A Piedmont Porchlight Story

You didn’t need a calendar. You didn’t need an invitation. And you sure as the world didn’t need Mama to tell you. If you paid the least bit of attention, you could always tell company was comin’. The first clue usually showed up sometime around breakfast.

Mama would start cleanin’ things that, to the best of my knowledge, hadn’t been dirty since Roosevelt was in office. Not our Roosevelt. The other one. She’d dust the tops of doorframes. Straighten magazines nobody had touched in weeks. Polish mirrors that already looked clean enough to see the future in. Then she’d fluff sofa pillows with enough determination to make them think twice about wrinklin’ again.

That’s when I knew. Somebody was comin’. The second clue was even more obvious. The good towels came out. Now, every Southern household had two sets of towels. The everyday ones. And the ones nobody was actually allowed to use. I sometimes wondered if those fancy towels existed for decoration alone. If you accidentally dried your hands on one, Mama looked at you like you’d just wiped your feet on the American flag.

Then came the smell. Lord have mercy, the smell!

A cake bakin’. Or maybe a pecan pie. Sometimes it was Mawmaw’s pound cake. Sometimes chocolate. Whatever it happened to be, you could smell hospitality halfway down the driveway.

About that time, Mama would look toward the livin’ room and say the words every child dreaded. “Y’all go wash your faces.”

Now, I never understood that. We’d been perfectly acceptable five minutes earlier. Suddenly, we looked like chimney sweeps. Out we’d go. Soap. Water. Comb your hair. Tuck your shirt in. And for God’s sake, put some shoes on!

Company wasn’t due for another hour. The transformation continued. Windows got opened if the weather was nice. The coffee pot mysteriously found itself full. Extra chairs showed up from bedrooms as though they’d been waitin’ all year for this moment. Even Daddy seemed to stand a little straighter.

Then. Then, the sure ’nuff waitin’ started. Every passin’ automobile became a possibility. “Was that them?”

“No.”

“What about that one?”

“No.”

Children have never been particularly blessed with patience.

Finally, gravel would crunch beneath tires. A car door would slam. Before anybody reached the porch, Mama was already at the front door with a smile that had somehow been waitin’ there all mornin’.

Nobody knocked. Didn’t need to. The screen door would open. Voices filled the house. “Howdee! I’m just so proud to see ye! (to paraphrase Minnie Pearl) Y’all come in this house and set down!” Laughter arrived before suitcases ever did. The coffee got poured. Cake appeared on the table as if by magic. Somebody always said, “You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.”

Mama always answered exactly the same way. “Why, it weren’t any trouble ’tall.”

Now, here’s something I didn’t appreciate until I grew older. She was tellin’ the truth. She hadn’t cleaned because she was ashamed of the house. She’d cleaned because she wanted people to feel welcome. That’s different. Hospitality ain’t showin’ off. It’s sayin’, “We’ve been lookin’ forward to seein’ y’all.”

The dustin’. The bakin’. The good towels. The fresh flowers from the yard. They weren’t chores. They were love letters written without words. These days, folks often send a text.

“We’re about ten minutes away.”

That’s handy. I like handy. But part of me misses not knowin’ exactly when the car would come around the bend. There was something wonderful about lookin’ up every time tires crunched on the gravel. Hope has a sound. It sounds a little bit like visitors pullin’ into the driveway.

I’ve come to believe that a welcomin’ home has very little to do with polished furniture or spotless floors. It has everything to do with the people inside. Some of the happiest afternoons of my life happened in houses where the furniture didn’t match. Where children tracked a little dirt across the kitchen floor. Where laughter drowned out any concern over fingerprints on the coffee table.

What I remember isn’t how clean the house was. I remember feelin’ like they were glad I’d come. That’s the sort of thing a child notices without ever realizin’ it. Maybe that’s why, even now, if I know somebody’s comin’ by, I catch myself straightenin’ a chair. Puttin’ on a fresh pot of coffee. Lookin’ out the front window every few minutes. Not because the house has to be perfect.

It’s because I want the first thing they notice is that somebody’s been lookin’ forward to seein’ them.

And if I happen to hear gravel crunchin’ in the driveway, well…

I still find myself smilin’ before I ever open the door.