My Sunny Kitchen Window

This is the season when the morning sun breaks past the trees outside and pours into my kitchen window for a few minutes. I love a sunny kitchen window so I take advantage of these times when the sun comes my way, pull up a bar stool and sit here by the kitchen windows for breakfast. 

Now, I know, a window by the kitchen sink can seem an unlikely place to display some of my favorite small art objects but where better could they pick up the clear light of day and show off their lovely colors than here? Where else would they be seen so often as I go about my “KP,” my kitchen patrol? They used to be tucked inside the glass doors of my china cabinet but they begged to get out. So, here they are enjoying the view and adding to it their own delightful eye-catcher charms. 

There’s a deep red glass apple that belonged to my mother-in-law. A handsome ceramic rooster who is crowing silently and reminding me of the real live rooster we had at our Oregon ranch. A stained glass narrow plate with a golf course fairway scene reminds me of the weekly golf games Wally G. and I played at the little nine hole course in Gold Hill. A charming clear crystal replica of the Santa Maria, Columbus’s ship, sits in a blue glass mini-tub of water. We bought that as a ship's consolation gift for having to miss one of our cruise's ports of call. There’s a piece of pinkish-purple amethyst I bought to remind me of Robby, my second husband, who was a geologist. (I gave his collection of these to his kids when I moved out west.) A tall rectangular vase serves to show off the collection of small smooth river stones I love to pick up and let my fingers play with. A couple of leafy plants are enjoying the sun’s brief kiss, but most precious of all my kitchen window treasures is Tommy, the reddish yellow canary I adopted a couple of years ago. He too enjoys the sun and cannot fail to notice his own plumage reflected on the window pane. He adds those vital ingredients of life, animation, and song to these corner kitchen windows, and he never complains about the see-through bars of his cage. 

Occasionally I sit on one of the bar stools here by the kitchen sink to enjoy my breakfast and the ambience of my showcase by the window. Both the gallery of art and the panorama of nature beyond the windows give me delicious delight. The sun’s passing by also catches for a while the ripples on the creek and throws them up on the neighbor’s walls across the way to dance and play.

They say a writer should only write of things he’s well acquainted with. If I were more of a student I’d become familiar with things as things, but I’m wondering if it isn’t enough to just share the objects and ideas that give me joy on a more child-like level. If it is true, as someone once said, that “age is infancy,” then I’m back in my second childhood for at least part of my days. I’m playing house, my possessions are my toys, I must arrange them, display them, and then start reading the morning paper. 

As I page through I begin to wonder, - how many kitchen windows can be quite so distracting as mine? Does anyone else put their best beside the window above the kitchen sink instead of sponges and soaps and scrubbers? No, the daily newspaper can wait. It might even hit the recycling bag before it’s read. Would that be so bad? 

The sun is moving on now. It’s no longer pouring in my windows. I’m so glad I didn’t miss it today! That’s why I’m sitting here later talking to my blog and trying to recapture my child playtime of this morning, the first day of March, 2013. These moments will never come again. Like a photograph, I try to capture them for myself and posterity. I say to myself, This is what I’m most familiar with. I think I’ll write about it, and no sooner said than done!