1st draft (porch poem)
For the first time since I moved in, I had a reason to clean the entire house:
My best friend was moving to Seattle and I had offered to host the going away party.
That afternoon, my body exhausted, I plopped down on my wicker couch. I realized, as my legs and back were unremorsefully jabbed, that if I was about to entertain company I should grab some mismatched pillows from inside
And that the pigeon shit on the front porch and sidewalk should be hosed down.
Greta said not to worry about making everything super-clean cuz she was sure everyone would feel comfy in my house regardless, but I couldn’t stop cleaning.
I wanted everyone to relax and enjoy themselves without having to worry about pigeon shit on their shoes and holes in their pants.
So I got up.
My neighbor Adam showed up first and smoked a sweet-smelling cigarette on the porch.
I wanted him to come inside and see how nicely the place had shaped up, but I could tell that being the first to arrive was causing him some anxiety.
I excused myself and came back with two glasses of raspberry lemonade and we made small talk about books and more music until more people started showing up.
I start thinking about how I told my mom to stop by on her way back to Phoenix and how this will be the first time she’ll ever see my playing hostess in my own house.
I’m nervous but proud.
I wonder if she ever got to show her mother a brand new house she had decorated and furnished by herself and I’m suddenly thankful for the hand-me-downs I’ve inherited from her. She parted with the chair and dresser and curtains and mirrors easily because the patterns and colors had clashed with the color schemes of her new, middle-aged collection (and because she helps me out when she can.)
I wonder if mom ever got hand-me-downs from her mother. Grandma died when I was four, so she never got to see the house my dad built for us. He spent ten years planning and building this dream house into the side of a hill covered in wild raspberry bushes. When the house started coming together, we would go up to the second floor and look out over the abandoned farm and imagine what it was like to harvest 7 hay fields while managing a barn full of horses and cows and chickens.
Mom was always hopeful that dad would build her a wrap-around porch so she could entertain guests on those long summer nights that were so romantic in the books that she read. And eventually, when it became obvious that a wrap-around porch was one of dad’s non-essentials, I wonder how she dealt with her disappointment.
I know she planted irises outside her bedroom window that came back every spring after the frost. Maybe she tended to them as diligently as she would have the company she imagined sitting under mosquito-netting, sipping raspberry lemonade.
I used to think my mother never taught me anything more than how to keep (inhumanly) quiet,
But now, as I prepare for some thirty-odd people to come into my house,
I realize that she taught me how to make other people feel at home, even when it’s not everything you ever dreamed of.
My best friend was moving to Seattle and I had offered to host the going away party.
That afternoon, my body exhausted, I plopped down on my wicker couch. I realized, as my legs and back were unremorsefully jabbed, that if I was about to entertain company I should grab some mismatched pillows from inside
And that the pigeon shit on the front porch and sidewalk should be hosed down.
Greta said not to worry about making everything super-clean cuz she was sure everyone would feel comfy in my house regardless, but I couldn’t stop cleaning.
I wanted everyone to relax and enjoy themselves without having to worry about pigeon shit on their shoes and holes in their pants.
So I got up.
My neighbor Adam showed up first and smoked a sweet-smelling cigarette on the porch.
I wanted him to come inside and see how nicely the place had shaped up, but I could tell that being the first to arrive was causing him some anxiety.
I excused myself and came back with two glasses of raspberry lemonade and we made small talk about books and more music until more people started showing up.
I start thinking about how I told my mom to stop by on her way back to Phoenix and how this will be the first time she’ll ever see my playing hostess in my own house.
I’m nervous but proud.
I wonder if she ever got to show her mother a brand new house she had decorated and furnished by herself and I’m suddenly thankful for the hand-me-downs I’ve inherited from her. She parted with the chair and dresser and curtains and mirrors easily because the patterns and colors had clashed with the color schemes of her new, middle-aged collection (and because she helps me out when she can.)
I wonder if mom ever got hand-me-downs from her mother. Grandma died when I was four, so she never got to see the house my dad built for us. He spent ten years planning and building this dream house into the side of a hill covered in wild raspberry bushes. When the house started coming together, we would go up to the second floor and look out over the abandoned farm and imagine what it was like to harvest 7 hay fields while managing a barn full of horses and cows and chickens.
Mom was always hopeful that dad would build her a wrap-around porch so she could entertain guests on those long summer nights that were so romantic in the books that she read. And eventually, when it became obvious that a wrap-around porch was one of dad’s non-essentials, I wonder how she dealt with her disappointment.
I know she planted irises outside her bedroom window that came back every spring after the frost. Maybe she tended to them as diligently as she would have the company she imagined sitting under mosquito-netting, sipping raspberry lemonade.
I used to think my mother never taught me anything more than how to keep (inhumanly) quiet,
But now, as I prepare for some thirty-odd people to come into my house,
I realize that she taught me how to make other people feel at home, even when it’s not everything you ever dreamed of.