Like the wind and the weather.

Some long while ago I was sitting on a bright front porch with someone I know, conversing and breathing in the sunlight. It was just past noon on a Saturday and Thanksgiving was coming up, so, as is the way things go, the conversation was guided toward tradition. I could not think of any family Thanksgiving traditions aside from the obligatory meals and wine. Nothing like afternoon sports games or gift exchanges, or any nights of song. We wondered together about starting some tradition, and how it could persist long enough to become one.

In the good, slow energy pent up in those mornings, the talk turned as it would, and when I leaned forward to stretch into its comfort I was reminded of the origins of bodily aches I no longer think of. Two of them: the first, a popping, snapping creak in my wrist and my shoulders. Years ago I worked at an auto parts plant, and the automatic lines were built for people much shorter than me. The second, a tightness that appears as it chooses throughout my back, gained from an accident in my car. It rolled down a ditch several times, and I was jostled along inside while it did, my shins crashing against the dashboard and my body swinging and straining into the seatbelt.

These things, lingering aches and pains, can be carried a long distance, long enough to know they are still carried even though it is forgotten what for--to cling to them so they remain long enough to integrate themselves into a habit of thought and motion, and to become a thing that you are so resolutely in disagreement with that it blots out all else, without being able to recall why. But I never think about these things. Once that sun got high enough, the warmth it lent was all else a person could need there. Porches are good for that.