"A Window Into the Past"

Looking out a window, I see the same thing I’ve seen for sixteen years. Out that window is the run-down garage, with its white paint flaking off and the flower bed that’s had the same annual flowers since I moved in. Every so often, that flower bed gets something new that dies in one year. Last year, it was deep red and white snapdragons; this year, I’m thinking marigolds or dahlias. 

A few feet away from that flower bed is the red maple tree- a tree at least twice my age and taller than my two-floor house. Every now and then, I wonder what would happen if the wind hit that tree just right. Would it swallow my house whole? 

It would surely take down that freshly installed ramp. Oh, how that ramp sticks out like a sore thumb. It's silver and spotless, something unheard of for this old farmhouse. 

My old farmhouse. The house I’ve grown up in. That’s what I see when I look out that window. Memories. My childhood. What it was like coming from Philadelphia and then settling into an old farmhouse in the middle of Warren County. A farmhouse that my mother had grown up in. The house that my grandfather, her father, had built long before she was born.