13/365 Porch Sitting

I take all my important phone calls on the front porch. I sit on the top step usually and listen to (now ex) friends complain about their lives, or to my sister or mother or mother-in-law give me important information. Quick calls I stand in the front hall and handle. But if I have something I need to say I go out on the front porch.

Not the back porch, and I had to reflect on that to consider why.

Nothing important happens on my back porch, I realized. We chat and eat supper and watch kids swim. But the front porch is a different story.

The front porch is I hear news and pass it on. It's where I meet neighbors and sometimes have to deal with them and their problems (as block captain). The front porch is where Zelda stood just a few days ago and talked about something I'd written on my blog--and delivered the package that had been delivered to her when I wasn't home. It's where kids are said goodnight to before they go spend the night. It's where Gilbert's son-in-law stood in the rain and told me he was going to cause some trouble with the neighbors.

The front porch is our contact to this bigger living room of the street. We stoop sit and watch kids play, sure, and shoot the breeze, but sometimes it turns into important topics. Sometimes it's politics but often it's relationships.

Zelda, Travis, Gretchen, and I--but especially those first two--did expert level drug dealer surveillance from the front porch. We counted cabs and noted illegal activity. The secret service agent showed me his badge on the porch. AT the 2006 block party when the teenagers attacked, we ran up onto the front porch. Vic came out onto his front porch with a baseball bat. Gilbert's son-in-law, again, came out onto his with a gun. Henry sat on his porch swing for years watching the corner with a gun on his lap.

And last night after my bike ride I walked over to where I knew Zelda and Travis were hiding on their porch--they turn the light off and sit after kids go to bed on nice nights. I had something that needed saying and I stood there at their steps and we talked a minute. I didn't call her on the phone and I didn't pull my car up alongside theirs. I stood on their porch.

Sure we spend time in the kitchen, and around the table, but that porch is where we encounter the world, where the public meets the private.