TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

Some houses just feel homey — easy and warm and welcoming. They’re the houses that kids and neighbors gravitate to. The houses you can feel instantly comfortable in. You aren’t tiptoeing around or worrying about making a mess.

My parents’ house, the house I was raised in, was — and still is — one of these houses. There’s nothing museum-like or fussy about it. We didn’t have the biggest house in town, and we didn’t have a pool or any other big draw — in fact, my parents were late adopters of cable TV and microwaves and other things that kids might think of as standard “amenities” — but there was always laughter and music. And always people. My parents and their friends. Our extended family and our neighbors. My siblings and their friends. It was one of those houses where everyone felt welcome.

Now that I have a family and a house of my own, I want our house to be that warm and welcoming, too. I’m not a frequent entertainer; I don’t host very many dinner parties or cocktail hours. Maybe that’s because I work from home, so in the evenings I’m ready to leave and go someplace else!

But my kids are always welcome to host sleepovers and to have friends over for dinner or a movie or, depending on the season, a snowball or water balloon fight. I love it. I want to be that house.

I want our house to be a place where anyone can be themselves and know they are with people who care about them, people they can trust. I want my friends and my kids’ friends to feel safe and comfortable, to relax and have fun, and to leave feeling ready to face the world outside, which isn’t always as warm and welcoming as I’d like it to be.

Today’s poem is about how the small things we offer one another — meals, conversation, a soft place to land — are not small at all. They’re everything.

Community
by Emily Bright

It is nearly midnight and I’m
scrubbing at the grout.
The dishes, washed,
are put away. This is how I love
the people in my house,
with baking soda and a sponge.
We build our community
from the kitchen out,
knowing eggs or cornbread
stretch a meal to feed
the neighbor boys, who come
when we sit down to supper.
They always join when
we invite them, always ask
to use the phone to talk to girls.
They claw through adolescence
and such obstacles I never had to face:
gangs and constant relocations,
Michael’s father half-way through
his fifteen years for selling. I learn,
I learn from them. Outside, sirens
flash their blue and red again.
I sweep footprints in a pile,
fill the bucket for the mop.
So much is beyond my circle of control.
But this house, this place of gathering,
it shines, if only for a few to see,
if only through the morning.

"Community" by Emily Bright from THIS GROUND BENEATH OUR FEET © 2026 Emily Bright. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Holy Cow! Press.