the front porch.

We looked at a lot of houses during our six month search in Thomasville. There were houses with 16-foot ceilings, houses with teal kitchens, houses with checkerboard floors. There were backyards with swingsets and hallways with stained glass, wood-burning stoves and outdoor fire pits. We liked a lot of what we saw, but I didn't know if we'd ever find "the one."

There's this myth that spreads like wildfire among women, particularly women who find themselves in the middle of a search, a treasure hunt: women looking for the perfect man, the perfect dress, the perfect house. The myth -- and maybe it began in truth -- is that you'll know it when you find it. The emotional draw of the human, of the gown, of the home, will be so strong, you'll feel it. You won't be able to ignore it. 

It's a dangerous myth, because it leads to the rejection of perfectly good things, things that would have been good enough if we hadn't been waiting for the magical moment. 

I hated shopping for wedding dresses. Loathed it. My mother and I went into shop after shop, ranging from the chicest boutique to Moultrie, Georgia's bridal barn. Nothing seemed right. All the gowns were strapless and white. None of them looked like me, and I wanted desperately to look like myself on our wedding day. 

So my mom did what I suppose any wonderful mother would do. She found someone to make my dress, and it was polka-dotted and sleeved, and I could wear my Converse tennis shoes, and I loved it. But even that dress, even that perfect-for-me dress, didn't leave me with feelings of euphoria or adoration. The day I finally tried it on, my heart didn't flutter and my knees didn't buckle. I loved it, sure, but I didn't feel any immediate attachment or awe. And at first I felt a little guilty about that. I couldn't understand why I hadn't had the feeling. I had bought into the myth, and as it turned, the myth didn't ring true for me. 

Enter buying a home. 

We went into house after house, and I kept waiting for this feeling I kept hearing about. I kept waiting for the moment I'd step over the threshold and just know: This house was meant for us. 

I'm not sure that moment ever really came for me. Perhaps it's just not in my personality type for me to swoon or be bowled over by nostalgia or feeling. Though I feel a kinship to Anne Shirley, and I consider myself to be a fairly romantic, imaginative person, maybe I'm just not romantic or imaginative enough for the myth to happen to me. 

But if that feeling does exist, if the myth is true, the closest I ever came to feeling magic was when I walked into the doors of the home we now cautiously call ours. 

When I was 10, my parents bought a new house, out in the country -- relatively speaking -- and I was hesitant, I think, as most children are when moving is involved. It was only five miles up the road, but it was away from the neighborhood that held my grandparents, my cousins. The house would have to be something special to pull us away from the people and the house and the yard my brother and I loved so much. And the truth was, the new house really didn't feel all that special, not at first.

But then we discovered we could play "Civil War" in the backyard where my parents were having trees torn down. The yard was big enough to play kickball, and there was a basketball goal in the driveway. My room had two windows, and my parents put a desk in front of one so I could feel like John Boy Walton. 

And there was the porch. 

I guess porches are a Southern thing, but to me, they simply symbolize home. 

My parents hosted a graduation brunch for me on our front porch. They moved the Foosball table outside, and my friends came over, and we played and ate and laughed. All throughout junior high and high school, my mom and I would sit in the porch swing and talk about mean girls and hard days. When Chet and I hung out in his room, we'd hear the swing creak back and forth while my parents visited with each other, and my mother watched the birds. 

I got my first phone call from a boy on that front porch. (He was calling for help on his spelling homework.) At Thanksgivings and holidays, the kids' table would sometimes be on the front porch, and while we may have loathed it at the time, I think all of us now miss sitting at the kids' table. It was fun, looking back, to have a place all to ourselves, especially when that place happened to be away from adult eyes, hidden in plain sight on the front porch. 

Then, more than ten years after moving into that house, a boy I loved very much stuck a pair of Converse tennis shoes on that same front porch. He sat next to me on the swing, and we dreamed about life together. He proposed, and in the weeks that followed, my parents and I planned our wedding from the comfort of the porch swing. 

As a little girl -- and now, as a grown up -- I loved my parents' front porch. I never want them to move, because the porch, the home they made for me and my brother, means so much to me. And I guess I knew, deep down, that's all I really wanted or was waiting for. 

A home with a front porch. 

This week, we bought a house. A tiny little house in a tiny South Georgia town. Jordan carried me over the threshold, and we had our picture taken in front of the "sold" sign.

On Friday, my mom and I cleaned every inch of that house, and when we needed a break, we'd sit together on the front porch swing, watching the neighbors walk by.