Porch Freedom

Last night was the first time this year, maybe since late in the fall, we slept with the porch door open. Getting up at three-thirty I closed the door, and shut the blind in it to stop the street light from shining in Linda’s face. Upstairs porch and bedroom opening on to it is something about freedom, like living in a treehouse or on a riverboat. Last night I went out on the porch to put on my pajamas and wondered if Alfred had ever done that, put on his PJs while looking out across the Bay. 

The porch is better now, screened in and with a new metal deck, but know what, I’ll bet he did, it was his bedroom and his porch. He was a teenager when he lived here, 1913 when the house was finished until January 1918, and I’ll bet he slept out there when the weather was right in those days before the house was heated and cooled, I would have. In fact, I promised Kristen we’d sleep out there sometime but we never got around to it. For the moment it’s my porch, but nothing is forever, is it, especially the happiness of having a child around to keep you smiling. Alfred and I shared birthday months, he turned eighteen in September 1917, and I outlived him by exactly sixty years last month.  

The backporch thermometer says 60F. That piece of a moon is in the haze right over my house, but judging by what was going on in Kiev last night and the smouldering rubble this morning, I’m guessing it’s still not in the Seventh House. 

Imagine having been able to watch chaos, rioting and the fires of Kiev on live streaming Ukraine TV during the Soviet era. How did I get so lucky as to be born an American. And to live in this in-between closing age of diminishing freedom before out of control government regulations and big brother surveillance completely shut us down Soviet style afterall.  

How’s the Blogger? He thinks he fine, but he’s just the writer, only the reader can tell. He’s going off paranoid about the government like every other buzzy old codger who ever lived.

In the meantime, 11:30 today, Wednesday Noon Eucharist and free tasty lunch with Bible study. What? Still in the Sermon on the Mount according to Matthew.

TW