No Small Thing A Window

One of my favorite things to do is to walk the sidewalks of our neighborhood at dark. While I walk I look in upon my neighbors and wonder about them and their lives. Sometimes I see a family around the dining room table talking and laughing. Other times I see them watching the television and visiting with each other. Sometimes too I see mom cleaning up the supper dishes or dad reading the paper. The neighbors directly across the street email their daughter in Texas each evening. I know because from my bedroom window I can see them sitting at the computer in their spare room.
Mom always said it was nice to have a light in the window. I imagine that's why she always lit the lamp in the front window as soon as it began to get dark. It was comforting to know when you came down our dark tree lined street that the light would be on by the front door to welcome you. Of course there were times when I wished that she wouldn't light that light. That was when my boyfriend and I would park underneath the front light post to kiss good night and she would flick the light on the porch off and on as if to say that's enough, it's time to come in where I can see what's going on.
Perhaps that's why my neighbor always puts those lighted candles in her window every fall. They stay there until spring when it stays light later in the evening. A candle in the window. A welcome sight. And one that helps when I'm outside looking in. The light illuminates the characters inside the house. The ones I'm watching.
Some windows, however, aren't good things. Those are the windows across the street from my house. The people who live in that house stay up all night. I often wonder why the light flickers black and white and gray. Are they watching television? Or is something else occurring behind those curtained windows? I don't know.
I often wonder who watched through our windows when I lived at home. Did they see the evening my father beat my mother? Or watch me run from the house in terror because she was covered in blood? Did they hear the shouts and the cursing and the arguing? What did they think about us?
My neighbor who walks his dog and cat each evening after dark often stops to ask me about the soprano who lived in our house. Seems he could see her each evening in front of our piano practicing her next recital piece. What is she doing now, he inquires. If only I could tell him that the voice he admired is now silent. She isn't singing at the moment. And she no longer lives in our house. But then, from his walks he knows that. The window he looked through didn't tell the whole story. Of course I looked through the same window and I couldn't have told you the story either for the life of me.
The older woman who lives across the street seems to know when something is amiss at our house. My husband calls her nosy. Sometimes her looks seem so intrusive. Other times it's comforting to know that she has seen something different through our windows and cares enough to call and ask how we are.
When my daughter was growing up, a Chinese family moved in across the street. They had a small girl a few months younger than our daughter. I can remember hearing that baby cry for hours and hours. My husband even remarked, "What's the matter with them? Can't they hear that child crying? Why doesn't someone pick her up?" The curtained window hid our view. But we imagined what might be happening.
Years later we would realize that there truly wasn't anything wrong. It was simply the Chinese way of dealing with a small child. Their lives were perfectly normal to them. It was our view through the window that didn't seem quite right to us.