In praise of the porch sitters
how a neighbor named Sherry became family
Sherry sat on her front porch like she’d always been there, watching the river, preparing a church lesson, blowing bubbles with our son. This is a tribute to her and to porch sitters everywhere: the rocking chair neighbors, the Sunday School teachers, the quiet custodians of a vanishing way of life
Last week, Sherry died of a heart attack. We sobbed when we heard. My first thought was of our 7-year-old, who called her his “foster grandmother.” I knew he’d be devastated, and the instinct to shield him was primal. But I knew I couldn’t. Grief is part of the river of life. It has to flow through you.
For all practical purposes, Sherry was his grandmother. Their bond was like something out of a Hallmark movie: a little boy without a mom, and a grandmother figure who’d never had children of her own. We were the gay urban weekenders with a kid. They were rural Christians with tomato vines and a shotgun hanging above the door.
Sherry lived with her husband Jack just down the road from our cabin in rural Maryland. Their house looks like a homestead of the old breed — weathered wood, a porch that faced the slow-flowing river, grass and garden beds softening into forest. Just above the floodplain, their property sits on an acre or two of grass, vegetables, and an empty chicken coop. It’s the kind of place you half expect to see goats. The kind where magical childhood memories take root in the soil.
When we first bought our cabin, my partner and I called Jack and Sherry “the porch sitters.” We’d walk past, they’d wave, and that was that. They were always there, like human Nest cameras keeping watch.
Then Covid hit, and we moved to the cabin full-time to ride it out. It was spring in that strange, suspended year of 2020. The world shut down, but the river kept moving, and we began to notice the texture of the seasons. I took our son on daily walks through the woods and tricycle rides down the road. One day, as he pedaled past their house, he stopped and asked if he could ring the large bell by their driveway.
“Sure,” Sherry said with a smile, and Jack led us to it with a glint in his eye. I lifted our son — then two and a half — as he tugged the rope, lighting up at the loud ding-ding-ding.
That was the beginning.
The walks became daily visits. Sherry would greet him with a hug, and he’d run into her arms. He and Sherry lived in their own little world from the start.
One day, she asked if she could talk to him about Jesus. I said yes. I trusted her that way. So Sherry gave him jelly beans and Bible stories. She bought balloons and toys just for him. She hovered beside him as he blew bubbles into the wind. She led him through the garden and taught him how to pick tomatoes. By the end of that slowed-down spring, he moved through their yard like it was his home.
After Covid, we moved away. But Sherry kept in touch. Easter cards arrived by mail, along with handwritten notes and small treats. When we returned to the cabin each summer, my partner arranged morning visits before day camp. The bubbles and balloons became Go Fish, checkers, and Jenga. Jelly beans gave way to popcorn and, on my urging, fruit. Sometimes she’d surprise him with a Minecraft t-shirt or a used book she thought he’d like.
Sherry was sharp. Her blue eyes were bright and curious. She always asked what I was reading or writing. But I didn’t linger and chat the way my partner did. He’s from a small town and spoke a shared language I didn’t fully understand. But even I felt the warmth of her porch. I loved hosting her and Jack for dinner. I appreciated their presence. Sherry became more than the nice neighbor lady. Somewhere along the way, she became family.
She was loving and thoughtful — always thinking of others, always showing up in small quiet ways. Just last month, she mailed me a birthday card, and just seeing her handwriting made me feel warm. I thanked her by email, but I wish I’d told her more. I wish I’d said how much she meant to us. How much we loved her.
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As the world spins faster, I keep wondering: when the porch sitters go, what do we lose?
They never bowled alone. They made apple butter and grew vegetables from seed. They moved at a pace set by seasons and Sunday mornings — by rhythms older than digital devices, even older than air conditioning.
Sherry was fully herself: kind, complex, and radiant. But she also belonged to a world that’s slipping away. One that felt slower. More rooted. More communal. The ache runs deeper than nostalgia. It’s the loss of a way of being — of porch sitting.
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The day after the news, we sat down and told our son. He sobbed in my partner’s arms. As fate would have it, the next day at school happened to be “Grandparents and Special Friends Day.” It felt like a gut punch. Still, he straightened his back and went. We told him to make it a day to honor Sherry.
He did. He started brainstorming ways to carry her memory forward. He came up with ideas like planting milkweed for butterflies, planting a tree at her home, and running errands for Jack. He made a video for Jack and called him.
I know the loss of Sherry will hit us — and him — hardest this summer, when we return to the cabin. No daily visits before camp. No hugs on the porch, no snacks, no adventures. But Jack will still be there.
So I’ll encourage him: Walk up to Jack’s porch. Sit with him and watch the river. You don’t even have to talk.
At my house in an old New England village, I have the ideal place for porch sitting. An elevated perch where I can read on a warm spring morning, facing a quiet village street with more pedestrians than motorists. Easy to have a wave and a chat with neighbors or visitors stopping to look at the flowering cherry tree.
But porch sitting ain't what it used to be. So many people now just stride by, ears plugged and screen in hand.
A warm and gentle evocation. It dusted off memories of my own growing up in a small town and the porch sitters that were part of that almost languid pace. All gone now except for the memory. Thank you.