A brief geography of the front porch

If God is a woman, heaven is a front porch in the summertime.

Jul 04, 2024

On May 14th, I sit on my parents’ front porch and watch an afternoon storm roll in. I used to do this with my nonna all the time. It’s one of my fondest childhood memories—she would let me drink orange juice out of one of her nice crystal wine glasses while we sat on the porch and listened to the thunder. I always wanted to talk about her past, and she always wanted to talk about my future. I would tell her how excited I was to grow up, and she would tell me that I was always going to be her little girl. She still refers to me (almost exclusively) as her little girl, and it makes me feel very small in the best way.

I think about growing old. When I am 80, I would love to have a one-story house reminiscent of my nonna’s with a garden full of pink hydrangeas, a closet full of vintage dresses, and a husband with deep smile lines and faded tattoos who holds me in his arms and kisses me like we’re still spring chickens. I’ll try my best to be grateful for my aching joints, to think of them as the result of a life spent dancing, and when storms roll in, I’ll sit on the front porch with a granddaughter of my own.

For now, though, I go inside and pour orange juice into a wine glass. My nonna was right—I’ll always be her little girl.

On May 26th, I sit on my parents’ front porch with Bella and Kate. It’s nearing 10:00, and we take one last shot while we wait for our Uber. We’re all tipsy and giggly and so very excited to be together again. They’re both wearing my clothes, and they look beautiful. I feel beautiful, too. I sandwich myself between them, kiss both of them on their cheeks, and tell them that I love them, which they already knew.

The girls down the street are sitting on their front porch, too. They’re much drunker than we are and have started to sing. They sound terrible, but they also sound happy—the metaphors just write themselves, don’t they?

There is so much joy on this street alone. Everything is warm, and I’m lucky to be young.

On June 5th, I sit on my parents’ front porch and I miss Avery, Elena, and Jamie. I message them to tell them as much and let them know that a front porch is my only non-negotiable when we start looking for a house in Athens. We make plans to have coffee on the porch before our morning classes, which we won’t do, because Jamie is perpetually in a rush, but it’s a nice thought anyway.

On June 8th, I sit on my parents’ front porch, and I think about the bagel I ate for lunch. I feel grateful that I don't obsess over my calorie intake or body mass index anymore. This summer, I’ve been going to the best bagel shop in the world once or twice a week for a sandwich, a cup of soup, and an hour or so of people-watching. There’s a guy who’s been working there for as long as I can remember, and though he recognizes me now (he recalls my order every time that I come in, which never fails to make me feel special), he likely has no idea that I've known his face since I was about 11 years old, when my mother and nonna and I used to eat there after church. My nonna would order a salt bagel and smear her lipstick all over it.

I can’t stop thinking about her, lately. I text her that I miss her. She tells me that she thinks about me every day. I smile, and then I cry, because I know that she means it.

On June 16th, I sit on my parents’ front porch and try to write something beautiful while the dog licks away my makeup. I receive a text from my dear friend, Jackson. Jackson and I met in February, I think, and since then, he has been an incidental but comforting presence in my life. He’s only a couple of years older than I am, but the things that he says and the way that he says them remind me of my grandfather sometimes. I wish that the two of them could have met, even if independent of their respective relationships with me. I think that they would have been very fond of each other.

The message is a link to a song called Something Fine. I listen to it and think about my darling friend—his affinities for devastating lyrics and western movies, the way that he almost always smells like cigarettes and almost never says my name without the word “sweet” in front of it (sweet Nina—it’s nice to hear, and it makes me want to prove him right). I wonder why he sent this song to me, whether I should be decoding the lyrics or if he just thought that I would like it. I’m fairly sure that he’s drunk—he tends to be, these days—but I’m glad that he’s thinking of me, anyway. I hope that he’s a little bit less weary than he had been last time we spoke, that he’s getting by in Dayton, that he’s finding some semblance of the tenderness he’s been yearning for. I wish that I could give it to him, and I hate that I can’t. I worry for him more than I care to admit.

