A Light in the Window

When I was a little boy we lived in a house by the sea. It was an old house. It was a tall house. It was a white house. It was a tired house.

It clicked and clacked and talked in it's sleep. It sagged and sighed and shrugged it's stooping shoulders. 

Across the street lived the gardner and his wife. Summer days revealed bony arms and spindly legs. Brown leathery skin and bare shoulders bent over good earth and greenery.

They said he played the piano for a small-town church down the coast in Camden. I could see his narrow shoulders hunched over the keys. I could see the earth just beneath his finger nails. The sweat and soil mingling on his brow. His calloused fingers picking out 'Come Thou Fount', or 'Amazing Grace', or 'Be Thou My Vision'.

I liked the Gardener and his wife. 

When I was a little boy, I was afraid. I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of what lived and breathed and feasted in the dark. Of crows perched high in trees with no leaves. Of creeping things, crawling things, spiders and snakes and centipedes.

I was afraid of being buried alive. Slowly suffocating under six feet of loose earth. In the dark. There would be creeping things, crawling things, spiders and snakes and centipedes. And no one would mourn me, no one would mourn me. And no one would know, no one would even know.

This kept me awake most nights, but my greatest fear was this:

being alone. 

When I was a little boy, I shared a room with my brother. It was a cozy room. White-washed walls, strings of lights that looked like christmas-time, and ancient wood floor-boards that we painted grey. 

We slept in tall bunk-beds crafted by strong Norwegian hands. 

Our room was situated snugly above the front of the house. There was one window. It gazed out over the street, across the street, it fell upon the Gardener's house. 

I liked the Gardener and his wife.

I didn't like going to bed. I didn't like it at all.

Going to bed meant being alone.

When I was a little boy, I shared a room with my brother. My brother was a fast sleeper. This meant five to ten minutes of side-splitting laughter, and then, silence. Cold, dark, silence. I was alone.

Sleep is a frightening concept, when you pause to consider it. Countless families, scattered across the countryside, completely unconscious. Breathing corpses. The living dead. Zombies. 

This kept me awake most nights. 

Being the only person awake was a lonely struggle. Like I was the last living person left on the planet. These are things that reminded me I wasn't alone:

Late-night cars rolling by, headlights filling the room with the sweetest kind of relief. I would wonder where they were going.

Passenger jets passing overhead, every seat filled, every person heading to a different destination, a different home.

A clearing of the throat or a rustling of the blankets as my brother turned in his sleep.

And a light in the window.

Off the porch, over the lawn, across the street. The Gardener's house stood proud. Interrupting the night with a solitary light burning through the kitchen window. Many nights I was laid to rest by the knowledge that just across the street, the gardener and his wife were living and breathing. Maybe they were doing the dishes. Maybe they were sharing a glass of wine. Maybe they were wrapped up in the dog-eared pages of some well loved book. Maybe they held each other close, making their way through the house, as the record spun around, and around, and around.

They were living and breathing, and I was free to go. To close my eyes and join my family. To enter that sweet relief and to wait there until the breaking dawn cried out "come forth! Rise up!".

When I was a little boy, I was afraid of a lot of things. I'm grown now, some might even say I'm a man, but I'm still terrified of being alone. So, as night settles over you and your home, think of me, and leave a light in the window.