This past weekend, I had the chance to go down to Perry and visit with my sister. I always enjoy going down for a visit, just to touch “home base.” Often when I'm down there my sister, and I will sit and chat and get caught up. Sometimes I find myself becoming a sounding board for my sister when she feels the need to vent about whatever may be on her mind. I don't object to this at all; I realize how important a sounding board can be from time to time.
During my latest visit, we both began reminiscing about our collective youth. Both of us talked about those precious times spent on the porch at Mama Patrick's house in Greenville. It was a pretty large porch, looking out toward US Hwy 90, with several rocking chairs. On Sunday afternoons, that would be the destination for everyone's post dinner migration, especially this time of year when the weather was nice and not too hot. We would sit and rock in those old rocking chairs, and Papa would tell stories about what went on and where, back in the old days. Occasionally, a passenger train would pass by, and I would wonder where it was going, and why the people on the train wanted to go there. Other times, if I was lucky that weekend, one of my cousins may also be visiting, and I could talk them into a round of catch with the baseball. Sometimes, we would just sit and rock and “watch the cars go by,” as Mama Patrick would say.
As my sister and I talked, I found myself thinking that we need more porches; we need places where families could gather and talk, visit, play catch, and simply spend time together; places without cell phone signals so people might just interact face to face. That might just help more families reconnect and get to know each other again. I don't know that it would solve all the problems facing the world today, but a return to those simple Sunday afternoons might help more than we think. It's hard to hold onto bitterness while you're sipping on a glass of lemonade, rocking in a rocking chair and just “watching the cars go by.”