Here's to the Inconsequential

A toast to my living room windows

Most of the time I just look straight through them, but I’m here today to look directly at the windows in my living room and bring them the honor they deserve.

There was a time when I hated the look of them. 

Decades old vinyl strips hung from the frame above, garish vertical blinds enclosing the room in darkness. There were many arguments brought against the blinds, and yet, for years they remained.

I wanted to love the big windows, but their ugly treatments and the fish bowl-like quality they brought to my safe place kept my love at bay. That was, until I realized, it’s where the light comes in.

Now, don’t get me wrong, those big ol’ windows magnified our every move to the neighbor across the street and impeded our privacy. There was one occasion where, Miss Maria who was 89 years young was able to see I was home, and moments later appeared in my kitchen with something for my children right as I left the shower in my robe, sending my heart rate through the roof for a few panicked moments until my mind caught up. Her window observations also fueled her comments as she crossed our busy road with a bag of oranges in 2020, making sure we had enough food, and clearly concerned we didn’t get scurvy. 

The same window, though, allowed me to see her tired shuffle to the mailbox as the months went on, and the lack of visitors, and made my heart drive a mile down the road to buy her tulips and hand them off to her as she tried to invite me in to see her sweater collection. It also made me see it was time to send her a letter in the mail to tell her what she meant to us all those years, observing us and bringing us small bits of laughter and joy, and to say goodbye before she was gone. 

There was the year they built the bike path, with the large pieces of equipment just feet from the window, entertaining my firstborn every day for an entire summer, allowing me a moment to drink my coffee in peace. There’s the menagerie of dogs we have been able to observe daily through its panes, each of us yelling “fluffy butt!” when a particularly cute one walks by. 

Many a Saturday afternoon you could find me smiling and staring out those windows at the scene of my husband on the riding lawn mower gripping one or both of our boys in his arms with their big ear muffs on, turning a relaxing job into an arm work out, and a chore into a core childhood memory.  My heart swooned at the sight. Is there anything more attractive than your husband being the best dad in the world? If he wasn’t mowing on a weekend afternoon, he was on the floor playing chess or doing a puzzle with our oldest, beams of light spilling through the window over the board and onto their faces, illuminating their staggering likeness.

My boys would run to the window sill whenever they heard a siren coming, in fact they still do, adolescent bodies tripping over each other and slamming into walls just so they can watch the lights go by.

The window’s expanse reveals the cars that zoom by and honk, saying hello to us on their way to the beach, reminding us that we are known here in this small house in this small town by many whom we love. 

Nightly, we peek behind the curtains to see the edge of the sun setting, and in the late summer months that sometimes sends us running out to the car to chase the sunset down the road, sticking our feet in the water for a few moments as the pink streaks in the sky fade.

The long dark winters are survivable because we can cocoon ourselves on the couch and be illuminated by the icicle lights hanging from the eaves above the window at night. During the rare sunny winter days, the light streams in, casting snowflake shadows on the carpet from all the paper snowflakes I enthusiastically cut out and tape to the glass each year as my small creative act of protest against the gloom. 

And here we are today; those vertical blinds are long gone, and the paint on the trim that was fresh nine years ago is starting to chip around the dents that our children made while watching the fire trucks and dog walkers go by. 

There’s new neighbors now to observe our mundane days and funny habits, and the little boy who was gripped by his father on the lawn mower is old enough to push mow the entire lawn on his own, nearly tall enough to drive the tractor too. I stand and watch him through that living room window and marvel at what God has designed my baby boy’s body to grow into in just a decade's time.

I get longer quiet afternoons to enjoy the sunlight on the couch and read as the snow falls because as my boys grow, so does their attention span and love for reading.

This year I’ve found my youngest on a few occasions on the living room floor in a tiny ball wrapped in a blanket directly in a patch of sunlight. When I asked him what he was doing, he said “It’s just so nice being here in the warm light. I just want to stay.”

I simply could not imagine life having any vibrance without those windows. It is through them that countless memories were able to be created and stored in my heart. I’m sorry to have ever doubted the important role they would play in our family’s story.

I will continue to treasure how the light streams onto my boy’s faces as they read away their elementary years into pre-teen hood. I’ll etch into my mind the scenes unfolding through those window panes in each season we call this precious house our home.

So, here’s to the living room windows; permanent and reliable fixtures in our ever changing lives.

Here’s to the seemingly inconsequential things that let the light in.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Cheers!".