Gladys

A few minutes after five this morning I turned on a local news program to check to weather forecast. I’ve cut myself off from the news almost altogether; I don’t even listen to NPR anymore and I check the forecast about twice a week.

This morning, a traffic cam was zoomed in on a bridge, to highlight the dangers of black ice, and a man wearing hiking books, baggy cargo shorts, a puffy jacket, and some sort of hat walked into the camera’s path. Shorts? I know this is the Pacific Northwest, home of hardy men who welcome the chilling kiss of the river’s mist on their bare calves.

But the temperature still lingered in the twenties. I could see the frost twinkling in the hair on his legs. I smiled and concluded he was crazy, turned the tv off, bundled up and went out to the porch to meditate and watch the sunrise.

Later, it occurred to me, my neighbors probably think I’m nuts for spending hours each morning out there, no matter the weather. Colder temperatures just mean additional layers. I spend a lot of time doing what probably appears to an outsider as simply staring off into space.

At least, I do now that I’ve changed which direction I face. I used to sit facing generally south, which grants me a panoramic view of the neighborhood on the other side of the street. It’s quite beautiful, regardless of the season, and I’m fortunate enough to know and care for nearly all of my neighbors.

Which brings me to needing to change seats. Early in the morning, as people rise and light their homes while the sky remains dark, it is easy to detect at least shadows as people ready themselves for their days. (Our own incredibly modest neighbor has in fact asked us to install thicker curtains on the windows that face his home. My wife complied; I still grumble and make rude gestures at the fortified window coverings.)

As much as I liked facing south and watching the lacy outlines of the bare trees become visible against the lightening sky, one day I realized it looked like I’d become the neighborhood Gladys Kravitz, peering into everyone’s windows.

Since I value my own privacy, I don’t tend to look into other people’s homes. It freaks me out when there’s a gap in our curtains, and I make the rounds a few times a night closing them up as the cats get into and out of the sills. But it is human nature to be attracted to sudden movement, and one morning an abrupt flash of white in the window directly across the street interrupted my reverie.

I looked up, of course, and noticed the curtain in the window moving slightly and a shadow moving away. I wondered if the neighbors had left it open the night before, had seen me out on the porch facing their window, looking—for all intents and purposes from their perspective—into their home.

Knowing what sort of reaction that would provoke in myself, I decided to move to a different chair. Now I face more northeast and have a tunnel view up the block, lined with trees, busy with foot traffic—I even saw another guy wearing shorts walking past my house just before I came up to write this entry. Really??

I digress. Now, the only neighbors whose windows I face are the overly prudent family who would prefer to impose themselves and their morality on their neighbors rather than simply hang heavier drapes themselves. (The picture window in their dining room remains, to this day, bare.) But the far end of my porch and then some bordering bushes and trees block out all of his windows from the vantage of my new seat.

So now, if I’ve been harboring a long-silent Gladys, she’ll have to be content with a narrower view full of strangers to observe and trees too far away to make out any meaningful detail. I think she’ll live. I’m not so sure about those guys in the shorts though.