WINDOWS

At home, I spend a fair bit of time looking through the glass doors onto our back porch and yard. In the mornings, the edge of the sun is just visible as it rises over the tree tops. The light sparkles across silken spider webs strung daintily between the porch railings, evidence of nocturnal work.

Through the day I watch for hummingbirds visiting the red glass feeder. I water the roses and hibiscus, smiling when they bloom. When there is shade, I take my baby and let him crawl across the outdoor rug. When indoors, he will stand at the window on his chubby baby legs and look outside with me when it’s too hot and bright to be out. When deer visit our yard, I point them out to him and we watch as they quietly graze. They sometimes look back at us, diligently assessing that we are not a threat. We can share this space.

If my baby wakes in the middle of the night and needs me, I always go to those back windows on my return trip to bed. It feels important to pause and look outside at 2:00am or a similar time, because it’s a changed world at that time, and to ignore it when I wouldn’t otherwise see it feels rudely indifferent. When the moon is full, light cascades across the porch. When it has waned, the stars glimmer more brightly overhead. A car’s headlights spray a stream of light through the trees and I wonder where they’re going. Somewhere, spiders are at work creating their artwork webs. Once, I saw a skunk trundling across the yard, and although skunks and spiders aren’t creatures I want to have any personal encounters with, still it fascinates me to think of the night as their active time, when they own the outdoors and know they won’t be disturbed.

One evening while it was still light, I took my baby outside and placed him in his swing so he could enjoy some fresh air before bed, but when a mosquito began to snack on my legs I gathered him up and returned indoors, angry about the smarting welts which cut our time short. My baby seemed unfazed about the back and forth parade, even though he loves to be outside as much as I do. I love it, yet I’m thankful for a cool house with big windows to retreat to when there are mosquitos. I’m thankful for the times spent reading on the porch or swinging in the hammock or watering my garden, and for the times when I can be comfortably inside yet still looking out.

In Ecuador, I knew a teenage boy whose childhood home of cement brick had no windows. Sometimes his mother would lock him inside for hours in the dark; he recalled how desperate he was for light. Years later, darkness still made him uncomfortable. Had there been just one window, I can imagine how the light and the glimpse of the outside world would have fed his soul, giving him hope which the suffocating darkness denied. When I remember this, my annoyance over mosquitos fades. My gratefulness for windows and light increases. We all need the outdoors; we need sunshine and to see things which grow and bloom and move. I’ve lived in this home for seven months, and it can feel ordinary in the way one’s home quickly can, and then I glance outside and remember: I have windows. What a gift. I have roses, and a porch, and a baby swing, and a yard which deer visit.

So, may I remember to be thankful for all of these things. May I remember, and pass on to my son, how to be thankful for things which are easy to take for granted, like windows and the chance to look outside them at 2:00am rather than being grumpy over being up at that time. I look outside and think, “How wild. What a gift: all of it.”