A home can't sing if it doesn't have that swing

On the day that I first visited the house I would buy and live in for the next 40-some years, the swing was waiting in the wings of possible dreams.

From the roof of a long, narrow front porch, two thick chain hangers looked at me longingly. Their message was clear. They wanted to end their hiatus from holding a swing.

As much as I wanted to hear their stories of swings past, I chose them as placeholders for swings to come. Standing between the dangling duos, I knew I could fulfill my dream of living in a house with a front porch swing in that very space.

Nodding in agreement, the chains were already chattering excitedly about affixing their parts to the swing handles so they could move together.

“I want a plain, old-fashioned wooden swing,” I explained. “No frills.” That meant the hangers would have to do most of the work. No gliders or automatic contraptions to help them. The frills would be the stories of the people who sat in the swing.

The perfect porch swing was waiting patiently in a catalog on the afternoon I stood on the empty porch and daydreamed it into existence. It arrived six weeks after we moved into our home.

It was my first purchase for my first house, which turned out to be my only house, a place that is now on its second porch swing.

On the evening after the swing was delivered and hung, I walked barefoot out to the porch and gently sat down on the swaying seat. A light summer breeze stirred the leaves of the crape myrtle tree, almost identical to the one in the front yard of the house where I grew up, 3,000 miles away.

That house had a brick entry porch, way too small for a swing, but big enough for me to sit on the steps and daydream about one. The young Patricia thought it would be very romantic to sit on a swing with a boyfriend, something I actually did a lifetime later, on this very swing, with the man I would marry.

The older Patricia is grateful for daydreams and porch swings. They have served me well.