Windows...

I lay in bed and look up, first thing, at the trees. The changing light and swaying limbs are a treat early in the day. This is nearly ritual for me. I am drawn to look out before I do anything else. Eyes roam the familiar and the known. Some days I judge it priority to get out, others show me that looking is all I need do. This is the second house that finds me this way.
They are many, and they are large. So much light pours through.  It is spring when we find out, and blue sky is the backdrop for budding green. I walk past the windows and he is in front of me holding a sign. Baby girl is kicking inside of me, and I wonder how well she will know him.
A few weeks later, with the thing now named, I sit and look up, out the window.  More green and more buds. I find myself each week looking out that window, and my very own time lapse emerges. Through the long summer of new treatments, moving, adjusting, and birthing. In the fall when he has the big surgery and the long two months of recovery after that, I sit mostly with him, sometimes by myself. I become a creature of habit and look up and out that same window - it becomes my moment with God.
When we were finally done with it, it, my view had come full circle. Gray sky and thin, unadorned branches gave way to blue, green, and white.

I love windows. For me, the more light the better. I like to see and when I am in a room with few windows I feel stifled. I like the steady feeling of the objects that don’t change: trees, buildings, rocks, bushes, decks, streets, and telephone poles. The familiar gets spiced up with the perpetual seasons, animals, flowers, changing leaves, angles of light, and the activity of the place.
I love to ponder who has looked out old windows and how similar what I see is to what they saw. Windows make me understand what it is to gaze. Maybe not nearly as intoxicating as a fire, but a firm draw nonetheless.  Unlike anything else in the building they are part of, they herald the marching of time. Through them you can survey wide open spaces and what they might offer, or see if the indoors has what will entice you in.
And if you choose, you can mark the time, measure the progress, and engage in holy moments.