Creative Nonfiction

Ainsley Brigham; Creative Nonfiction 

Between Seasons 

There is no place quite like the back porch, precisely from 7–9 p.m. in the summertime, outside of the rattling town of Croix. Summertime here has its share of advantages, but none quite like the crisp, lingering hours at the end of the day, sitting out listening to tunes on the porch. The light softens, the air settles, and in that margin between day and night, the world feels generous. Not because anything extraordinary happens, but because ordinary things show up differently there: the creak of a chair, the clink of ice in a glass, the faint hum of someone humming along to a song. 

The porch is not a large space—five chairs, a narrow wooden table, and the faint smell of citronella that never quite does its job. My grandfather’s chair still sits closest to the railing, paint peeling at the arms where his hands used to rest, grooves in the wood from years of leaning forward to spit sunflower seeds into the grass. And if you rest your head on the back, you can still smell the years of his cigar-and-bird-watching equation. It complains with a long groan each time I sit down, but the sound has grown into comfort, like an old record player scratching its way toward the first note. I’ve always thought that chair knows things—secrets held in its tired joints from all the summers it’s carried. When I sit there now, I still half-expect to hear him clear his throat, gearing up for one of those long, winding stories about birds or baseball. Although I never admitted it then, I’d give anything to hear one again.

But tonight, I’m not on the porch. Tonight, I’m tucked into the corner by the fireplace, that faint hum carrying instead through the branches of the Christmas tree—a big old pine Dad and I chopped down this morning. My arms still itch from the sap, and Dad still has a rope burn across his palms. He made a show of pretending to be Paul Bunyan, wiping his brow and flexing at the neighbors as we dragged it across the snow. I rolled my eyes and kept tugging. The needles shook loose all the way through the doorway and into the living room, leaving a trail of green confetti. In the winter, the creak of the porch chair is replaced by new music: the pop of firewood, the groan of closet doors as my brother, Blake, digs out ski gear for tomorrow. 

“Do these even fit anymore?” he shouts, one boot half on, the other flopping at his side. He grunts, pulling, hopping across the rug. 

Mom doesn’t answer. She’s too busy arranging spoons on the counter, serious about the wives’ tale that says if you sleep with one under your pillow, fresh snow will fall by morning. She lines them up like soldiers—soup spoons, teaspoons, even the odd bent one with a handle that curves a little off. The wooden spoon even makes the cut—the one I doodled on a few years ago mid-soup-cooking boredom. She picks one up, squints, sets it down, picks up another. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Blake laughs, stomping his foot into the stubborn boot. “You know it’s not real.” 

“Not with that attitude,” Mom shoots back, sliding one of the big serving spoons under her arm like a quarterback. 

I can hear Dad in the garage, clattering around for the same pair of old sticks he’s had since high school. He hums the same line of the same old song, looping it over and over as if he doesn’t realize. Or maybe he does. Some things never change.

It’s not the back porch in summer, but the house in winter has its own kind of glow—that of string lights caught in glass ornaments, the smell of pine needles stuck in the carpet, the sound of Blake finally winning his battle with the boot. Ski days wait just beyond the door, and I count them like coins in my pocket. 

Sometimes the spoons work; most times they don’t. On the mornings they fail, the town looks tired—streets heavy with slush, porches crusTed in salt, February stretching on like a bad joke. I roll out of bed to find Mom standing at the kitchen window, coffee steaming in her hand, shaking her head at the stubborn sky. 

“Wrong spoons,” she mutters. 

“Or wrong pillows,” Dad offers, already halfway into his flannel. 

“Next time I’m putting a fork under mine,” Blake says, thudding his boots against the wall. 

In the fall and spring, Croix feels like it’s holding its breath, any North Idaho local knows such a thing to be true. In the fall the colors change on all of the birch trees, and that’s how you know its school again and the red leaves fall and the rain jackets come out. It’s cold, but without commitment. Not quite time for snow boots. It’s dark and the sun rises at 8AM and sets at 3PM so during school we don’t see the sun all day. The spring is the same, but moves in the other direction. In spring skiing the sun comes back out and it’s a little more warm so we don’t leave with fifty layers. Sometimes we can even get away with just our shell. We get some sunshine and get to switch out the lenses on our goggles. The flowers are good, we can start to think about our summer garden. Plan it out. Potentially even plant some seeds. We get to imagine how tall our zinnias will grow in the summer months. They’re both hopeful but in different ways. Hopeful for winter, hopeful for summer. 

