magic of summer...but Mom was feeling pretty badly by then.
This past winter when she was feeling very ill the ambulance came across the lawn and the porch was used for the stretcher transport. I didn't decorate for Christmas. There were no white lights twinkling or evergreens with bows as their had been the years prior. When we brought her home from the hospital I rode with her in the ambulance that left grooves in the lawn as a reminder for months. We came in through the front and paramedic boot soles and wheel marks were there long after the snow had melted. She left through that front door. She said goodbye to the porch one last time.
It is now July. Mother's Day came and went without the traditional batch of new flowers. Spring said hello and then left without the scrubbing and preparation of a new summer. Boxes were left in the garage with the old soil. The porch was left dusty and dreary and full of cobwebs and dead leaves. The swing has been lonely. One of my favorite spring cleaning projects has been avoided. Tonight I grabbed the mop, broom, murphy's and my bucket and scrubbed. And cried. And swept. And cried. I heard her voice saying it was about time I got to the porch...
The last few years were devoted to a woman who had devoted a great portion of her life to me. It was her turn. I made the meals she loved. I sorted the pills that gave her some relief. I told her every detail of every event that she missed. I talked and shared more than I ever had. She did the same. It was almost as if I knew that they would be the last few years. Almost as if someone had told me to make it count...and I did. I am grateful for that. So much is missed. Though I have stopped running down the hallway to tell her something that would make us both crack up with laughter...I still have trouble when I realize she isn't there when I really need her. I sometimes talk out loud assuming she is listening because we all know she wouldn't want to miss a damn thing. And maybe now I'll do it while swinging on the porch. But up until today I simply couldn't face that I would clean it and make it nice for a card game that would never happen. That there wouldn't be a pile of magazines with pages ripped out for the new recipes I needed to make for her. No catalogs will be scoured. No cold beers or juicy burgers. Not with Mom. I have one more section to do in the morning. The sun's departure was too quick for me as I worked. I will finish and I will swing and look at my work. I just have to remember that I won't have to run down the hall and pull her to come and see it...something tells me she'll already be there on the swing just as proud as ever.
hugs!!!
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