Back Porches and Kitchen Tables.

I'm thankful for you.

I'm thankful that I can sit in a chair, prop my elbows up and talk about anything and everything with you in the room. I can share my deepest thoughts with people I love, and you won't say a thing. You just sit there and hold me up, without a complaint of how I've gained weight in the winter or I'm too sweaty in the summer.

When I cry, you catch my tears. And when I laugh, the sound bounces off you and hits me in the face. Sometimes I feel like you hold the laughter and the tears with you, like a diary of our family.

You have held some of the best meals I've ever eaten in your hands. And you've seen generation after generation pass through the walls around you. You've been the site of Italian backhands over lasagna, Uno games and Spades and Scrabble. You've seen my grandmother perfect her English with Sunday crossword puzzles. You've watched us open card after card sent to us when people we love have passed. And you've watched birthday cakes pass in front of you without complaining that we never offered you a bite.

You don't even know it, but you're the brother to my favorite back porch.

You're the brother to the back porch that stood in silence while I painstakingly learned the difference between a begonia and a portucala. "A good Southern woman knows her flowers," you heard my grandmother say.

You sat silent while we churned homemade ice cream in the backyard, grilled chicken covered in my grandfather's secret BBQ sauce and shot fireworks into the neighbor's yard on July Fourth. You watched me go to faraway lands that no one else could see, and splash in a plastic pool on hot Georgia afternoons.

When I grew up and moved away, you were there as a haven for my grandmother when she was left alone. And you sat many mornings and many nights with her, while she smoked cigarettes in her favorite swing. You watched as her garden eventually grew again after two years of staying barren, and you watched her face bloom like the yellow tulips by her front gate. You watched her become whole again.

You are as much a part of my family as the members of it. Because you have been there through it all. I hope one day I have a back porch and a kitchen table like you both. That way my family will come to know the meaning of love you have both seen. And I'll be thankful for years to come.