My father remodeled Mammam’s house several years before she went to the nursing home. He replaced two double-hung windows in the upstairs bedroom at the front of the house with two smaller awning windows. He chose to place them fairly high on the wall so furniture could fit below and so as to increase privacy; the windows were in the front bedroom of the apartment above my grandmother’s bedroom. There had not been tenants for many years but my father had a plan that would eventually change that.
My grandmother was short – very short. Next to my Grandfather– a muscular and slender 6’3” - she seemed even shorter. She used to call him a “big lug” – “Get outta here ya big lug ya!” she’d say, chasing him out of the kitchen.
That was earlier.
That day she heard my father upstairs installing the windows and went up to investigate. “Hi Mom!” my father said, “What do you think of the new windows?”
“Yeah – yeah” she said under her breadth as she walked up to one of them. “I can hardly but see outta them bein’ up so high!” She reached up and grabbed the window sill plate with both her hands, her knuckles whitened slightly. She wanted to pull the space down to her level – as if the pine two-by-fours defining the structure would compress and stretch, “Can’t ya just slide them down a little bit?”
The solids where she resided were compliant – glass was permeable and space was tied to no specific time.
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