Beyond The Kitchen Window

As a child, I often saw my Aunt Mattie "take her lunch" standing at our kitchen window. In fact, I'm fairly certain that she also ate most of her breakfast meals here, as well. On occasion, my little self would shove an old, worn kitchen chair up to the window, climb on top and stand by her side, looking out, searching for whatever it was that drew her attention time and again. Sometimes I'd catch a glimpse of one critter or another walking across the yard to the compost pile eagerly in search of their own repast. But most of the time there was nothing noteworthy to a little one's eyes there to be seen. Trees, in various throws of whatever season we were in, grass a thick carpet spread out along the counterplane, and an weathered red barn that had seen better days...none of these overly impressive when the world, to my eyes, was new with too many other, more "shiny" things to see. This evening, however, it hit me, her strange ritual finally clicking into place.

As I stood in my own kitchen, taking my humble dinner of Honey Nut Cheerios with warm, buttery toast over the sink while watching the world through my kitchen window, I realized that Aunt Mattie was onto something extremely special. You see, she was at a place in her life where she truly appreciated simple beauty in quiet places while she enjoyed her own company. This may not sound like some epic revelation, but to be honest, being at peace with who you are and where you are in exactly the moment you are in is truly a difficult feat, especially in a world where we are constantly inundated with stimuli. While I watched a neighbor across the street aimlessly wander around her front yard and randomly stoop over to pick up some wayward scrap of something that offended her own grass, I wondered at the process of "sewing" the seeds of my life up to this point. It has been an arduous, often painful process. I also thought back to how many times I had found myself eating a meal, standing alone at that very window and was surprised that it was so many I couldn't determine the actual number. There was a time in my life this revelation would have made me feel terribly lonely. Today, however, all I felt was a lovely inner peace. And when did that happen? When did I come to be comfortable in the silence, with nothing but my own company to...well...keep me company? I'm not sure when that inner "shift" took place. I am, however, completely certain it's a very zen place to be!

Time and again I have struggled with defining who I am, where I'm going, and what lives beneath the depths of my own skin, especially in those dark places most people don't even want to admit they have, much less intimately get to know. I often allowed the noise of the outside world to muddle those defining characteristics that make me uniquely me. I allowed others to create doubts, fears, or even flat-out hatred for what I found in myself, to the point of feeling suffocated by a world that rarely makes sense with its own "face value" and definitely can be vile beneath that surface. Thankfully somewhere along the way, inner me no longer felt the need to continue this destructive pattern. Now, here I stand, popping the last bite of toast in my mouth as I try to figure out what in tarnation that woman across the street is attempting to plant next to her driveway, perfectly happy in the fact that next to my driveway there's a complete riot of violets prettily vying for my ardent attention (to sniff, not extract...much to my husband's dismay).