The Window

I mentioned a few months ago that I took a creative writing class. The class wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for, but a couple of the assignments were thought provoking, if nothing else.

Our very first assignment was to write about a window. That was it. That was the assignment. Oddly enough, the first thing I thought of was my dad…so that’s what I wrote about. He’s been gone eleven years today, so I thought this would be a good time to share what I wrote.

Our dining room was misnamed. In the thirty five years that we owned my childhood home, I only remember eating there a handful of times.

The dining room was my dad’s domain. It wasn’t really an office. Occasionally, a meal was consumed, but the table was used primarily to house the ever growing collection of books, magazines, and puzzles that my dad accumulated over the years. When the table was full, he stacked them on the floor. He used the dining room as his refuge after long days on job sites. It’s where he drank and smoked. It’s where he read and worked crossword puzzles.

And sometimes he just sat there and looked out the window.

The dining room window was by far the largest window in our house, and in many ways it was the window to our small corner of the globe. The house was situated at the end of a rural cul-de-sac so that, even with the slight bend in the road, if you sat in just the right spot, you could see anyone coming down the half mile long street. That’s where my dad sat. He wanted to keep the world in front of him.

As I got older, I began sitting there in front of that window with him. This was where I needed to be if I wanted to spend time with my dad. He taught me how to play cribbage in front of that window. We talked about girls and politics in front of the window. Other times, we would sit and watch the world go by in silence.

One of our many conversations wound its way into the topic of phobias. I couldn’t conceive of my dad being afraid of anything. The one thing he mentioned: he didn’t like to look out the window when it was dark outside. He said it reminded him too much of the unknowns he faced while stationed in Vietnam.

I don’t think I truly understood where my dad was coming from until later in life. In my youth, I didn’t have much to worry about. The window to my world was mostly sunny with only a slight chance of showers. As I aged the sky became a little more cloudy, but I’ve chosen to create my own light so that my window doesn’t fully darken.

I know my dad lived a rough life, and I think his sun was setting much faster than normal until it set completely about a decade ago. My mom sold my childhood home five years later after it was flooded during Hurricane Harvey.

Looking back, those moments with my dad were some of my favorite memories of growing up. I sometimes wish that I could sit in that dining room once more and talk to my dad about life, love, and everything in between. Even though I can’t, I still often find myself staring out the window, wherever I am, and just watching the world go by.