On the Front Porch, Looking In

Non-FictionCreative WritingHomesteading
Written By Elizabeth Russell

In the frustration of selling a home and the constant rejection of trying to buy a new one, a rocking chair became my silent protest and in it, I found a slowness and stillness I could never have found otherwise.


If I were going to write another poem, it would be about a rocking chair. But my brain is stuck on prose, so this will have to do.

The choice to buy a rocking chair wasn’t exactly an obvious one. I’m not 70, I don’t have a baby to lull to sleep, and I get so motion sick that the tiniest lilt of a dock or the light sway of a hammock can feel like an epic roller coaster ride. The idea of rocking on purpose seemed entirely disagreeable. But when your large front porch feels like the only empty one on the block and you spot a $10 chair on Facebook, you buy it - rock or not.

And $10 was about all it was worth. The scrolls of the great legs were chipped and scratched. The curve at the base of the lower back was held together by black, plastic-y electrical tape. The cane seating had a hole or two, each the size of a quarter. No matter - my hands were adept at transformations of this kind. Together, they plied sheep into yarn, wrangled pallet wood into home decor, and maneuvered words into strings of stories. If I trusted anything, it was my own two hands; a rocking chair update felt like a typical days work for them and a beautiful days work at that, sitting in an open garage surrounded by sawdust and only just out of reach of the sun - just.

As we eagerly began to look into selling our house, though, the rocking chair upgrade rapidly fell down my project list, bumping past porch repairs, knocking against new gutters, and finally settling among the muck - not only dead last, but entirely forgotten.

If I were to accuse the adults in my life for lying by omission, it would be on the topic of homeownership. Oh, the things they do not say! 

An old home is a massive, wooden stepchild - birthed by another but still, somehow, your baby. And as we prepped to put our house on the market (still not done, by the way), I unearthed every joy and sorrow you can imagine. The night we made our first serious offer on a new house, I cried myself to sleep for the loss. 

My tears were wasted. Our offer was rejected.

The next house we made an offer on, I was so sure we were leaving that I took an hours long walk through the cemetery and onto roads of our village that I had never stepped foot on. If I was leaving, I wanted to see it all before I left. 

Again - my emotions were for naught. 

When we wanted to make an offer on a third house but couldn’t, as a couple, agree on a price, I made a hole in the kitchen floor - an unintended consequence of what I thought to be inconsequential rage. 

Sometimes rejection felt like relief - I wouldn’t be leaving my baby after all. By the 6th or 7th one, though, I began to seriously despair. I began to wonder if our little village house - the main contingency that caused every seller to turn a blind eye to our money - had been a mistake. In one instance, we had offered a good deal more than the offering price but still - the seller would rather move fast for less money than wait for us to sell our current home. I despaired that we weren’t rich enough, that we were too financially risk-averse, that our jobs in risk management had made us safety freaks - even with money. 

I started to resent every hour spent touring others’ homes. I began to ignore emails from our realtor. My blood pressure skyrocketed while my sleeping time did the opposite. 

Said politely: this thing meant to bring so much joy, was actually doing quite the opposite. 

Said impolitely: the situation blew and I was fully prepared to blame my less-than-rich boyfriend and every miserly seller in the world.

“That’s right - I was staging a sit-in.”

But blame isn’t my game; I’m far more stubborn than that. Instead, I decided that if I couldn’t move, I would master the art of staying put - right in the middle of a porch repair project. 

That’s right - I was staging a sit-in.

I waded through the rolls of chicken wire and gas-powered lawn tools to get to my long-forgotten rocker, shoved unceremoniously into the back of the garage. In my head, my plan was idyllic - the wooden rocker, bronzed by the morning sun, would prove to everyone that… well, it would prove something. 

That I was slowing down. 

That I didn’t need this frustration. 

That I had this perfectly good porch and this perfectly good rocker and the world could shove it up its… well, you get the idea.

When I reached the chair’s storage space, I realized that in my reverie I had forgotten how truly scraggly this thing was - the electrical tape now peeling, the hole in the seat somehow bigger, the wood dampened by too much wet spring air. But protests are messy business, so I carried on. 

I knew I was on to something when I successfully got the rocker onto the porch alone, despite the missing floorboards on the eastern half of the porch. So little had been easy lately. Surely this was proof of my righteous cause. 

So I sat.

“You know I’m painting the porch tomorrow, right?” Brad called from the front door. He was so matter-of-fact, so chill - always. 

“I know,” I said, throwing just a little bit of side-eye. I had someone’s attention.

I was so excited with my demonstration that I couldn’t really enjoy this small triumph. Instead, I went with a cell phone picture, carefully cropped free of construction, and an Instagram story - “Front Porch Sitting!” It should have said “front porch sit-in” - I was here to make a point. But on Instagram, we lie. 

I think I lasted a total of 15 minutes before my nervous energy propelled me upward and on to some new project. 

Though my post was shortly abandoned, it was not forgotten. The activist in me had been born and I committed to my protest on nice mornings and clear evenings, while eating breakfast or reading a book. I banned cell phones, podcasts, and music. This would be a silent protest - me against the world and its nice things.

Despite my new rules, the world continued to make noise. The birds sang. My neighbors murmured on their own front porches. Bikes swished past. Children screamed. Grills sizzled. Car doors thudded. Garage doors screeched.

I heard noises coming from inside my protest too. My feet padded lightly against the porch to tip me backward. The cane squeaked gently below my shifting weight. The runners of the rocker made just the lightest crunch against the dirty floorboards.

Some did abide by the rules of silence. My rage left for fear of filling my protest with the sound of blood rushing my ears. My stress kept its distance lest it should make my stomach gurgle or my heart pound. My mind went on vacation, unwilling to be the one to break the silence. All of these things and more left me, keeping my mission in tact.

“The thing about silent protests is that they always seem to affect the protestor more than they affect the people they’re protesting.”

The thing about silent protests is that they always seem to affect the protestor more than they affect the people they’re protesting. The hunger strike made its striker more hungry. My protest was no different. Somehow the missing boards on the porch were put on in spite of me, and were cleverly painted beforehand. A bathroom was repainted. Floors were refinished.

What was once protest faded into habit. I became an accomplice to the home selling-buying process again, returning to my silent vigil regularly when I needed to. The silence and the noise of it both became my security system when the times got rough - a remind that I had a power, a place to slow down when the world started to overwhelm.

We still haven’t found that new house. Our house still isn’t ready to be sold. But the other day, Brad asked me if I had another chair hiding somewhere that he could have. 

Silent protests may affect the protestor most, but that’s not to say they don’t have an effect on others at all. 

For more posts on slowing down…

This essay was jump-started by a writing prompt from Illuminate, a writing program by The Kindred Voice. This month, I’m joined by the following amazing women writing about slowing down.

Elizabeth Russell
Previous

To the Man Who'll Carve My Headstone