A few days ago, I checked in with myself. I was feeling kinda crabby, so I figured it was time to seriously ponder how blessed I really am. I started counting my blessings, and I discovered I have so many blessings that I had to take a few days off from writing TIE O’ THE DAY posts, because I have never counted that high before and it made me dizzy. That is I— discombobulated by my wealth of blessings.
My list o’ blessings begins with my mom, Big Helen. These photos were taken on my front porch in Delta. Mom would walk across the property line between us to porch. “Porch” is a verb too. Mom would sit and rule the world from the Porch at least a couple of times a day, weather permitting. Porching with Mom was a blessing of time well spent. I learned so much about her and her perspectives on her own life, as well as her take on the world. I hope she likes what she learned about me.
We told stories, joked, passed along nice gossip, and laughed. Once, we laughed so loudly and animatedly, a UPS truck stopped in my driveway. The driver— who we didn’t know— got out to ask if Mom needed help. “I sure do need help,” she said while laughing even harder, then she invited him to porch with us. Of course, the concerned UPS dude had packages to deliver, so he opted out of our invitation to porch. But he left with a bigly smile on his face.
Everyone was welcome on the Porch. A few people were officially invited to sit with us there, and they all declared their visit to be the best porching they’d ever done. They all left laughing.
The last year Mom lived in her house happened to be the last year I owned my Delta house. I was in Delta most of that year, on Mom duty. I had become the official designated driver for Mom and Peggy for their daily drinking (Pepsi) and driving. The old girls gradually became less interested in going on their routine leisurely drives around the county, so the three of us did most of our daily drinking on the porch. Two or three months before I sold my house, Mom wasn’t able to porch with us most days, so it was just Peggy and I on the porch. Porching alone with Peggy is one of my magical blessings too. We laughed, cried, and learned a lot about each other. Peggy told me things about the history of Hinckley that I’m sure Hinckley would rather I not know.