Open Windows

“Do you want to go back to bed?!? DO YOU WANT TO GO BACK TO BED?!?”

“Yes!” I grumbly murmured as I rolled over in bed and turned my back to the open window letting in the cool 5 a.m. August-air.

photo-1447154705288-7175737fb73cI was a couple weeks into my new apartment near Philadelphia. By now I was used to the 6 a.m. physical training drills as platoons of teenagers from the military college across the street marched to their practice field about 100 yards from my window. Five a.m. was new though. Someone must have done something wrong.

I knew my body well enough to know my night was over. I slid out of bed, trying to be quiet in case my roommate had managed to sleep through the earlier-than-normal P.T. routine. She’d be up early enough when they marched back to campus singing their cadence song in an hour or so.

I wandered into the kitchen to start the coffee and curled into the soft cushions of our couch, staring out the window into the front yard of the apartment complex until I heard the young cadets marching home again.

Leased from a local military college, my graduate school housing was a 1930s era apartment. Its wood floors were charming, and the sweetest floral pattern was etched into the bathroom mirror. The 1930s was the era of the fuse box which meant no air-conditioning and no window unit. So, we left our windows open.

Aside from the hot-July months when I had to escape to wander the mall all day lest I roast, I didn’t really mind it so much. I’m a couple years removed from that apartment now, and I rather miss needing to have my windows open. The always-conditioned cool air of Georgia summers seem rather stuffy in comparison.

Much of my graduate school classes focused on peace and non-violence. The irony that I was living on a military campus where teenagers marched by and sang about war on a daily basis was not lost on me.

The apartment buildings was surrounded by the military college and their football field, the parking lot for a large church (that was also a school), and a golf course. The golf course was mostly quiet.  

On Friday evenings in the fall, the football field filled up with high school sports. A marching band walked past my window, drumline in full performance. For every touchdown that the home team cadets made, a cannon blast pierced the air.

The cadets began the daily symphony early every morning and by 9:00 am there were sounds coming in from every direction. Children’s laughter from the church’s playground bounced across the mostly empty parking lot straight into our windows. On the other side of the road the bells of the college chapel began to ring on the hour at 9 a.m. and went until 5 p.m. Sometimes the bells counted the hour, sometimes they played a hymn.

On days when I had no classes these became familiar time-keepers, keeping me focused and paced as I read book after book after book after book. You don’t need any sort of advanced intelligence to attend grad school. You just need lots of time to read.

More often than not, I read past the end of the daily bells and was still working when one lone bugle broke through the dark night sky and played Taps. It’s the sound for lights out. I know it most from movies where it’s played at military funerals. And so my night often ended on a somber note. Not that I minded, I’ve always had an odd love for sad movies or songs or books. 

Every once in awhile there was a special evening conclusion to my daily concert. On clear nights, after the sun had set, there would be the faintest sound of bagpipes. I’d close my book and sit and listen to the peaceful tune as the crickets outside joined the song. This final piece of the day’s symphony would often go on for hours.

Throughout all of this – we grew skilled in making our own noise. Loud family dinners of neighbors and friends were rich with full-bellied laughter. We hooked a projector and speaker up to a laptop and watched movies or the latest episode of Sherlock in a volume that was probably too loud for the neighbors who didn’t join us. One summer, we streamed the World Cup games from the laptop and loudly cheered on the home teams among our group: Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and USA. Some nights we quietly listened to each other and shared our stories (to the soundtrack of bagpipes when we were lucky).

The golf course across the street had one noisy night a year – July 3rd – when they put on a fireworks show. The first year it surprised me and I ran to the window when my living room lit up bright red after a loud explosion. I had a perfect view from the second floor window. My last summer in that apartment the July 3rd show was rained out.

A few weeks later my roommate and I packed our cars and moving trucks full. All that was left in the apartment was the dorm-issued furniture and a small overnight bag. We were leaving bright and early the next morning.

As we prepared for bed, we heard a crack and boom and saw the flash of light outside. We moved one of the beds directly in front of the window, and sat next to each other as we leaned in towards the screen, listening and watching in delight as our neighborhood gave us a grand, thunderous, farewell.

 

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Nicole bio YAH

 

Go Stick Your Face in a Cake

It was February 14th, 2009, and we were finally hosting our first daughter’s first birthday party–a full month and a half after her January 2nd birthday. Our first excuse for this procrastination was obvious: we had a year-old baby. Our second excuse was known only to me and my husband: I was already pregnant with her sister.

In an attempt at fleeting sanity, we ordered her cake from a local bakery, and the morning of the party, I drove to pick it up. I was surprised when the clerk handed me two white boxes, one big and one small. Seeing my confusion, she smiled confidingly. “Smash cake,” she explained, “It’s for your baby to destroy.”

And so it was. In the smaller box was a tiny pink cake, a mini-me version of its twin. It was created for destruction, and so, we sang happy birthday and let her at it.

Smash cake, smashed. Check. Though she was surprisingly neat about it.
Capture

I like the smash cake, which I suppose tells you something about my personality. I don’t mind a bit of fun chaos every once in a while. I encourage my kids to get their hands dirty and their boots muddy, and I try to do the same. To me, it’s not real exploration if you’re afraid to make a mess.

Which brings me to another smashing celebration.

In August of 2014, six writers met in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a couple of months later, in October 2014, we launched the You Are Here blog. Our first year has been full of… ahem… learning opportunities, and lots of messy exploration. Along the way, stories have been told, and told well.

And we are grateful.

We are grateful for deadlines, for themes, and for a community of writers. We are grateful for guest posters, for Laura (who designed our banner), and Jason (who fixes our technical problems and inspires most of Kristin’s food-related posts). We are grateful for the words when they finally come, and for stories that are continually given. We are grateful for you, because again and again, you come back to read more.

So happy birthday readers and writers of You Are Here! Now get yourself some cake and go to town.

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Some numbers:

166 posts

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