The streaks are there before I even spray on the window cleaner. The slightly moist rag takes the streaks away, but leave even more that dissipate as the window dries. Small pieces of lint dance on the glass after all the streaks are gone. A quick wipe with a dry rag and the window is a crystal clear screen for the never-ending movie of the outside world that plays on in the most vividly realistic 3-D. There’s a lot going on out there. The horizon is miles away, and in the space of those miles there are cars taking people on journeys long and jaunts short. There are people without means of transportation either hopping on busses that come through like clockwork, riding bicycles, or using their own two feet to get to wherever they need to go. There are buildings with facades that are worn and cracked and buildings that are so new that they still have the price tags on them. All around the edge of the horizon, mountains line up and act as still sentries, guarding the perimeter of the bustling city from the unseen forces that are imagined as mounting the advance. Among the sounds from these sights are sirens and alarms, horns and shouts, laughter and crying. It is a view that changes from window to window, from floor to floor of this multi-storied building. Different windows; different views in perhaps different times from a life story…
First floor: There is a small boy sitting in the dirt with a dirty cast on a dirty leg. He’s pushing a toy car around in his imagined metropolis of mud buildings, Popsicle stick bridges and paper towel tube tunnels. He winces with a bit of pain as he moves his broken leg in order to swing around to push the car further down the road that continues on behind him. A horrible thing has happened, something this little boy doesn’t quite understand. He looks up in anticipation as he hears a female’s voice come through the open window of the house. Is that mama? Did she come back from that big white building filled with the nice people that put this heavy thing on his still aching leg? Daddy, brother and sister are home, as well as aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas, but mama isn’t here. That voice was just one of the other mamas that come and go with sad looks on their faces. Not mama’s voice…and the toy car continues on its journey to the cardboard box school near the end of the dirt and by the edge of the grass.
Second floor: Palm trees and moss covered oaks. Hmm…new things to the boy in the passenger seat. Not much is remembered of the trip from Tennessee to the Sunshine state, but things never seen before leave an impression. A strange noise, later to be found out as a peacock cry, at first scares the boy, and then when the source is found, amazement takes the place of fear. This is his first remembered trip to Florida where his grandmother lives. He gets a little shy when he sees a young couple kissing (the guy who took him down had met his girlfriend there and had no qualms about kissing her in front of the boy). But embarrassment turns to joy when his grandmother greets him and takes him home. Little did he know, but this was to be his home through his first years of college.
Third floor: The sounds of children laughing and playing carry over the playground outside a two-room schoolhouse. Double-dutch jump rope, high-in-the-sky swings, Red Rover, kickball, tether ball, and monkey bars; part of the regimen of exercise called “recess”. This is the place where first friends are made, first crushes are experienced, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are traded “up” for cheese and mayo sandwiches (and maybe a banana to boot). The innocence of childhood is slowly ebbing away, being replaced by just a touch of knowledge of the real world and the pain and the wonder it brings.
Fourth floor: He’s too young to be called a man and too old to be called a boy. He lugs his suitcase up to the room assigned to him for his first year at academy, mere hours away from home. The room is no bigger than his old room at home, but split down the middle in a mirror image of beds, dressers and closets. Yet this one holds two people and their possessions. The previous year, he and his best friend were the whole of the ninth grade class. Now he is just one of about a hundred sophomores. This is where even more friends are made, the knowledge that some people are just not nice at all, and others would give you their all for just the asking. In this time period there is the “never to be forgotten” first kiss, the realization that sports are just not his “thing”, and some decisions are made that just might not be the smartest ones to make. More lessons learned.
Fifth floor: More lugging of suitcases up stairs, this time in a college more than 500 miles from home, yet in the same area where home was before going to Florida. He really doesn’t know what he is doing here. Yes, it was his decision to come here, but deep down, he knows he is only here because it is what is expected of him. Might as well make the best of it and see what there is to do, because people are depending on him. He doesn’t really know what he wants to do in life, and this place is where he is supposed to be made ready for it through books and tests, on paper and in reality. Leave first crushes and kisses behind…this place is full of the real thing! But who has time for that when your education is at stake? Well, at least for the first few years anyway. More bad decisions and the real crusher of dreams called “complacency” take precedence over any original good intentions of the freshman of yesterday. He wonders who he is and where he is supposed to be…the answer is that he is who he is and right here is where he is supposed to be…
Sixth floor: Nothing else matters. There she is. He can’t believe that she is here after many seemingly failed attempts at showing how much he cared, all the notes and letters unanswered, a simple phone call from far away that felt so good…he returns, and here she is. He remembers a few short months ago, a night spent dancing and singing karaoke, and a “few too many” to drive home. Those few extra had nothing to do with the way he felt that night. It was a feeling that he had never really felt until then. That feeling never went away from that day forward. He knew that what he felt was coming back to him; love for someone else that surpassed the love for self many times over. He keeps telling himself that it is too good to be true, but it isn’t. It isn’t even about the prospect of sex. It isn’t even a goal. That doesn’t even happen for several months, and that is just all right for him. Trips to blue holes, vacations many states away and in the backyard of the near foothills, nights around a campfire; those things hold more places in his heart than any heated moment of passion. What is to be is coming to be…
Seventh floor: Rose petal lined path, sweet music, friends and family eagerly waiting, hand in hand they walk. Tears, laughter and “I do.” Running away to beautiful beaches, true alone time and enough pictures, printed and engrained…true honeymoon material. Love…
Eighth floor: A young child cries as another one runs laughing through the house. Six years from wedded bliss, he still feels the same love. Love increased by the same cries and laughter…love times three. He still thinks about how he got to this place from where he was. He never got what he came up to this state to do. But what he does have, he wouldn’t trade it for the world. When he didn’t know what he wanted to do, he believes that it has culminated into this moment in time. Husband, father, mentor, caregiver, lover; is it what he set out to be? It could be true. Being a firm believer in “where you are is where you are supposed to be”, it never occurs to him that there just might be something wrong. Life is good, life is strained, life is love…but what is hidden underneath; what is it that he just can’t see and isn’t even aware that it is to be seen?
Ninth floor: Love times three, minus one. “I want a divorce.” The view from here is a bit smeared…
Tenth floor: Looking around at the clutter he thinks, “Wow…that was a lot of living and learning; healing and hoping; blunders and corrections.” He has come through a rough time, perhaps still in it, but coping and making it. He found out just how many true friends he has, who to trust and who not to whisper any secrets to. He still wonders who he is and where he is supposed to be, but the answers don’t seem to change. He looks out the window and into the past. That’s where he was. The vivid and crystal clear image of a child grown to man and the story that fills the empty spaces between the starting point and the point of now is just that; a story. But it is a story that is his. It isn’t one that he would trade for any story that has a perfect ending or one that he could change if he could. It is where he is supposed to be, for whatever reason. He still has love. He still has things to learn. He still has two young minds to direct in the paths of their lives, to create their own stories. He gives them pointers and tips on how to make a great story. But it is not his to make…it is theirs. He can only fill it with his love and his experience.
This last window needs a lot of cleaning. Two panes of glass that keep out the wind and the rain and allow light in and sight out. How many years of neglect from the city air and dust has it seen? What will it take to make the scene outside of it into one that isn’t hazy or blurred? Squirt, wipe, smear, wipe dry…
It’s looking better already.
