Story-A-Day #115: Porch Light

PORCH LIGHT

There is something comforting about returning home to find a few lights left on, especially in the dead of winter when the cold grips you like a vice, and the sun comes and goes while you are sitting at a desk.

It’s no wonder people find winter depressing. You literally exist in a world of darkness for a few months, and there is something unnatural about leaving for work and returning home, all under the cloak of darkness.

Summer is easier. The days are warm and long and it is easy to appreciate the outdoors. You get exercise through proxy. In the wintertime, it becomes all too easy to get wrapped up in the cycle of dark-work-dark-sleep-repeat.

Wandering home through the crisp evening air, I’m glad for the exercise, but the most physical workout I get, is from staving off the shivers. I’ve never really been a winter person, although I used to get out into the cold with greater frequency in my youth. I miss the days of sledding and cross country skiing, and building forts. I think I mostly just miss my youth.

Watching the cars pass by, belching great plumes of exhaust smoke in their wakes, I am glad for this bit of exercise at least, but I am even more happy to see the porch light that welcomes me home, glowing in the distance.

On this night, that light is an indication that I have made it back to the comfort and warmth of home. It is a signpost in the night, and it makes me appreciate the relief that a sailor would feel when they spotted the rotating glow of a lighthouse beacon after a long day at sea.

Even the cascades of rippled ice leaking down over the metal fixture are a welcome indication of the warmth that light provides: enough to melt a groove through the icy heart of winter.

I fumble briefly with my keys, then feel the familiar click as the door unlocks. I knock the snow from my boots and step into the warmth of my house, happy to have arrived.

I shut the door against the icy cold that threatens to follow me inside, and listen as the walls and roof around me fight off the onslaught of winter. The creaks and cracks denote the dying end of a long hard battle. The warmer months are coming, looming just around the corner.

I peer out the small window in the door and the cold, still street that intersects the end of my driveway, then flick the nearby switch on the wall. The porch light flicks off, its duty complete for another day.