Front Porch Ramble

The stuffy night air hit him when he opened the front door and when he pushed open the screen it was if some enormous dog sat in the darkness panting in his face.  The symphony of tree frogs and cicadas almost masked the low rumble of this highway and that, teasing him with sounds that would only be accompanied by silence in the rural area where he grew up.  The mosquitoes reminded him of home too, they thought they'd all died and gone to the bayou.  Jeremy took the itchy bumps as his penance for the sin of smoking.  It was a fondness he was supposed to be overcoming, as his personal assistant app reminded him this morning for the sixth day in a row.  Another midnight found him looking for his lighter in last night's pajamas, and gathering change for the single cigar he'd walk eight blocks to purchase from the 24-hour convenience store.  The walk eased his guilt at never quite getting his exercise regiment off the ground, and also served as further penance.
     He had been raised in a Catholic family, but thankfully not fanatically.  He had dutifully attended public school religion classes once a week during his youth, and had learned quickly that these were not the setting for difficult questions. Not if you wanted answers.  At 15, he had finally completed the process of becoming recognized as adult by the church.  The ceremony at the big cathedral in the city was grand and beautiful, and meaningful to Jeremy in a different way than the other young people in their finery. The institution now recognized him as an adult capable of making decisions of faith and he was determined to exercise his rights. When the family got in the van to head home, he told everyone that he would no longer be attending church.  Now, as a staunch atheist father, he wondered if one of his boys would climb in the backseat one day and announce that he'd accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and personal savior. He shuddered and shook his head to clear away the thought.  He and Kelly would cross that bridge if they ever came to it.
    Jeremy took a drag from the fragrant pipe tobacco cigar and let his mind wander on the subject of his children's futures.  He had read somewhere that personalities don't change in their basic makeup after the age of four years old.  The oldest had already passed that mark and so it seemed was destined be a teenager.  Things number two and three were still cooking, but occasionally seemed like a couple of good ol country boys looking to get muddy and rowdy. He wondered how to advise them on finding their path when he could hardly choose one for himself. In the last 5 years he'd gone from student paramedic to retail employee, then manager, now stay at home dad moonlighting as a painting instructor for wine-loving well to do white women. If you went back 10 years the employment history got even more vague and desperate. The smoke was too hot on his tongue and he realized as he inhaled that he had burned the cigar down to the nub. He tossed the butt on to the pile that spilled out of the old cinder block in the corner of the porch. He was disgusted with his inability to quit, a feeling coming to his post puffing inner dialogue. Before his fix, it sounded more like  "one more won't hurt" and "Monday is a better day to quit".
     His younger brother told him that the best way to quit was as if pulling your hand away from a hot stove. He dreaded in the art of war by the strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu. Jeremy recalled it often, gazing at the burning addiction between his fingers. Inevitably it was a fully burned but that landed on the pile. He sent massaging his singed tongue with his teeth, listening to someone's peel out a mile or two away. The high pitched drone of a sport motorcycle in the distance was suddenly a buzzing in his ear. He started and swatted at his cheek, shaking his hair wildly like an animal shedding flies. He stood, we committed himself to quitting smoking on Monday, and set about filling his evening of insomnia.