The song ends and starts again, and because I am me, I read far too deeply into the lyrics this time. They sound just a little bit too much like something that Jackson would have said to me in the quiet of my freshman dorm late at night—something tired, but tender. I try my very best not to cry, but I am exhausted and I miss my friend terribly and the thought that my overabundance of empathy is never going to go away has started to make me feel sick. I cry until my head hurts, and then some more.

On June 21st, I sit on my parents’ front porch and play my guitar for the first time in a long time. I send a short video to Marie, and she sends back a video of herself raving about how good I’m getting at fingerpicking. She’s a much better musician than I am, and this is very sweet of her to say.

A neighbor’s mother is walking up and down our street, smoking a cigarette. She tells me that I sound lovely, and I tell her that she looks lovely.

I go inside to get ready for my shift at the restaurant.

On June 26th, I sit on my parents’ front porch after my second shift of the day. I drink two glasses of sangria and proceed to cry on my mother’s shoulder. I tell her, through my tears, how much I wish that we could have been friends in college. She laughs and tells me that it probably worked out for the better, because she likes being my mom. I think she might be the most beautiful woman that ever lived.

I tell her about my shift, about the old man who grabbed my hand, kissed it, and told me that I looked like an angel. We talk about our upcoming trip to Athens, and when she asks me if I’m ready to go back to school, I feel a little guilty when I admit to her that I am. I start to explain to her that it isn’t that I don’t love being home, just that I have two homes now, and she tells me that she understands, that I don’t have to explain, and how happy she is that I love school so much. I tear up again. She pets my hair.

“Wine makes me emotional,” I tell her, as if she didn’t already know.

“Most things make you emotional.”

On June 28th, I sit on my parents’ front porch with a pain in my chest. I’m frustrated and I can’t stop crying and I’m not sure why. I usually don’t like to wallow in my sadness, but I think that I may have to today. I feel like a wounded animal, skittish and helpless and afraid of my own longing to be held gently. I chalk it up to hormones, even though I’m sure there’s something else burning inside of my heart.

I watch the couple across the street wordlessly load belongings into his car. It looks like they’re breaking up, and I think about my ex. I miss how tightly he used to hold me, how safe it made me feel. I wonder whether or not he would come over if I asked him to (not that I would, because that would be terribly unfair of me). I think about him for a long while—his new job, his new house in Cincinnati, and all of the other new pieces of his life that I will never touch. I keep crying and hope that the world is kind to him where I cannot be.

Bella knows that I’m upset, and she brings over a pint of matcha flavored ice cream, which makes me want to cry all over again. It’s swelteringly hot outside and the ice cream drips down my wrist. She’s done her makeup differently today, and she looks radiantly beautiful as we recap her date from the previous night—they’ve been going out for a little while, and she’s completely smitten for the first time in a long time, and while I’m happy to see her so happy, I keep telling her not to put all of her eggs in this seemingly wonderful man’s basket, simply because I can’t stand to see her hurting.

She hugs me for a long time before she leaves, scratches my back with her acrylic nails, and I choke up. We talk about how lucky we are to have each other quite often, but I still haven’t found the right words for what she means to me. I just know that I feel better now—I don’t try to decipher it.

On July 3rd, I sit on my parents’ front porch with a fresh face and a cup of some citrusy tea that isn't quite sweet enough for my taste as my hair dries curly and wild in the humidity. I think about how often I used to wear it like this, and how seldom I do so anymore. It only ever seems to turn out the way I want it to when Jamie styles it for me anyway.

I’m listening to Tupelo Honey and wondering if the “angel of the first degree” ever felt like her sweetness was taken advantage of. I decide that a song this beautiful certainly would have been enough of an apology for me, and I resent that.

My dad comes outside to tell me that there’s a storm rolling in. I think that I will stay here for a bit.

Thank you for reading You Get What You Need ♡

I hope that the summer has been kind to you so far. Feel free to leave a comment, I would love to hear from you. Xoxo