Exactly four years before my mother died, in exactly the same season, I had a chance to spend a month with her, every day making the long lovely walk through leafy old colonial Connecticut to her assisted living home, bringing her special abbondanza Italian deli shop lunches—which she barely could eat yet took delight in their obscene gluttony—just hanging out, spending time, meeting her friends and talking. These were golden times when I probably learned more about her than I ever really knew because I had set aside the time, determined to get to know her, really and truly, as a person and not just as the mother whose son I have always been. Maybe I was motivated by this quote from Norman Maclean, “It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.” Maybe I felt time running out. Maybe it was my own long road always racing towards tomorrow that made me realize valuable parts of my past had been left behind, fading like the fake teepees along Route 66. So, before I flew off once again, I carved out time to spend with her. On the walks, I thought up questions to ask her. If she wanted to talk about these topics, I encouraged her. If not, I backed off. But mostly, it was as if she had been restrained by her role as a mother and now welcomed the opportunity to talk. I watched her eyes light up with the memories, watched her fade back into herself, remembering the sweep of her life and the high tide of precious moments. As a son who had never truly seen his mother, it was a revelation. The best questions I asked her were about windows: “When you were a child, what did you see out your bedroom window?” “After you were married, what did you see out your honeymoon window?” “If there was a window into you, what would I see?” “If you could create a view out any window what would it be of?” “When you now look out a window, do you look outward or inward?” The answers were amazing. Windows are the eyes to the soul. And so I took a long way around to get to the real topic of this post, which is what I see out my own windows in China. I live on the third floor and my favorite sitting spot is on what I call a sun porch, which is a little high blown but fairly accurate, where I have placed a high backed office chair that rocks and wheels about, making a curious sight to those looking up from the street. I look out on a narrow private lane that leads to a gate, so there is no traffic, only cars entering through the gate to park. To the right are three rows of brick, six-story apartment blocks. To the left is a modern, soaring, thirty floor residential tower. Beyond the gate is an avenue and on the opposite side is a row of apartments with the ground floor occupied by small eclectic shops. Looming above is a medical skyscraper and the dark rim of mountains. I look outward as well as inward and do some of my best dreaming and thinking there. It’s like a blank movie screen that I can imagine anything on. I see the reflection of ancient cycles and endless ancestors. I see the China you might expect me to see as well as a China none of us will ever know. I see hardworking people. I see lives unfolding. I see children walking hand in hand with their parents or grandparents. Sometimes I don’t see them at all and some of them seem much like urbanized peasants. Other times I see the structure and the rhythm and flow of a culture that has learned from the ages how to get along with itself, which is no small achievement given the massive population here, who mainly all reside in the cities. I see a lot of laughter, a measureless busyness, unquantifiable legions of everyday people, as unique as snowflakes, with everyone working their Smartphones, but really, mostly, I just see you as well as me. I look out my window into more windows. In low watt China, it is absolutely Edward Hopper-esque. Portals into nameless lives I’ll never get to know. Sometimes I see them looking back at me, and we share in that brief moment a kind of collective bewilderment. China goes to bed early and I watch as the windows blink out. I like being awake while everyone else is asleep. I like imagining I can see into their sleeping dreams rising up all together in the dark, rich atmospheric dream ooze that makes me larger. My windows run east to west so I can watch the sun arc across the sky in the daytime and watch the moon at night. Tonight I can, not only see the moon, but Jupiter along with the stars Castor and Pollux. Not to diss the moon—which is like a lover to me, but seeing Jupiter, so bright in the sky, so close, so far away, so clean and untouched, so absolute, our earth flying between it and the sun, is to me like riding the carousel of the cosmos, all that gravitational whirling and spinning, I swear I can feel it all, sitting right here on my glorified sun porch. Right now, it’s dark. Only a handful of lights. In the middle of the residential tower, green nightlights run upward like vertebrae, lighting stairs? A few cars pass on the avenue. It’s 12:54 AM and so quiet. You could hear a mouse belch. The parked cars sleep. The bricks surrender to shadows. Lonely lamps stand watch. The moon is gone but Jupiter is still high above. Other timid stars appear. A continuance is gathering that I cannot name. It is also a window into something. It calls out like a wordless poem. It touches my face. I breathe on the cold window. It becomes a canvas for drawing. I draw what needs to be drawn: A window into you. After that, I surrender into it all . . .
2 Comments
Mary
1/10/2014 07:00:30 am
Windows are frozen snowflake designs right now. We have had a polar blast I do not remember it this cold. I love the window questions for Mom wish we asked more questions too. Windows inward and outward sounds like a great song for Kevin to write. The mountains in the background look like Sleeping Giant. Thank you for the views often wondered where you thought up your posts. Wishing you a new and exciting 2014!
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Erika MarĂa
2/15/2014 07:37:34 pm
There is the possibility that after looking out of your window I can define a Little better my feeling about China... your descriptive words and imaginative vein took me there... I like what I see!
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