I love porches; not patios, not balconies, not decks. Porches.
My grandparent's house had a wide porch across the front. Dutchman's Pipe vine crawled up the webbing on the side railings right up to the roof, hiding us in our own green world of dappled light and changing shadow.
There was nothing as exciting as swinging on the creaky canvas-covered sofa hung from the porch roof with chains. My sister and I stretched out our tiny suntanned legs to give us momentum – back and forth, back and forth – in time to the summer rain drumming on the rooftop.
It was a cozy feeling to be outside when the rain came, but not really outside. There was a tension to that, the idea of being out when you maybe should be in and knowing that the rain couldn't get at you, but daring it to anyway. Perhaps it was a conquering of the powerlessness that children often feel that turned this into an I-dare-you thrill. As adults, we forget how important simple moments can be – and can feel.
Then we moved to a house in another town where the front porch was so far back from the highway that we could only just see the traffic jams on summer evenings when the Americans had come to Canadian lakes near us to fish. And again, there was that special tug, that tension of watching the slow hot crawl of angry cars wending their way eastward, beeping and snorting, when we, lucky souls, were perched on our porch slurping our melting Popsicles. We were in the present but we had the freedom of not being a part of it.
Over the years, I've enjoyed some splendid porches as my affaire de coeur continued.
I've spent a few happy summer hours sitting on the wide stone porch that wraps itself around the Mount, the erstwhile home of novelist Edith Wharton in Lenox, Mass., before she ran off to Europe in a vain attempt to find genuine love. I love sitting there looking over Laurel Lake and the Italianate gardens that Edith designed. I love the overarching embrace of the huge blue sky above. And I love thinking about the friendships that blossomed there in sync with the leaves of her Lime Walk. Henry James was one of her most frequent visitors and the literati gathered for Edith's porch parties; her anchor in the storms of her marriage to Teddy Wharton. In her autobiography, A Backward Glance, she wrote of the "evening talks on the moonlit terrace." I'd sit where her comforters once gathered on that stunning outdoor space that is larger than my house times three.
Not far from Edith's porch, I've enjoyed a few perfect Barbara Pym moments sitting under the eaves at the historic Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Mass. It's a place the author would have related to: white wicker rockers, chintz cushions, cups of hot tea. I love to sit on the wooden porch on quiet evenings with the softness of a spring rain, again, tapping on the rooftop.
Overseas, I've walked along the sand at My Khe Beach in Vietnam, which borders on the South China Sea. It was early morning at the end of the rainy season and I was alone. The waves were maybe 15-feet high. They crashed and banged on the sand and pounded out a rhythm borne of the deep.
"What if," I wondered, "the waves jump shore and drag me out to sea?"
I dashed for the hotel porch and watched the wild scenery from a comfortable distance. I curled up in one of the vast wicker armchairs under the eaves and watched the people nearby tapping on their laptops. How could they do something so mundane with an entire ocean climbing and spraying in front of them? I revelled in that tension again, the wonderful juxtaposition of looking at the untamed from a tamer place. Safe, but maybe not quite.
Another favourite: the enclosed porch of a cousin's cottage in the Lower Laurentians where I've fallen asleep in the middle of the day lulled by the clear mountain air, the perfect stillness, the unrippled water of Lac de l'Achigan beneath the open windows.
In the everydayness of my real life, the porch on which I sit is of a humble variety at the back of the house. We watch sunflowers and gold finches on soft fall days, orioles and redwings in the spring, and all summer watch nasturtiums bloom while lilacs and a happy strip of zinnias do a tango with the cosmos.
At home, I have taken my fondness of porches to a whole new level. Two friends and myself have started what we refer to as our Porch Parties. We sit on one another's porches on summer mornings with coffee, muffins, strawberries perhaps. It's the perfect trifecta: three friends, three porches, three cuppas. Porches are places for friendships to blossom, just like the zinnias in summer and the frosted snow flowers on the window panes in December. We generate from various backgrounds and on many matters we have different opinions. And yet, we can say what we like without condemnation.
Our porches act as metaphors. We step away from our regular lives and sit back. We're outside the fray, but just momentarily. For that brief, blissful period, we are out of heavy weather. We talk about books we're reading, foment new ideas, discuss world events and the concerns of our hearts. Those matters are in safe keeping under the eaves of the porch roof. May Sarton, the American writer, said that "the joys of life have nothing to do with age." The joys of life have everything to do with feeling safe. It's about letting the rain fall and not getting wet, but sometimes just reaching out a bit to test the drops.
Judy Pollard Smith lives in Hamilton.