Rear Window

As with most days, time gets away from me and before I know the day is over and it's onto the next. I had planned on writing this blog over the week-end but didn't get around to it. It's not a blog of much importance, it's just about a day last week in which I was out for a bit of a road trip and the things that I saw.

I don't know why it seemed like the day was any different from the rest, but it seemed like I saw so much more that day than I usually do. I don't know if I was more aware of my surroundings, my mind open and not lost in thought as it usually is, or if I was really seeing and taking in what was around me instead of dwelling on me and what I was doing for a change.

Friday I went to visit my grandmother, and MkChippy you will be glad to know I did find out more about the pic from the previous blog. It is a pic of my great great grandparents on my mom's dad's side. They had left for Colorado to see if it would help with my great great grandmother's health problems. They weren't there long at all before they decided to move back home. Evidently the move back suited them well as my great great grandmother lived to be well in her 90's.

My day started with seeing a couple of my neighbors outside. I saw a man working in the hot sun to help a widowed neighbor lady, only to balk and hold his hands up and shake his head "no" when she tried to pay him...

I saw a bald woman out mowing her yard. It would be enough to make anyone stop and stare and wonder at her state of hairless-ness. I would wonder myself if I hadn't asked her if she was ill or having problems. Neither was the case, she shaved it on purpose to commiserate with another friend who was...

On my trip I stopped to get a few things and it was while I came out from shopping that I noticed an old white haired man push his shopping cart across the paved parking lot. He finally came to a stop when he was in front of a John Deer tractor and he took his bags of purchases and placed them in the the bucket of his front end loader and then took off. It had me wondering. Was he having car trouble and took the tractor in to town as a last resort? Had he been working in the fields nearby and stopped for a few necessities before heading back home? Whatever his story was, it gave me a giggle. I could only shake my head and think only in the midwest...

It was in that same parking lot I saw a large woman in a sleeveless t-shirt and a stained short skirt walk in to the store. Normally, if we are honest with ourselves, we tend to roll our eyes, maybe even wrinkle our nose in distaste about someone wearing dirty clothes to go out in public to go shopping. It was less than five minutes later I saw the same woman walking back out of the store with three huge bottles of laundry detergent. Evidently it really was laundry day which had me wondering if she had been frantically pawing thru a huge pile of clothes that morning for anything to wear...

Down the road while traveling I saw a small cottage with a row of mature evergreens in front of the house. The trees couldn't have been much more than 10 or 15 feet away from the front door. Smack in the middle of the windbreak of trees was a large tree, broken and lying to the left of the house. It's trunk twisted but still connected to the base of the tree. I wondered if whoever lived there was home at the time when the storm struck? Were they fervently praying to God when the winds blew... and he answered? By all accounts the tree should have fallen on the house, but instead it twisted and fell in the only spot that it could to miss everything,... the house, the other trees, and the power lines...

Turning off onto the access road to the interstate I saw a suitcase by the side of the road. Lost luggage I wondered? Til driving closer I could see a man lying in the tall grass sleeping, curled up as if the earth was his pillow. Tramp...transient...bum would be the first thing that would pop into most people's minds. I could only wonder where was he going and where had he come from. Did he have a destination or was he just traveling, and killing time, trying to find himself or some kind of purpose?...

It made me all start to think of an old Jimmy Stewart movie called "Rear Window". In the movie, Jimmy Stewart had a broken leg in a cast and he spends his days staring out his window at the apartments across the street thru his binoculars. Thru his window he can see their lives unfolding before his eyes. Granted in the movie, he thinks he has witnessed a murder and I didn't see anything of that nature, but it did make me think and feel that I was staring in someone's rear window. I saw small glimpses that I might have instantly dismissed or not even noticed.

I saw kindness, ..I saw ingenuity...I saw daily toils and struggles... I saw a small miracle and I saw life such as it is for some. That is what I love about being connected to all of you here on Multiply. Thru your blogs I am given a glimpse thru your rear window. I see and read about your trials, your triumphs, your joys and your sorrows...

I see you.