O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.
- from “As I Walked Out One Evening” by W.H. Auden
When I walk up the half flight of stairs into my grandmother’s house, I open the door and see her standing across the room, framed by the window behind her. The rest of the house was for her family, but the window and the windowsill was and is hers. The bird feeder outside is at the height of the window. Her sink is in front of the window, and her coffee cup is always right next to the sink. My grandmother rarely leaves her house. She cared for my two great-grandmothers so my grandfather did the grocery shopping. Since my grandfather died, my mother has done her grocery shopping. My grandmother’s window looks out to the driveway, to the bird feeder, and to her neighbor’s house where her brother and sister-in-law live.
Standing in her kitchen, near her window, my grandmother knows the room, the view, and the sounds so well that she can supernaturally detect one of her children’s cars slowing down on Race Street and turning left into the driveway. The cars pull in at odd times: my mother’s nearly daily; my uncle’s when a bill needs to be paid or a pot of soup needs to be shared; and the others’ when they're in the area, to say hello.
I was standing by my window,
On one cold and cloudy day
When I saw that hearse come rolling
For to carry my mother away.
-from “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
When I was home most recently, my mother and I stopped by (after a long day of errands) to drop off groceries and listen to my grandmother’s news and worries. On our way home and halfway down the one-way Race Street, my mother stopped and said, “we should have Grandma over for dinner.” She turned right three times around the block and turned left into the driveway.
I imagine how my grandmother felt when we left and then returned. She is used to cars and children coming and going, but she probably relished the minute or two of silence to reflect when her daughter and I left. But this time, we left and came back, taking her with us, away from her window and out of her driveway.
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
-from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot
My grandmother’s window is one of those with a central pane that doesn’t open and two side panes that open a bit. So she cannot lean out of her window, but I imagine, when I pull my car into the driveway, that she is nearly leaning out of her window. She is waiting and guessing to see who it is who has come to visit her, and why. She leans out of her window because she loves the person who will walk through her door. And we all come to her.
Every Christmas Eve, we file in. The staircase is narrow, and there are too many of us to pile our coats on the banister, so one of the grandchildren deposits them on a bed upstairs. My grandmother’s house is full of us, and several times during the evening she returns to her window. It seems like she’s making coffee, or mixing pineapple juice and ginger ale, or placing a used styrofoam cup in the sink, but I see her pause there. I wonder what she thinks when she looks out the window for a second or two into the dark (and snowy, if we’re lucky) night before turning back to her overfull house.
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