New Windows, or a New View?

So already, here's the question: what new windows to buy for my old place? At this moment, two realities are converging to compel me to consider where and how to live, literally and metaphorically; what glass to see through; and what "view" to look out on. One is the Jewish season of teshuva, or repentance and return, that will be at its communal and self-reflective height during the next ten days; the other is my apartment's need for new windows that has emerged screamingly over the last few months.

So let me back up, because there's a story here. It's related to my one actual achievement of summer 2021: my successful completion of a course of physical therapy related to a lower back injury I sustained some months back by forcefully opening a stuck window in my bedroom.

After two months at Peak Physical Therapy, I now bend, reach, and lift smarter, and I also walk taller. I also own and regularly use a 65 cm exercise ball that I am able to store on top of my stacked dryer--thankfully, I have high ceilings. But my stronger core doesn't mean my windows no longer pose a threat. That's why I decided I needed to replace them. New windows would not require mindfulness and strategy every time I went to open them. Furthermore, they'd keep the winter cold and wind outside, reducing my electric bills.

Of course, to contemplate such a costly and complicated project is always to have to wrestle with the question of how long one hopes or plans to live where one is living. Does one want to do this project really well--thus more expensively--or just well enough both to solve the immediate problem and to satisfy a prospective buyer sometime in the not-so-distant future?

Lots of Balls in the Air These Days!*

My husband Scott and I have had a further consideration: one of our bathrooms has just developed a somewhat urgent need for "work," so the costs of both the window and bathroom "improvements" must be considered simultaneously. And given that we're condo owners, every change we want to make must be approved by our condo association. None of it's really so bad, but still, oy! Truthfully, we might have started working on the bathroom sooner had the pandemic not made inviting contractors and salespeople into our home an unwise idea.

But everything's a little different right now. (I guess I could write that sentence truthfully every week!) Maybe it's that I'm so keenly aware that so much is beyond my--and everyone's--control that I'm eager to have control over something that might make my life better, especially something that might make my home life more comfortable as we inch toward another season during which we might be home a lot. In addition, Scott and I have decided we'll be staying in this condominium at least ten more years. So we can anticipate enjoying these home improvements personally for a good chunk of time.

But beyond that next ten years, who knows? This whole question of where to live next invariably brings me face-to-face with many of my inner contradictions. 

Yesterday, I sat writing the first longhand draft of this blog post in an Adirondack chair at the top of the field in front of our cabin in Berlin, NY (just west of Williamstown, MA). Late summer is my favorite time of year at the cabin: when the goldenrod rules the field, I'm always filled with a sense of well-being based on being in harmony with . . . something. Whatever this elusive something is--sometimes, I'm sure it's God, but not always--it makes wonder if I'd like to live in a house that looked out on this field all year long. I think my answer might be yes if I knew that I'd actually look at this field, pay attention to it, as I do when I visit it now--without my computer, without my electrified kitchen, without running water to create all kinds of cooking and cleaning opportunities to pull my attention away from the field.

Then there's the question of who my neighbors would be--sort of an interesting concern for me since I'm unable to speak to so many of my Quincy neighbors because I don't speak Chinese, and they speak little or no English. Our interactions are pleasant and polite, but superficial at best. I haven't made friends in my building--but did I really want to? How alone do I want to be--and how neighborly? Hmmm . . .

Dream Windows in a Dream Spot

Then there are the other visitors to my neighborhood, the ones I'm sure I don't want to befriend. Last Thursday afternoon, I looked out of my window to see a man urinating on the street next to a parked car; last Thursday night, Scott and I were awakened by the very loud conversation of several seemingly very drunk men, one of whom vomited audibly mid-conversation. Was this whom and what I was choosing? Was I about to purchase new windows for viewing these events?

But if I left Quincy behind for the country, whom would I live near? Certainly almost no one who isn't White and Christian, at least by upbringing. Frankly, I don't want to be the only Jew--been there, done that all through elementary school. I simply don't want to live in a place where I constantly need to explain--or hide what I am in order to avoid explaining--what I am, where practically everyone has never heard of three-quarters of the holidays, customs, and texts that are central to my spiritual life. I also don't want to have to drive for an hour to attend some synagogue, maybe the only synagogue for miles, that may or may not be the right synagogue for me.

Please understand that I don't blame people for being the dominant or only group in some communities. For sure, there are places in America where people have assiduously chosen and strategized to live exclusively among "people like us"--places I believe actively contribute to the American problem. But the rural communities in and around the one where our cabin is located are generally places in which many people and their families have lived, are living, and will keep living. I don't know much about their lives, but based on what I hear as I sit at the edge of our field in the early evening, lots of them have guns and like to practice shooting; hunting season will soon be here, after all.

So if I don't fit comfortably in either place, is the good news is that I'm fortunate enough to be able to move between them as my life is currently set up?

The upshot of all of this is that I'm staying in Quincy for a while. Its diversity, its growth and change--both the positive steps and the missteps--fascinate me. In addition, I love the view of so much sky from my windows, my twelve-minute walk to the beach, my twenty-minute walk to the salt marshes, and my five-minute walk to the subway station--someday I will again often go, many of us will again often go, to Boston and Cambridge. So I'm getting those new, good windows.

But what about that on-street barfing and peeing? Thankfully, they are rare occurrences even in Quincy. And when this past weekend at the cabin I was getting carried away with the possibility of daily life lived at the top of our field, Scott reminded me that while I had become a keen observer of the barred owls that love the woods around our cabin, I had not paid sufficient attention to the barf owl. A Field Guide to the Birds by Roger Tory Peterson rendered the barred owl's call phonetically as "hoohoo-hoohoo . . . hoohoo-hoohooaw." According to Scott, the barf owl's call is "hoohoo-hoohoo . . . hoohoo-hoohooawughghgh (wretch)." 

So there's really no way of getting away from it--barfing, that is. But did I tell you the window salesman said that our new windows will be more soundproof than our old ones? We'll see (or hear). Happy New Year! Shanah Tovah to All! 

* Painting by Scott Ketcham; not yet posted on his website.