I believe every porch needs a swing. Whether it is to sway grandbabies to sleep, talk good old days with your dad or share a sweet tea with your sister, if there is a porch involved…there needs to be a swing to enjoy it from. I have this big old log swing that hangs on the far end of our back porch. It has springs at the top that give it just the right amount of bounce and makes it super comfortable. There is nothing in the world that can calm a soul like the back and forth of a swing in slow, steady motion.
The very first log cabin I ever entered was in Kentucky at a historical farm. I remember it well. It was the day I fell hopelessly forever in love with log cabins. It was a primitive, one room cabin with a stone fireplace that took ownership of one entire wall. A rickety ladder led to a sleeping loft overhead. The only piece of furniture in the structure was an old porch swing suspended on ropes from the ceiling in one corner. I suspect even in those days it was to sway a grandbaby, talk good old days with dad or share a sweet tea with a sister. Not much about those things change from family to family or generation to generation.
Before we moved to our cabin, back when I was still working in an office cubicle and screaming to get out, I often thought about…dreamed about…sitting on the swing on the porch of my own log cabin. I remember how just the thought of that steady to and fro motion would calm me, stay me for another day, another week, another year in that cubicle.
I don’t think people were meant to live their lives in an office cubicle, a window-less factory or cooped up in a warehouse somewhere. I think people need to look outside, be outside, to get from nature what they can’t get anywhere else. I think we need to have our senses assaulted with the smell of fresh cut grass, the taste of freshly roasted marsh mellows or the cry of a baby fawn in search of it’s mother.
We need to be able to see the sky and watch a falling star as it shoots, ever so briefly, across the midnight sky. We need to see baby colts dancing in the field and baby calves dancing in the rain. We need to stop along a country road and watch stranger’s children playing baseball and share in their joy and love of the game and root for teams whos names we don’t know.
We need to turn the tv off and the put the cell phones down and teach our young ones to do the same. We need to fish and hunt and ride bicycles and let off sparklers after dark and remember what it was like to be a kid again and not live in a room without windows. We need to plan our escape back into the world we long for, live for and dream of being in. Each of us needs to decide and find what that world is for us. We need to find our porch, our swing, our steady to and fro that calms us. The place where we can sway our grandbabies…talk good old days with dad… share a sweet tea with our sister… sit on our porch and swing till our hearts are content at last.
I hope, that as I have, you too will one day find your own porch swing.
I pray it be sooner than later.
God Bless!
Dianna