A Window to the World

A window to the world,

over the kitchen sink.

This was one of my mother’s major considerations when house hunting, which was done more than two dozen times due to the nature of her husband’s career. 

Her best loved homes provided a view to the outside world as she orchestrated meals and mounds of dishes for eight. In the Georgia pines a tiny house gifted her with backyard views of her young children at play and clothes drying on the line. The St. Louis house had an expansive bird perching hedge just beyond the sink glass. In Minnesota and Virginia, split level designs raised the view beyond the sink to mid tree heights and vistas of neighboring yards. Across the years, from state to state, she enhanced the daily scenes with feeders inviting the birds, brilliant blooms spreading along a fence line or hanging in planters, and a picnic table welcoming meals outside. It was a priority, even I as a child knew, the kitchen window was a priority.

Then there came a house with many fine attributes, historic and gracious. It became our home despite lacking the longed for window above the kitchen sink. Progressively, across the decades of living there, the wall above the kitchen sink was transformed into an exhibit provoking thought and covered with beauty. She curated  an assemblage of small art prints, inspirational quotes, clever cartoons clipped from the paper, prayers, scripture, poems, paintings from greeting cards or magazines. The spread was taped and pinned, fitted and aligned as a publishing house would arrange and edit its best quarterly press release. As a young adult home to visit, reading mom’s collection above the sink became an honored tradition and fodder for deep conversation over morning coffee  ~ a window to the inner world of a our mother’s intensely creative mind and deeply spiritual soul. 

Linking with the communities at Coffee for the Heart, Tell His Story, & Give Me Grace.