The Beauty of Windows

When Paula announced she was hosting the Loveliness of Windows Fair, I didn't think I had anything to offer.  I do love the ideal that windows offer but there's only so much to say about windows.  Yet a wispy gnat of an idea kept flitting through the cobwebs of my brain.  I patiently waited for it to land on the windowpane so I could swat it.  And land, he did.

I found what I was looking for in the essence of several literary windows, beginning with my favorite tale of all time The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen:

"She lit another match.  This time she was sitting under a lovely Christmas tree.  It was much bigger and more beautifully decorated than the one she had seen when she peeped through the glass doors at the rich merchant's house this very Christmas.  Thousands of lighted candles gleamed under its branches.  And many colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop windows, looked down at her."

It was in reading this that I realized that the beauty of windows isn't about their physical presence at all.  Rather windows allow us the chance to catch a glimpse of the hearts and souls that abide behind these windows.  That is where we find the beauty and romance.

As author Nancy Lande wrote so eloquently in the Introduction of Homeschool Open House:

"While driving down a street in town, I love to look at houses, especially at night when caramel-colored lights glow in windows.  I look at the purple and pink gingerbread trim on a carefully restored Victorian house and wonder about the people who live there.  What kind of work do they do?  How many children fill the rooms?  What enticed them to buy this historic home?  Do they live a gingerbread life?

"Or, I see a cozy cottage on the edge of town, with children's bicycles tipped over on the freshly cut lawn and a small but colorful garden with vines stretching up and holding on to high windows.  I wonder who taught the children to ride the bikes and how long it took to go from wobble to balance.  Where is the family originally from?  Do they laugh a lot?  Do the children play piano or soccer?  What dreams do they have?"

---Homeschool Open House by Nancy Lande

Like Nancy I wonder.  I wonder a lot.  I believe the awakening of our imagination and the driftings of our flights of fancy are where we find beauty in the symbol of those windows.  And I see the world of Internet and blogs as very personal windows into our homes where we lift the curtains at random strokes of the sundial so as to let the passerby, friends, and guests get a warm glance into the rooms beyond the windows.

Then there are the cushioned hearths which I find so appealing.

I never had a bay window, but always wanted one.  I never had an alcove window, but always wanted one.  I never had a dormer window, but always wanted one. I never had a picture window, but always wanted one.  And I never had a window seat...until my dear husband created a "hole in the wall" with my very own "seat with a view".

And, as I began to remember all the literary excerpts I've read that evoke wonderful, lovely visions of windows, I was taken back to The Velvet Room with Robin:

"Robin opened the door and stepped into the most wonderful surprise of her life.  From that first glimpse, from the first minute, it was more than a room---more even than the most beautiful room Robin had ever seen. ... At the far end of the room a wide doorway led to a circular alcove. Windows of curved glass lined the alcove above window seats fitted with dark red pillows.  As Robin knelt on a window seat and looked out, she realized that this alcove was formed by a section of the tower.  ... There were heavy drapes of dark red velvet at the windows, and the wide doorway that led into the rest of the library had drapes, too. When all the drapes were closed, there was a full circle of velvet.  Robin pulled the drapes shut, and then sat down and looked around.

"It was a wonderful, cozy place.  A lot of people must have sat there to read in all the years since Palmeras House had been built.  There must have been other children who had liked the wide window seats with their deep soft pillows.  They probably took their books there and pulled the drapes shut, just as Robin had, and felt safe and comfortable and hidden.  If they were a little younger, they probably pretended they were birds high in a nest, or maybe princesses in a magic tower."

From the beginning of my little window seat's life, my daughters have enjoyed it with me:

They love window seats as much as I do.  My girls have enjoyed visiting friends in Texas whose daughter has a beautiful windowseat in her bedroom. The look on my girls' faces when they saw it assured me that they believed in fairy tales and that Sleeping Beauty or Rapunzel's tower was indeed on the other side of that window.

And that's exactly where windows and books take us.

What can be more revealing than a physical window whose welcoming presence reflects the windows of our mind.  Then, upon closer inspection, we realize that the transparent pane that separates reality from our ideals is but a shaft of light.  A shaft of light that takes our mundane lives and turns them into something richer, sweeter and more imaginative.  A shaft of light that takes the dreariness of our earthly lives and widens our thoughts to encompass more space:

"Of all the features of the house at Rocky Ridge---and it bore many marks of Almanzo's inventive mind---perhaps the most pleasing to Laura were the spacious windows, for they opened her view to the world she had loved as a child.  The four great windows of the parlor framed 'landscapes of forest and meadow and hills curving against the sky.'  The curtains hung straight, the glass was always uncovered.

"' I don't want curtains over my pictures,' Laura would say. 'They're never the same for two hours together, and I like to watch them changing.'

"In the kitchen was a window with a special purpose.  'She hates kneading bread,' Rose said. 'All her life she has hated it, and baked twice a week.  So the window is there.  She forgets the kneading in looking at the sheep pasture.  She has windows everywhere,' Rose added, 'not only in her house, but in her mind.' "

---Laura by Donald Zochert

This shaft of light changes flowers into fairies, window seats into boats, little girls into princesses, books into maps, blogs into backyard fences, rooms into towers, and houses into homes.  What a wonderful world a window can represent, if we look at it through the eyes of faith instead of our just our eyes.

"A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon."

---Jane Eyre (Chapter One)

Comments

[Leonie]

Oh, I loved all the pics and all the liteary quotes. Thank you !

[wendy]

Hello Cay,

I'm new to your blog, found you through Tea at Trianon. This post was sooooooo lovely, so i just had to say hello : ) I especially loved the Rocky Ridge qoute, "She has windows everywhere,' Rose added, 'not only in her house, but in her mind.' " And the fact that you gathered literary inspiration for this window post, it shows just how much words can be true windows for the soul.

In having a look around i came accross your post on the "Old Stone Bowl" too and have found it such treasure.

Anyway, its so nice to "meet" you through yor writing here, and i hope your week is peaceful : ) Wendy

[Cay]

Hi, Wendy.
Thanks for visiting. It's nice to "meet" you too. :)

Your blog is lovely and I look forward to reading more of it.