Porch Time

It seems like yesterday, poof!  I was out on the street playing kickball with my friends. We would finish and run up the front step porch of someone’s house and be handed

Popsicles and feel like the luckiest kids in the world. We would see parents up and down the street peeking out windows while they were busy doing whatever adults do, making sure we were staying out of trouble. Then there were the older ones, aged, who would sit on the porch smiling with not a care in the world either, watching us. Back in those days, trouble was not playing breaking rules in kick ball, fighting over whether a ball was out or if a kid got hurt.  Life was easy as we played out there in the street. We had a whole lifetime ahead of us. In those days, we didn’t even think about it. Nothing seemed impossible.

I remember sitting on the roof top, in a few years later, as my dad fixed the antennae on weekend mornings.  In those days, there was no cable, no digital internet, just a big old tower hooked to our house.  The easiest way to the roof was through my bedroom window so I often went out there with him. What a view of the street from up there. I would sit on the shingles and get a bird’s eye view of the street while he worked away.

 I remember the day I was in my pajamas and pink curlers and accidentally closed the window!  It was locked when closed and no one heard me knocking from inside. I was stuck out there for hours!  In fear someone would see me, I hid on the backside of the roof. Three guys my age lived across the street, I was petrified that would catch a glimpse of me in my not so cool looking pjs.   My dad found it funny and was right, I had two choices, deal with it or take the 8 foot jump!  

Gone are those days of me being the one in the street, me being the one on the roof. Now I am the one on the porch.  I am not the one you would catch on a roof top either. My balance is not so great that I would feel safe up there that high anymore. I even wonder now, looking back, how my dad withstood that height and the heat so many times those days. I can swim laps and ride a bike but running around bases playing kickball would certainly lead me to serious joint pain!

Initially, it was a sad realization I am getting old and that I will never again be the one playing in the street.  I can’t play be the one playing kickball.  I won’t ever again have a future that is a blank slate.  None of us older do. But, with that said, a lifetime comes with all the turbulence, all the choices, decisions, hurdles, and sacrifices one has to make. The heart breaks a thousand times over as the years create opportunities for people to come and go in your life.  Joy and heartbreak also.

I remember learning about a dear friend Michelle Bell I grew up with dying, in her forties.  When she died, I remembered the times we spent at the park simply swinging as kids, riding in her first car (a Javelin, with a muffler tied up with a coat hanger!) , and sewing halter tops and switching tops because we wore the same size. All the silly simplest times became so much more meaningful when she was suddenly gone.  And then it seemed like 10 years was one week and then another close high school friend,  James Green,  was gone suddenly.  He had been on the waiting list for a kidney but that wasn’t even what killed him, it was a freak fall where he hit his head and didn’t recover. And there I was sitting at his funeral remembering all our notes, all our walks and talks and fast forward, we were adults and would have no more memories to share.

Not everyone you care about will be there till the end of your time. I have some dear ones that have fallen by the wayside, some from death, and some by choice, theirs or mine.   Life is like that, change is inevitable. Kickball is unpredictable too but it sure doesn’t seem so heart-breaking.  In life, you will be judged, evaluated and make a difference in some lives and in others, nothing you do will make a dent in their persona.  In kickball, it was way easier to make a difference with the kids you played with on a team. We all just wanted to get along and have success together. Don’t you wish your life had worked out so simply?

The freedom of aging and some of the peace is in knowing that you have made your path. You have lived. You have created your own unique journey that no one else can quite replicate. In one sense it does remind me of those days gone by, as a kid, you were the only one in the street that looked just like you.  And now, currently, aged, if you are like

me, sitting on the porch, you have a story to tell that is unlike anyone else’s.  It doesn’t matter, at the end of the day, whether anyone believes all of it or not,  or even hears it, you have lived it and you know it by heart. God shared in every piece of it. The reality of you and your memories are the moments that took you around the bases of your life to lead you right to where you are, now, sitting on the porch, looking back. Rest easy in the rocker. 

As I reflect on my life, I realize my blessings.  Mistakes and successes, but through it all, I survived. If you focus on those that judge you for all you did not become, did not achieve or what they expected of you,  you are left forgetting who you are and what you were given in God’s Master Plan. Create your own vision of the world and of yourself.  Aging truly has its rewards when you empower yourself to let yourself go and just be you, be real.

You made it, you got the hard work done and got the privilege of sitting on the porch.  You get to watch the game of kickball and watch others run around the bases.  Enjoy the view and reflect on the path you took to get there.  You made the circle back home.