Window

I wonder if the view is better through the window?  

Framed as a painting might be.  Divided into a quadriptych of individual scenes?

The window gives me focus. Reality.  I only need look at what it individually presents.  Nothing to the right.  Nothing to the left.

Each panel presenting a part of what I can see.  The top of the elementary school that no longer remembers my children.  The back of the lawn where the willow weeps and the badminton game lies unplayed.  The shed with the red wheelbarrow leaning in wait.  The doghouse without the dog.

Yesterday I stood at my sink looking out into the winter garden below.  Shovels.  Buckets overturned.  Furniture beleaguered by weather.  My husband’s building projects askew on the patio waiting for spring.

The window selects for me what I will see.

It confines me. It allows me only what is within it’s reach.  Present and past.   It tells me to look to the garden forgotten by winter.  The sky questioning snow.  The corner of the neighbor’s grey house providing a barrier to life on the left.

I cannot see beyond the window.  I cannot dream.  It doesn’t allow it.

As a child, the winter window would be covered with frost for me to etch my initials. Draw stick figure animals. Breathe on until the frost separated to create a small opening to what was beyond.   But today my window is clear.

Clear to me.

It is winter.

I am at the sink.  Looking at the winter garden.