My back porch

Post on 11 March, 2020 by Dallin Malmgren

I love spring­time. Since my boy­hood, it has been my favorite. I like the oth­er ones too, but, ah, spring­time! I love it in the air, and in the blos­soms, and on my golf course, and on the cal­en­dar (yahoo, spring break!), and at my bar­be­cue grill, and in the behav­ior of the ducks and the geese, and espe­cial­ly in the weath­er. I love it most of all on my back porch.

My back porch is the per­fect inter­sect for affirm­ing my rela­tion­ship with my home and with my world. Too much of one and you are a recluse—too much of the oth­er and you are a gad­about. Isn’t lov­ing your indoors and your out­doors kind of a par­al­lel to lov­ing God and lov­ing your neigh­bor? Some­where in there exists a parallel—you have to weave them together—that is an artis­tic life.

On most back porch­es, your eyes are drawn out­ward and upward. Your joy meter clicks up a lev­el, no mat­ter how low it was run­ning. When you sit down on a back porch, you have to slow down—most of us need to slow down. Did I men­tion the ambi­ence? The spring­time breeze, just a hint of chill still in it…the incred­i­ble flow­ery scent…the inevitable fas­ci­na­tion with watch­ing wild things make their way in this world…the won­der­ful way that light dis­ap­pears from dusk til dark..the sight and/or sound of humankind.

Now start to add in our human touches—

The food! It is a nat­ur­al fact—if I bring food from the out­side in (the grill to the kitchen), I am expo­nen­tial­ly dis­posed to view it with more enthu­si­asm. When you acci­den­tal­ly cook it just right—it is a rev­e­la­tion in haute cui­sine. And if you burn it—the fam­i­ly is grow­ing spir­i­tu­al­ly, brother.

Music! I am often torn between lis­ten­ing to the nat­ur­al sounds and putting on music. Ah, but when I feel like music, it is won­der­ful! I have said it before, but being able to find and play almost any tune that comes float­ing into your head is a tech­no­log­i­cal mir­a­cle. My Blue­tooth speak­er and my Spo­ti­fy are as essen­tial to my back porch as the grill is.

Phone calls! I am more comfortable…I don’t know if it’s the pri­va­cy or the ambi­ence or the poten­tial dis­trac­tions if my mind starts to drift. I am not a huge enthu­si­ast of talk­ing on the phone—but I am def­i­nite­ly more recep­tive on the porch.

The com­pa­ny! I like it when my wife joins me on the back porch…it’s kind of a sig­nal to shut­ting down the day. I’ll fix us a drink, and we’ll vis­it, and we’ll observe the won­der­land, and we’ll relax. We don’t enter­tain that much, but it is my favorite place to hang out with most any­body. It works for the grown-ups and the kids…I recent­ly bought a small firepit, and the lure of s’mores on the back porch is irre­sistible to almost anyone.

Final­ly, prayer! Of course, you can pray any­where. But for me it is just a lit­tle eas­i­er to feel His pres­ence when I am out back.

I have only had four sig­nif­i­cant back porch­es in my life, the four homes I’ve owned. I’m sure there are oth­ers from my child­hood, but they are encod­ed in my memory.

The first is the one where I raised my chil­dren (see pho­to). It is the small­est, drabbest, most unim­pres­sive of them all—but damn, there were so many mag­i­cal moments out there! It is hal­lowed ground.

The sec­ond back porch was where my chil­dren were teenagers. Part of it was screened-in, and part of it was not. Def­i­nite­ly metaphorical—I am cer­tain all my chil­dren have more intense and impact­ful mem­o­ries of that porch than I do…but I too have mine (I pre­ferred the out­side to the screened-in).

The third porch was my retire­ment porch. It was there I gave my heart to God, because I real­ized how mer­ci­ful and gen­tle and kind He had been with me my entire life. I used to stand on the edge of the porch at night—wonderful tree sil­hou­ettes in the moonlight—and look up at His uni­verse and marvel.

The fourth is prob­a­bly my last back porch—I’m okay with that. I love this one. It is more like Rear Win­dow than Out of Africa, but I loved both movies. And I do enjoy watch­ing the golfers go by.

Have I com­mu­ni­cat­ed my love affair? I see it as a portal—like every­thing else about us, we can improve our states of con­scious­ness. No one has to be stuck in a mood. The back porch is a spir­i­tu­al place. I find it is easy to get centered—to see the big picture—to con­nect with the One who is every­where all the time. Get­ting cen­tered will always lead to look­ing out­ward. And then you take the food off the grill and bring it inside for oth­ers to enjoy. 

Comments

  • Reply

    Enjoyed this a bunch. I remem­ber all of your back porch­es. I have nev­er had such a fond­ness for any of my back porch­es, but now see them in a new light. Prob­a­bly the one with the best mem­o­ries has to be the house on Doral with the hot tub. The Debbe back porch has more to do with the pool and swim­ming with Jason. I also enjoyed the one on Via Bal­boa. But none of them have a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion like you have with yours. Again, enjoyed read­ing this!

    Laura23 March, 2020
  • Reply

    that was a great read! I absolute­ly love the pic. You are a grate­ful man, God loves you for it.

    Gretch12 March, 2020

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