A Labor of Love...and dogged determination

I grew up in the same house my entire life, something I have come to realize as a rarity. This means that I have incorporated certain aspects of a home into a list of necessary items for a happy childhood. Everette has too (hence the sandbox). For me it is a front porch. I was so excited to have a front porch when we moved into our new house. I simply think houses with front porches are so much more friendly and more welcoming. The other necessary item for a homey front porch, is a porch swing. Not a freestanding glider, a hang-from-the-ceiling porch swing. I had planned for a while to get a porch swing for our front porch, but I hadn't really ever discussed it with Everette. This year I told him (after he asked) that for Mother's Day, I either wanted a baby jogger or porch swing. He opted for the baby jogger. I repeated my conversation to my mom, however, and she and my dad picked out a porch swing! She delivered it at our Mother's Day extravaganza. Where it sat on our front porch until this weekend. Knowing that Everette wasn't thrilled at the idea of hanging a porch swing, and that we had a bajillion other things to do around the house, I didn't push it. Last weekend I mentioned the box sitting on the front porch and how much I would really like to be able to go out in the morning where there is still shade on the porch and play with jonathan. He just gave me a look. So I waited. Then this Sunday he said we were going to assemble the swing. We put jonathan down for a nap and gathered the supplies on the front porch.
Assembling the swing went quickly with little hiccups, until it came to the mounting. Everette realized that the ceiling was not mounted to the studs, it was mounted to two trim pieces, which of course were less than 47" apart (the width of the swing).

It is in moments like these that I realize just how much Everette is like my dad, and how much I am like my mom. Everette began plotting ways to reinforce the beams with available supplies. I began thinking how we should just mount it to the pieces as is and it would "probably" be fine.Max "helping."


Thankfully I have learned from my mother and my father, and my husband, that in cases like these--most often my dad/husband are right, and my mom/me shoud just keep our big dumb mouth's shut, so the whole porch doesn't fall down. So I did, and instead steadied the foot stool as Everette tried to attach reinforcement to through a tiny hole he cut in the vinyl.
As I watched, I saw just how much Everette loved me. I saw it on his arms where the vinyl sliced it repeatedly. I saw it on his face as he strained to support his arms over his head and turn by hand the screws in the wood, since the drill was too big to fit in the ceiling. I heard it in his words when he restrained from spewing out his mouth a fountain of expletives, I could see brimming to the surface. Heck i wouldn't have blamed him, I was thinking them for him!
I could tell he loved my simply by the fact that he finished the swing, instead of telling me I was an idiot and crazy for even wanting a porch swing and stomping off in a fit of understandable frustration. This is where the dogged determination comes in... everette can't give up. I would have... I was already thinking.. forget it, I don't want a swing that much.
So he did hang my porch swing, and he even kissed me afterwards.
And today, I sat on that swing and folded a basket of laundry and watched the storm move in from the west. And later, I sat of the porch swing and watched my son play shirtless in the water.