Views From the Windows of My Mother's House

Kitchen

A stretch of green yard with a concrete sidewalk on the left. A 100 foot tall (or so it seemed) Norway Spruce that dropped torpedo pinecones we loved to throw at each other. The garage where Dad kept his car washing supplies, and the upper room full of hats, costumes, props, and a filing cabinet with our childhood drawings. The parking pad with Mom's car next to the garage. The gate with a closure Dad made that was difficult to open and close when it rained. The long garden of perennials Mom planted along the chainlink fence that separated their yard from the Gehr's. Tammy, Mr. Gehr's tiny dog, sniffing the edges of the fence. The alley beyond the garage.

Dining Room Gehr's Side

A porch with a square table covered in a black and white checked tablecloth in the summer, topped with a tiny blue vase with choreopsis and speedwort from the garden. The patchwork pattern of the Gehr's asbestos shingled siding, and their dining room window, curtained in 1945.

Dining Room Other Side

The first floor apartment porch of a reclusive woman who lived there for decades. She had an exotic sounding name I can't remember now -- Florence, Lorraine, Yvonne, Eleanor? A man visited her regularly, who she claimed was her brother, but Mom figured to be her boyfriend. When he arrived, he'd pee facing the garage on that property, an action we could see from Mom's kitchen window. His suspenders ran up his back like crossed train tracks. 

Living Room

The brick porch with a blue painted ceiling, a cherry tree, a lavender bush, and a stretch of State Street with a line of large Victorian homes. Most of the neighbors were unknown. The road was a wide river that wasn't crossed too often. 

Bedroom Porch Side

The upper floors and roofs of houses, the midsection of the Norway Spruce, a zigzag of powerlines, the sky. This porch is where we watched the fireworks each year from a bench swing that hung by chains from the ceiling. Dad installed it.

Bedroom Other Side

The rental property with the reclusive woman. A long staircase leading up to the second floor apartment, which changed tenants often. More often than not, there was a pile of moving boxes and leftover, unwanted items on the porch.

Bathroom and Guest Bedroom

The second floors of all those expansive Victorian homes across State Street. The tops of trees, the sky. This was a view you only saw if you were brushing your teeth at the sink in the bathroom and happened to turn and focus your attention through the sheer white curtains Mom hung above the two little shutters on the bottom of the window. Or if you were making the bed in the guest bedroom with the blue striped wallpaper and matching comforter.

If there were windows in the attic and basement (there must have been), I never looked out of them. The basement was Dad's stained glass workshop, so my focus was on what was being created there when I was in it. The attic was filled with childhood toys, books, costumes, dead birds, and holiday decor. I can see in my mind's eye where the light is coming from up there, and I never walked over to it, afraid of dead birds or squirrels.

My memory of this house asks for more. It is the season of more, please, until I am stuffed to the tear ducts with nostalgia.