Harvest House Porch

ON A TUESDAY in March, I watched the season finale of The Bachelor with a group of friends. We spread out on couches and sat on the floor and shared piles of french fries from Burger Up.

The next morning, one of those friends tested positive for COVID-19.

And before the week was over, I got a call from the health department and was told I had to quarantine in my house for ten days. This was at the very beginning of the United States’ experience with the global pandemic that would shape our lives and our world for much of the year. But at the time, my friend was one of the first in our county to test positive, and therefore the health department was doing all they could to control the outbreak.

The phone call from the health department employee came on a Friday afternoon. “Are you home?” she asked once the hellos and nice to meet yous were out of the way. I told her I was not. She said, “Okay, well I need you to head home and plan to stay there for the next ten days. You cannot leave your house once you get there, but you are allowed to go outside and walk around the property of your home a couple times a day. I will be calling you each day to check in with you, ask you if you are having any symptoms, and have you take your temperature for me.”

I was like a deer in headlights. Stay in my house? Alone? For ten days? No one coming in, no one (me) leaving. I couldn’t imagine it.

I went home that night and ordered groceries. I called my parents and cried. Ten whole days. To some, that might feel like a gift of rest or an excuse to miss events you didn’t want to attend in the first place. But for me? I didn’t know how to do this.

I couldn’t believe I had just spent the entire fall off the road, learning to find fun in my day-to-day life of not traveling for work but always being allowed to move around my life and my city. The new year had started off back to normal professionally. In fact, I had just finished two weeks on a tour bus traveling around and speaking. And then there I was, grounded again. Off the road again. Events canceled again. Back home again. But this time, not just home in Nashville. Home in Harvest House.

I was sad and afraid that first night. On top of the isolation, there was so much fear of the unknown with the disease. And I would be facing every hour alone. So I laid on the couch, sent a few texts canceling my weekend plans, and turned on the television. I let myself just melt into the couch and melt into whatever was on the screen. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I woke up there the next morning.

And that day, once I had read my Bible and drank a strong cup of tea, I made a few decisions. I made a list of ways I could count down these ten days quarantined in my house.

I decided to wear a different color lipstick every day. I decided to count how many days I wore “real pants” (clothes I could wear to work) and “not real pants” (yoga pants, leggings, pajamas, etc.). I counted how many days I put on my glitter slippers.

And I made a bucket list. A quarantine bucket list. It included shows I wanted to watch and chores I had been putting off and books I needed to finish and new skills I wanted to learn (like juggling!).

In your knowledge of me and fun and the search for something that still feels like Eden, I’m sure you saw this coming, but I didn’t feel like doing ANY of that. I didn’t want to make fun out of this situation. I wanted to lay around and watch shows on television and just slog my way to day ten when I could go back out into the world. But I know myself. My friend Phil talks about knowing where the track is going before you get on a train, and I know how unhealthy I can get, in body and in mind, if the track laid down is a track of doing nothing. Wallowing in my isolation leads nowhere good—I don’t like where that train goes.

So before I felt like having fun, I make a list of fun activities. Before I actually did one thing, I made a list of the things. And then I started checking them off. Work was based at home—I turned my guest bedroom into a podcast recording studio and my dining room table became my desk and video chat home base. I cooked every meal, never got behind on laundry, took my temperature a lot, and cried often because it still felt very lonely.

The ten days went by slowly, but they went by. But those ten days, as you well know, became months. Of course, the rules changed in my favor. Once the ten days were complete, I was allowed to go to the grocery store and a few other places, but I didn’t go back to work for a while, restaurants didn’t open, there were no sporting events to cheer at or concerts to attend. I was home far more than I ever imagined I would be. I think we all were.

During my quarantine, I found myself out on the Harvest House Porch a lot. Remember when I said I missed those evenings with the beans on the porch? Now a version of that, with many more worries and way less beans to snap, was right in front of me again.

Harvest House Porch is a small rectangle of cement just outside my living room. The furniture includes an L-shaped brown couch with white cushions, though they have faded to khaki as I never covered them and they’ve been exposed to the elements. I decorated the railing with multicolored Christmas lights and did not take them down after the New Year. But I was so glad for my holiday forgetfulness. I plugged those lights in every day of the quarantine, just for fun, because I was trapped, and it made me feel like it was a choice—that I was choosing to be in this beautiful place. I had meetings on the porch. I had meals on the porch. I sat on the front edge of my porch while friends drove by and waved or stopped and had a quick conversation.

For the first time since I bought this house, cleaning the porch became a part of my weekly rhythm. Between watching church and making lunch, I would dust off the table (springtime pollen is a real thing), rearrange the cushions, fold the blanket, and sweep the floor. And in the afternoons I would open the French doors, put an album on my record player, light a few candles, and sit outside and read. The Harvest House Porch became a place for rest, for work, for escape.

I WENT BACK to Lost Valley Ranch a few months into the pandemic, and some friends and I sat around a fire pit and talked about the quarantine and the stay-at-home orders that we had all experienced. My friend Jennie, a wife and mother of four, sat directly across from me. Flexing her arm muscles in the bonfire light, she said, “I bought a full set of weights, in case we end up spending more time in our homes. That’s what I wished I had last time.”

Our conversation started a round of questions in my mind.

What happens if THAT happens again? What if we need to be in our homes for an extended amount of time? What if all the traditional methods of finding fun—from hanging with friends to going to shows to eating at our favorite restaurants—continue to be out of reach and we have to make our own fun again?

How do we live an expansive life when the outside world might be limited?

The answers were all over Instagram and other social media platforms—families coming up with tons of activities in their homes, groups of friends setting up happy hours over video chat, puzzles being done in every home, videos galore of choreographed dances, kitchens being used more than ever before. At the same time, we all heard stories, or personally know someone who lost their battle with depression or anxiety. Many of us, myself included, struggled with our mental health, our emotional health, and even our spiritual health. Not gathering for church really took a toll on me, even though my church’s online experience was amazing each week.

If I knew our world was changing and being home would continue to be a major part of my life, what would I do now to plan for fun, for joy, for an expansive life in a small (but special) condo in the middle of Nashville?

I called my friend Matthew who is a local contractor. He painted the walls and redid the floor of the Harvest House before I moved in. I asked him if he could come over to look through a home project I’d like to see completed. It was time to renovate the Harvest House Porch.

The side of the porch I share with my neighbors needed to be a full wall, not just a fabric partition. I wanted it a bit more closed off so that calls and conversations could be private. I wanted an outdoor television, just a small cheap one, so I could watch early morning soccer while drinking my tea. I wanted twinkly lights and better flooring and I wanted my furniture to be a bit more protected from pollen.

I received a full refund for a canceled trip that was planned during the pandemic, so I was able to put that money toward this renovation. I didn’t even know the porch mattered that much to me until it was a lifeline. Until it was the most Eden-like place in my life.

AS THE CONSTRUCTION on the porch began, I washed the cushion covers to make them white again. I took down the Christmas lights that had been up for seven months to make way for new twinkly lights. Matthew and I laid down new flooring and rearranged the furniture and hung some plants and suddenly, there was peace out on Harvest House Porch in ways I hadn’t known. It’s perfect now. No matter what culture or sickness or weather dictates next, I’m on the right path. I’ve created a porch that is a haven for me. It’s a hub for lots of fun. And it reminds me of a porch I knew thirty years ago, the one where we snapped green beans, the one where there were no worries. I’m ready for all of that—beans and no worries—on this new porch too.