I came home to change a porch light; instead I found two campaign signs at war, a slick step, and my father’s hand shaking as he caught my mother.
The rain had passed an hour earlier, but the street still looked like pewter—gray, dull, reflective in patches. The lawns wore the storm like a hangover: damp grass, puddles the shape of old leaves. On my parents’ front yard, two signs leaned toward each other like boxers before a bell. Donnelly’s name in bold blue, Rivera’s in fire-red, both staked into the same strip of dirt as if the ground itself couldn’t decide who it belonged to.
Above the porch, the bulb blinked weakly, like an eye refusing to stay awake. I parked at the curb and sat for a moment, listening to the AM radio leaking out of the screen door. Someone was shouting about saving or losing America—same pitch, same fury, different day.
The door creaked open. Mom stood there with a dish towel in her hands, cinnamon and coffee rolling into the rain-damp air. “Nate,” she said, my name soft as a prayer spoken out of habit, not expectation. Dad followed, wiping his hands on another towel, his jaw stiff. The towel didn’t disguise the tremor in his fingers.
“It’s just the bulb,” I said, holding up the little box I’d grabbed at Walmart. “Ten minutes.”
Dad nodded, then reached for Mom’s elbow as she stepped down onto the wet concrete. His thumb pressed into her sweater like he was testing a fragile seam. For the first time, I saw the truth I’d been avoiding. My parents weren’t stone statues anymore. They were clay—warm, living, fragile.
Inside, Mom busied herself with pie crusts. “I had a light fall last week,” she said as if she were talking about the weather. “Your father told me to slow down. Imagine that.”
On the fridge, a hospital bill fluttered under a flag-shaped magnet. Next to it: an old Polaroid of me in a Halloween mask, five years old, holding Dad’s hand. The paper was yellowing at the edges.
Dad fiddled with the radio dial until the shouting became murmurs in the background. “They’re ruining everything,” the host muttered, as if the words were furniture now, a constant presence in the house.
We survived a few minutes of small talk—my job, the price of eggs—before the outside world broke in. Raised voices, sharp, too close. Donnelly and Rivera, neighbors divided by politics and a property line, were shouting from the curb. The words weren’t even sentences anymore, just fragments hurled like rocks.
Mom stepped toward the door. Dad reached for her, steadying, but her heel skidded on rain-slick concrete. Just half an inch. Enough to make my gut plummet.
I didn’t think. I moved.
I took both campaign signs, one under each arm, and carried them to the trash cans. They clattered together like stubborn relatives at Thanksgiving. I laid a rubber mat across the porch steps, pressing it flat with my palm until it stuck. Then I climbed the ladder and screwed in the new bulb. The click was soft, but when the filament caught, a warm, steady light poured over the porch, turning every drop of water into a spark.
“Hey,” I called toward the fence line—not loud, not angry. “My mom needs a safer step more than she needs another debate tonight.”
Silence arrived like a guest of honor. Donnelly looked at Mom. Rivera looked at Dad. Rivera shifted, then set a thermos on the railing. “Chicken soup,” she said, her voice uneven. “Too salty, but warm.”
Donnelly ducked into his garage and returned with a little wooden bench, the kind that once lived in a waiting room. He set it under the light and patted it like a dog, awkward but genuine.
For one breath, the world stopped fighting. We just stood there, stewing in the glow of a new bulb.
Inside, Dad rinsed apples at the sink. His hands shook more openly now, no longer hidden. I reached for the peeler. We stood shoulder to shoulder at the counter, elbows bumping the way we used to when moving a couch through a too-narrow doorway. Mom’s pie filled the kitchen with cinnamon. The radio was silent.
“I can come Saturdays,” I said, sliding the knife through apple skins that curled into red ribbons. “Fix small things. Sit a while. Eat too-salty soup.”
Dad’s mouth twitched into something that was almost a smile. He set his palm on my shoulder and let it rest there, as if he’d finally found a place to lay down something heavy.
When I left, the porch light hummed steady. The bench sat beneath it, glowing like an invitation. Donnelly and Rivera were already there, sitting side by side, knees almost touching, like two kids waiting for a bus. Mom waved with a tea towel. Dad didn’t say “be careful.” He just said, “See you Saturday.”
I had come to change a bulb. I left with a rule:
If you’re lucky enough to still have parents, don’t bring them arguments. Bring them a mat for the step. A steady light. A warm thermos. And your Saturdays.