Hopeful for a time when it looks nice in your front lawn. For the lake to defrost. Play in the water. Fish. The summer porch, where the radio spills into the night and mosquitoes drift lazy circles in the air. My grandfather settling into his chair with a cigar in hand. Mom balancing a tray of lemonade glasses, all sweating before she even sits down. Blake chasing fireflies and smacking his shin on the garden boxes, yelping while the rest of us laugh.

My dad doesn't play about speakers—and tunes, for that matter. Similarly, I don’t play about the songs that come out of his carefully curated setup on the porch . The good ol’ Edie Brickell CD takes over most summer nights on the back porch. Jack Johnson and Chris Stapleton also come out to play. Even MJ or, every so often, ABBA when dancing is in the air. Music is a big thing in our house. We like music. So much so that my grandfather’s jukebox rests perfectly out there with us too, wheezing life in the corner. That thing never gets old. One night, the jukebox jammed halfway through “Dancing Queen,” Dad smacked the side until the floorboards lit up again—I spun across the cedar boards, laughing so hard I nearly spilled my drink. 

Sometimes a song on the radio lines up perfectly with the timing of it all—the laughter, the clink of ice, the mosquitoes—and for a second, it feels like life has a rhythm only the summer porch knows how to keep. 

And then winter interrupts. The living room fills with the smell of wet wool drying on the heater. Someone yells upstairs that the hot water’s gone. The fire sighs into itself, collapsing in sparks, and we sit in its glow anyway—cheeks pink, socks steaming. 

Sometimes the spoon trick works. On those rare mornings, Croix wakes under a hush—rooflines softened, fenceposts buried—everything turned into one long stretch of quiet. We move quickly. Boots thud against the floor, bibs half-zipped, Dad humming through the noise while Mom cups her mug I painted for her seasons ago as if it is sacred. The drive up the mountain lasts about a CD or two, windows fogging as the snow stacks along the guardrails. Up there, the world sharpens. The lift hums, poles clatter, and that first run snaps me awake—the cold biting my face, the light bouncing off the snow like it’s got somewhere to be.

“Who’s ready to rock and roll?” Dad calls as we slide off the chairlift, his voice already half-lost in the wind. 

His voice tumbles down the run before he does, laughter cutting through the trees. Blake launches ahead, reckless as ever, and for a moment we all are—painting lines that won’t last but still feel permanent. I follow his tracks until they fade, chasing the same rhythm, the same laughter, just colder air. 

Somewhere between turns, I think of Grandpa on the porch, eyes squinting against the light like he could already see this day coming. He never skied, but I think he’d have liked the quiet between runs—the kind that hums like the porch did when the jukebox jammed and everyone stayed a little longer than they needed to. 

By the time we head home, everyone’s talking at once—retelling near-crashes and close calls. Blake drifts asleep in the backseat while I’m brushing Cheez-It dust off my trousers, catching the faintest smile on Dad’s face in the mirror. He’s getting older, too. I know he never takes a ski day for granted with us—I don’t either. On days like these my dad turns to me and says: "Croix feels like the best place in the world.”

The heater fights to keep up, and for a moment it smells like the porch in July—wood, air, and the faint trace of something still warm. The seasons keep trading places like that, passing each other in the hallways of memory. Summer’s porch chair creaks inside the winter firewood; winter’s fire settles into the summer dusk. One day I’ll miss this chair by the fire as much as I miss that chair on the porch, but for now, they keep overlapping, one inside the other, like two songs sharing the same melody. Later that night, I crawl into bed with the spoon tucked under my pillow. The metal is cold against my hand when I shift, and I whisper something half like a wish, half like a joke. Downstairs, the fire clicks low. In the kitchen, one glass still sweats in the sink from earlier. And by the window, the porch chair waits under its own blanket of what I dream to be fresh flakes—stiff, silent, and certain it will have its turn again.