From the Heart

Life changed, but one woman found constant comfort in the steady sway of a safe place to sit.

She finds peace in a porch swing.

When I was a child, the porch swing at my grandparents’ home faced the creek. The trees in the summer hung heavy with oak leaves. Cicadas and birds of the evening sung their familiar songs. The sunset was always lovely there, in the swing.

My grandmother used to sit in her rocker beside me and tell me tales of folklore that I never tired of hearing over and over. As night progressed, frogs called to one another, and the whippoorwill brought in the dusk. The creak of the swing would lull me to sleep.

My grandparents moved to another home closer to my parents, but my grandmother never gave up a porch swing. As I grew, I would sit with her, the latest garden harvest in our laps to snap or shell.

Soon adulthood was upon me, and I married a soldier. I had a swing in the front yard of my first home. It was on the farm where I grew up, and I would sit in the swing with a baby at my feet, awaiting the mail and feeling the anticipation of perhaps a letter from Vietnam.

Weary of days with no word and filled with worry of “whatifs,” I let the swing help me solve problems that may or may not occur. Back-and-forth, back-andforth...days of disappointment mixed with days of content as I read and reread a letter giving me hope and strength.

Things change in life, but the swing was my constant, lulling all of my children to sleep. Through the years I would bundle in a coat and blanket and retreat to the swing during the cold winters to breathe fresh air. When my life began to unravel and I realized I would go through a divorce, I retreated to the swing—my comfort zone. Some dark days followed; hard decisions were made. Big ones. Little ones. All in the easy back-and-forth of the swing, my companion.

I remarried and moved to a new home with bright hopes and happy thoughts, immediately installing a swing on an oak tree in the backyard.

As time creases my face, the well-worn slats in my swing are weathered as well. I take a few moments each day to reflect, reminisce and enjoy my forever friend—the swing.

❝Things change in life, but the swing was my constant.❞