Visible Means of Support

By Gail Bush

	Illustration Courtesy of Bill Firestone

Sawdust on snowdrifts. Not a common sight, but we started the porch during the unusually mild Midwestern fall and winter before the blizzard hit.

The new side porch will wrap around from the existing front porch (where my swing hangs now) back to the kitchen. A kitchen window will become a door. The side porch will be screened in and the front porch will remain open.

Living in an 1871 house we are continually creating and changing living space. Can space be created? Einstein says that we do not create energy, just transform it. So we transform space and by doing so we create "spots" (a la Carlos Castaneda) in our home. My favorite spot is the front porch swing. During fine weather it beckons me to sit and read and wonder and think.

Now this new living space we are creating/transforming will beckon us in different ways. It will be inside and outside; home and not home. It is our physical representation of the stage we are in as a family.

Two teenagers, 16 and 17, need space to be home and not home, with us and not with us. "Not to be offensive," my 17-year-old says, "but I do not plan on being home this summer." "Not to be offensive," I reply, "but that's just what I would expect. It's a big world out there; it's time for you to go out and taste it for yourself.Ó

He says that when he is home he will sleep on the porch. OK. Who are you and what have you done with that darling little boy that used to live here?

The thrill of creating (forget Einstein) new vistas is always fresh and exciting with every new construction project on the house. Now I am walking where once there was only brush and weeds and poor, dead plants from the grocery store that never quite made it in the real world of earth and sun. The red clapboard that has been the outside of this house since just after the Civil War, built during the year of the Great Chicago Fire, is now the inside wall of this porch. All wood and nails, beams and supports. That is all it takes to increase the ÒspotsÓ we nestle into and invite friends and defy the yellow jackets of late summer.

So we can let go and still have them home. It sounds like a trick; what looks like screening is actually a safety net. Be with your friends but be home. Be home but don't be inside the house with us. Learn that you can live in one place for a long time and continually seek new vistas and new understandings. Learn that we all continue to grow and learn that our needs change.

The beams holding up the roof will stay exposed just like they are now. I like visible means of support, so strong, so there, not trying to look like something they are not. Sure, we can screw in a hammock or two or those hanging chairs we saw at Navy Pier a few years ago. I told the 16-year old and his friends that they can decorate the porch. Sometimes permission is all they want and the task never gets done. Either way, it may never look as good as it does today, from the vantage of sawdust on snowdrifts.

Once this project is completed, it will not be mine. Every construction job that incubates for months belongs to me as I direct and adjust every step of progress toward completion. My children were mine until birth, when they belonged to the world. This porch will be taken over immediately upon completion or fair weather, whichever comes first. So be it.

Yes, I understand, you must leave now. But first, sit a minute, beside me, here on the porch, and tell me about your dreams.

Gail Bush is associate professor and director of the School Library Media Program, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, at Domican University in River Forest, Illinois.



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