East and West Windows (Plus a Flash of Bear Lake)

Our Pleasant View house had some lovely windows to be sure (and some gorgeous views of Ben Lomond) but not one of those windows faced east or west! (That is not technically the truth--that "not one" business. Our master bathroom window faced west, and one teensy, tiny window in our laundry room faced east. But, at least from a practical standpoint, the view we might see during almost any given moment of our days would not be an easterly or westerly view.) And I have been quite taken (well, when we aren't shutting our blinds to stop ourselves from being blinded anyway) by how lovely it is to see sunrises and sunsets every single day without consciously going outside to look at them! Even just the way everything glows here in the early mornings seems so lovely!

Speaking of outside, the girls typically have a lovely view of the moon rising as I put them to bed at night. (And I often have a lovely view of it setting in the morning.) The recent supermoon was particularly cool to see. I tried to get a photo one night (1st pic) but it went behind a cloud, and one morning (2nd pic) but it seemed far away through my lens, so these don't do it the remotest bit of justice. Even so:

Another interesting outside thing? My kids have been playing out there far mor regularly than they did back at home. I can't quite figure why honestly. It would make sense if we were already at the farm, or if all those empty fields behind and in front of us were theirs to run on, but they aren't! The whole of our yard is pretty much seen in these pictures. A trampoline and a swing set (which are nothing new). That's all. Is it the draw from the view? The closer confines inside the rental? The fact that the swing set and trampoline are just right in their line of sight out the back door? Who can say.

I had an interesting experience the other day. I was lying on my bed next to an open window when, quite suddenly, there was a small switch—a flash of sorts in my brain--and I was near a window in my grandma’s trailer at Bear Lake. Some barrier of time had dropped, and I felt myself there, not in memory, but, somehow, just as I had been during a specific moment of time. I scrambled to grab firmly ahold of it (was I on the orange couch? the bed with the white bedspread? was it overcast? sunny?), but I shouldn’t have come barging in so quickly with my conscious mind (it’s desires for concreteness, and its rules about time) because, when I rushed to secure it, just like those droplets of dream that evaporate the instant you try to recall them, it was gone. I was back here in the rental with Logan farmland (not Garden-City lake air) outside my window, and a sort fading wisp of something receding back out of reach. I couldn’t even tell what it was that did it. The way the cars sounded in the distance? A certain bird call? The way the breeze blew in and some scent it carried? I don’t know. I stayed on my bed for awhile trying to pay attention to everything outside and just what might have registered as “my grandma’s Bear Lake trailer” in my mind, but I couldn’t pinpoint anything. 

I do remember the Bear Lake trailer well. Those memories are fairly well secured. (Ovaltine, the squeaky step and the yellow plastic tub for rinsing sand off our feet. Turning on the gas at the back of the trailer, the drawers full of coloring books and my grandma’s “rose milk”. The clothes horse. Captain Sea Scope. I’ve written about all these things before [see this post].) But this was something different than remembering. This was a flash of it still existing—with me in it—just as it was and just as I was. And I spent a good thirty minutes after it happened feeling equal parts frustration and sadness at not being able to stay with the moment and keep it, and … wonder and awe over this glimpse of everything still within me. Perhaps it was something similar to what I felt after the dream I wrote about in this old post.

Anyway, that's all for now.