Neighborhoods vary. I have always lived on a street where the row of houses appeared as a family bought a lot and built what they wanted. Through years to come the house retained the name of the original owner. In my lifetime in Hammond, before moving to Linden Ave at the foot of Charles Street down from the depot, we lived at the corner of Church Street, Then home was a rent house by the Episcopal church, and finally the last house for a few years was on the north corner of Pine Street before the college. A vacant lot next to us was where we raised chickens and Daddy had enough rows of corn to pick and eat. As a child I remember telling an adult my address and their answer would be, “Oh, the old (fill in the name) house.” Even now, I don’t live in a “cookie cutter” development neighborhood.
Yet somehow, the flow of these houses follow a pattern with necessary rooms easily found: a living room and dining room, bedrooms to the side along with baths, and then a kitchen with maybe a back porch. I know of only one house I’ve been in that didn’t have a kitchen window over a sink. Kitchen windows tie one to the whole world while time is spent tending to daily chores or maybe just stopping for a glass of tap water.
On Linden, I would view a large back yard. My mother’s bed of Shasta Daisies and pansies was one corner of the view. In the far back was a small pan to fill with water for Brownie, the thrush my daddy fed each morning and talked to as if they were best friends. As I write this, the son in Steamboat can only see a pile of snow after a month of unprecedented daily downfalls. At Rice I could look across a neighbor’s yard and watch traffic on the one-way south bound street as it slowed for a lighted intersection. That same view had par excellent sunsets that almost made dishwashing a pleasure. My present window is filled by a huge live oak tree that unlike other oaks loses its leaves in the fall. Its bareness reveals a skeleton shape and the blobs of leaves constructed to be squirrel nests in the spring. In full summer glory, the green is framed by the brightness of a blue sky. Once a team was called in to trim and shape and I watch enthralled as men swung from pulley ropes while carrying chain saws, the twenty-first century version of sailors hanging from the topgallant mast as they adjusted the sail.
If you stand at the front door with it open, you may be waiting for the mail person or you may be the noisy neighbor. If you look out the kitchen window you are just becoming one with the world, checking on children at play, or waiting for a car to come down the driveway, so you can wipe your hands and go to welcome someone home. Your day will be made complete.
Look around you and see what is happening: Your people are gathering to come home! Your sons will come from far away; Your daughters will be carried like children. You will see this and be filled with joy; You will tremble with excitement.
Isaiah 60: 4 – 8
Let Me Tell Ya 