Windows

I'm a little nutty when it comes to windows. I like them. If I am inside of the room, I gravitate towards the window to see what can be seen from it. Each window has a story.

The first window I can remember is a basement window that was my first bedroom window. We lived in a basement apartment in Cicero, Illinois, and you didn't get much light in from the windows in that apartment. It was perpetually twilight. I could never tell what time of day it was. By the time I was 4, my parents moved into a second floor duplex at Roosevelt Road and Oak Park Avenue. The apartment had lots of windows. There was a turning staircase that had a window at the landing. It was where my dad and Uncle Bill stopped the day they were carrying the new refridgerator upstairs. Uncle Bill had a bead of sweat hanging from the tip of his nose and I remember staring at it right then, and wishing he would wipe it off because I thought it looked gross. Uncle Bill died a couple of years ago from a brain hemorrage, so looking back on it now, I wish I could give 'ole Uncle Bill a big hug. There were 8 or more windows on the second story back porch.

My aunt and uncle bought a very large, very old Victorian era home on Western Avenue in Joliet in the late 70s. When I was 7 or 8, my parents and I took a ride to see them on my birthday in June. We were supposed to have a barbeque in the back yard, but it started to rain. That was the first year that I remember it raining on my birthday. After that, it always seemed to rain on my birthday, and I returned to the window to look out on the rain from wherever I was.

In 1974 my parents moved from the city to the edge of a small town in the far southwestern suburbs of Chicago. The view was of farmland and was open and clean and I remember seeing the tractor driving by one spring day, kicking up dust behind it as the farmer plowed the field. The sun was shining brightly that day, and the weather was perfect.

I grew to love the view with rain coming down, because that meant that there was no outside work for that day, and I was spared weed pulling or rock moving. There were always weeds to pull.

A very forlorn Joey on the TV show Friends was looking through a rainy window pane in a lead-in shot in one episode, and when the shot widened you could see that it was an electronically devised decoration to simulate a rainy window. Joey was feeling sad so he sat looking through it for the "back from commercial" lead-in shot. It was funny.

Windows are special to me because they always let you in on something. Eyes are the windows to the soul. You can tell if a person is clean or not by looking at their windows, car or home. Windows can help you let light in or keep the outside world out.

I once awoke to the sun coming up over the Charles River in Boston. The view from my window was from the 25th floor of the Westin facing north, towards Cambridge and Harvard. The river separated us. The view of the city was spectacular. Some of the most beautiful windows I've ever seen are overlooking Fallingwater. The view of the woods is breathtaking and is incorporated into the house and vice versa.

God doesn't close a door without opening a window. Sometimes it's hard to recognize a window. You know the door is closed behind you, there's no going back. The future is uncertain, all you can do is step blindly into the darkness, and then...there's a small light.

God once spoke to me and told me not to open the door. In that case, the only case, he wanted me to know that the door was closed and clearly, I should not open it under any circumstances. Pandora's box comes to mind. God closed the door and then showed me why. I was very unhappy but grateful for the heads-up. Thank you God.

Windows can let you see the storm but be safe. Windows let you see the world outside even if you can't find the door. They can be beautiful and artistic or broken and ugly, just like the building they punctuate. Without them we would live in caves, like Plato suggested. Knowledge, then is like a window. Without it, we would live in the dark. Windows are essential to our humanity.