A Piedmont Porchlight Story

I’ve lived in a fair number of houses over the years. Some were little. Some were bigger. Some I remember better than others. But I’ve come to believe something that took me a lifetime to understand. Home isn’t always a place.

Sometimes, home is a person. Growin’ up, I thought home was the house where Mawmaw lived. The printed curtains. The front porch. The smell of biscuits in the oven. Pawpaw’s old recliner. The sound of Mawmaw readin’ while he listened. The kitchen window over the sink. Surely that was home.

Then one day I noticed something. If Mawmaw came to our house, it somehow felt like home, too. She’d walk through the door carryin’ a pound cake wrapped in a dish towel. Before she’d even set it on the counter, the whole house seemed different. Warmer somehow. Safer. I couldn’t explain it then.

I can now. It wasn’t the house. It was her. I’ve known people like that all my life. Walk into the Coffee Cup and Hattie greeted you before you sat down.

Home.

Step into Curtis Pope’s barbershop and hear him ask, “Who’s next?”

Home.

See Daddy leanin’ against his old Chevrolet after work with a cigarette in one hand and a grin on his face.

Home.

Watch Pawpaw easin’ back into that old recliner while Mawmaw opened another Louis L’Amour novel.

Home.

It had precious little to do with walls. Everything to do with people. Funny thing about folks who feel like home. They never seem to realize they’re doin’ anything special. They aren’t tryin’ to impress anybody. They’re simply themselves. They remember how you take your coffee. They ask about your sister because they genuinely want to know. They notice when you’re quieter than usual. They save your favorite piece of pie without makin’ a fuss about it.

They make room. Not just at the table. In their lives. When I was younger, I thought hospitality meant openin’ your front door. Now I think it’s something much deeper. Some people have a way of openin’ their hearts so wide that you begin feelin’ at home the moment you see them.

You don’t have to knock. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t even have to be havin’ a particularly good day. You simply arrive. And somehow, everything settles. The older I get, the more I realize how rare that gift really is. Anybody can own a house. Not everybody becomes a home.

One autumn afternoon I was sittin’ on a porch watchin’ the shadows stretch across the yard when a neighbor stopped by. He didn’t stay long. Maybe fifteen minutes. We talked about the weather. The pecans beginnin’ to fall. Whether Alabama would ever get another good rain. Nothin’ remarkable.

After he left, I caught myself smilin’. Zeek asked me what was so funny. I said, “I don’t know, it just felt like home.” Then it hit me. The porch hadn’t changed. The weather hadn’t changed. The coffee was the same coffee I’d been drinkin’ all afternoon. The only thing that had changed was who’d been sittin’ in the other chair.

Some folks carry home around with them. Not in a suitcase. Not in a movin’ van. Inside themselves. They leave every place a little warmer than they found it. When they’re gone, the room somehow seems quieter. Not empty. Just waitin’ for them to come back.

I’ve come to believe that’s one of the finest things anybody can become. Not rich. Not famous. Not important. Simply home. The kind of person children run toward instead of away from. The kind of friend who makes burdens feel lighter just by sittin’ beside you. The kind of neighbor who leaves a porch feelin’ more welcomin’ than when they arrived.

Years from now nobody will remember what kind of truck you drove. Or how big your house was. Or whether your lawn was the greenest on the street. But they’ll remember how they felt when they were with you. Whether your laughter made theirs come easier. Whether your table always seemed to have room for one more plate. Whether your porch light burned a little longer for someone who needed it. Whether your presence made ordinary days feel extraordinary.

In the end I don’t reckon that’s a bad way to be remembered at all. Because if you’re very fortunate somebody, somewhere, will think of you one quiet evenin’ and smile without even realizin’ they’re smilin’, and say, “I always felt at home with them.”

To my way of thinkin’…

There ain’t a finer epitaph in the whole English language.