I Have This Window…

I have this window.  It came with the room that I acquired years ago when the previous occupant, our oldest daughter, moved out.  Before she had a chance to look back over her shoulder, I had secured my presence by moving in a desk, chair, and computer.  Bookcases and a file cabinet soon followed.  As they say, possession is nine-tenths of the law. 

I prize my window because I lived eight years of my life in an air force unit that spent a lot of time on alert, and the alert building was a concrete bunker with no windows.  If I wanted to verify the presence of trees and grass and sky, I had to step outside.  Having a view of the outside world became a necessity for me.

So I have seized control of a window.  And it is a window with not much of a view.  It faces out onto a street of urban tract homes, pleasant to look at but not spectacular.  On the left of the view is a neighbor’s garage.  To the right is a long stretch of the side of another neighbor’s property, with a curb and walkway unscarred by driveways.  It’s sort of a curbside overflow parking lot for when people have parties.

Delivery van drivers sometimes pause there, probably to update info, or maybe just to take a break.  A couple of stolen cars have been abandoned there, the last one a sporty Mercedes-Benz that showed up at night; the license plate frame and a sticker on a window hinted that the car’s home was near Stockton, some 50 miles south of here.

That intrigued me.  How did a car thief find this empty stretch of pavement in the back of a neighborhood that is a tangle of twisting, turning streets?  When you get to our house, you either know exactly where you are or you are hopelessly lost.

Several weeks ago the view changed dramatically, as in, Where did all these people come from?  The answer is easy:  They are neighbors who have been told not to go to work because of the coronavirus.  Therefore, they get out of the house to exercise or to escape boredom, maybe both.

There’s no organized parade, just individuals, twos and threes, family clusters, humans on bikes or skates, kids on sidewalk toys—and dogs, lots of dogs, many of them possibly wondering why suddenly their humans are home so much and why they’re being walked so often.

It’ll all end someday, and we’ll all be glad.

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