Windows

During my years in Bahrain I lived in 4 different places...thus 4 different houses/apartments. While standing at my kitchen sink today washing dishes I kept glancing out my window that is right behind the sink and watched birds, squirrels, traffic...felt the breeze coming through and smelled the grass, flowers. I watched the tops of the tree branches sway and couldn't help but just feel calm at this vista.

Then it made me think about my years in Bahrain and the fact that from all the places I lived in...I did not have any windows in two of those places to look out of, one of them had windows that looked at a wall and the last had windows that just looked out on desert and nothing more. Varying shades of tan with nothing to break up the sameness of it all. I'm sure this contributed to the prison like feeling I always had. I hated my life inside my houses...but there was nothing to look out on either to make me momentarily forget where I was...and more importantly who I was.

I realize that my one kitchen window in this apartment in the US affords me a view that has everything I yearned for over there; color, foilage, wildlife, sound, a cool breeze...a soothing calmness that if nothing else...makes the chore of doing dishes a lot more pleasant.