The Porch Light Still Burns

Margaret sat on her back porch, the same wicker chair she'd occupied for forty-three summers. The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of apricot and gold—her favorite color, the color of the orange marmalade her mother used to make from the fruit tree in their childhood yard. At eighty-two, Margaret had learned that sunsets were nature's way of teaching you how to let go.

At her feet lay Buster, the golden retriever her grandson had left behind when he went off to college three years ago. The dog, now gray around the muzzle and slow in his movements, was living proof that loyalty outlasts youth. They made a fine pair, she thought—two old souls waiting for things that would never come again, yet finding comfort in each other's quiet company.

She remembered the summer of 1968, when her father—then the age she was now—had taken her camping in the Smokies. They'd encountered a black bear at their campsite, a magnificent creature that had simply sniffed their cooler and ambled away. Her father had held her trembling hand and whispered, "Sometimes the things we fear are just looking for their own way home, same as us."

That wisdom had carried Margaret through three marriages, two lost children, and a lifetime of ordinary days that now seemed extraordinary in retrospect. She thought of her granddaughter, now pregnant with her first great-grandchild, and what she might leave behind—not things, but truths.

The porch light flickered on, automatic and reliable, just as Margaret had tried to be for everyone who'd ever needed her. She patted Buster's head, and he thumped his tail against the floorboards—a conversation they'd had a thousand times.

"We did all right, old friend," she whispered to the dog, to the bear in her memory, to the orange glow of evening settling over the world like a quilt. "We did all right."