Why is this Blog called "Kelly B's Windows on the World"?

There are two very different reasons why this blog is called my windows on the world, and each overlays the conviction I hold that writers are witnesses.  We are people who should translate what we see, hear feel, experience and act as conduits.  I don't think there should be much ego in writing, especially since, when taken to its extreme, writing can be very powerful.  So, as a witness it is always my intention to try to see and report vividly, personally but also universally, and with the great humility that should accompany the reality that all I am doing is pouring out what has been laid before me, what I am privileged to observe and comment upon or craft into a story.

My first conscious experience of the gift of having a window on the world occurred when I was quite young, about four years old if I am correct.  My family had hosted a reception in our home on the occasion of my older sister's First Holy Communion, and as four year olds are wont to be, I was a bit of a whirling dervish about the small, crowded house, uncomfortable around so many adults and painfully shy at that age.  I made a decision to make a run through the kitchen, past the pantry and laundry room, out the back door onto the breezeway where my rocking horse awaited and I could jump onto him (he was the type that sat up elevated above a platform with four large springs allowing the rider to approximate an actual galloping motion) and ride away my anxiety.  Unfortunately for me the confluence of my small height making me somewhat invisible to adult line of sight, the reality that I am left handed and always veer left to avoid an oncoming object or person, and the fact that my mother was walking out of the kitchen just as I was darting in - and that she was carrying the just unplugged oversized electric percolator that held two gallons of coffee for our assembled guests (and that she was right handed and so veered right in these circumstances) - resulted in a collision.  The unfortunate result of that collision was that I was scalded down my shoulders and back.  I don't remember the aftermath of the accident, although I imagine it put a damper on my sister's event and must also have caused quite a mess in the house my mother worked tirelessly to keep not just tidy but extremely orderly.

My burns were fairly severe and I spent the next few weeks lying on my stomach wherever I was with bandages that needed to be changed frequently and with my mother's watchful eye almost always upon me to ensure against infection and disfigurement or death or some such.  I was a trial to her always in that regard  as she had some inkling from the day I was born with my two dislocated hips and my breathing difficulties so soon after she had lost her last baby to heart disease - that catastrophe awaited me.  And indeed it did - over and over again.  But, I never succumbed.  And the aftermath of that scalding was no different.  In fact, she had a difficult time keeping me contained as spring began to fold into summer and all of my older sisters and even my little sister wandered outside to frolic day after day.  Frustrated, my mother set me up on my stomach on our piano bench next to the dining room window that overlooked our backyard.  My back had to be open to the air at that point and I was just longer than the piano bench, which was flush with the window sill.  I wanted to be outside with my sisters.  I was horribly lonely, and this placement of me in the window overlooking them was the proxy that my mother devised.

My little sister's birthday was in early June and she had been gifted with a four seated teeter totter that also rotated around like a carousel.  My parents had placed it out in our expansive back yard near the pear tree and close to our jungle gym.  My mother told me to watch my sisters, pretend I was with them, enjoy the bright sunny days.  And so I did.  They were probably about forty yards away from me, but when they laughed loud I could hear them.  Sometimes four of them would get onto that new piece of play equipment and swivel around and bounce up and down and try to make each other sick with the motion or try to knock each other off by going so fast.  Shannon, my younger sister, held on like a champion and her low center of gravity may have been an asset when things got hairy.  Many times I saw the 'middle girls', the ones born into a pair a few years before Shannon and me, hurled off quickly, ruthlessly almost, and one or both of my oldest sisters would laugh heartily and usher someone else into their place. 

Sometimes they would put on plays with our neighbors, or they would climb the many apples trees,toss fruit at each other, pick the blackberries from the vines along the back fence, play jump rope on the patio or volleyball at the court in the tall grass that awaited my father's mowing on the weekend.  I imagined my oldest sisters, who were on the brink of their teen years, as very sophisticated, very worldly.  I feared my own inevitable first ride on that teeter totter, holding on for dear life while my stomach lurched.  When they put on plays with the Brashear sisters an Terry from up the street I was mesmerized, as silent performances are always so much more dramatic than those with dialogue.  I didn't know what they were saying, but I imagined it. 

I don't know how long I was relegated to that piano bench, although I do remember some awkward visits from friends of my mother or relatives in which she would usher them into another room as I was not fully dressed and I had the bandages and scarring in full view and it could not have been very pleasant to the delicate eye.  I do know that my mother was right, that being in that window, watching my sisters, was like being with them, was an adventure.  Behind the window I was invulnerable in a way that the second youngest whose hips sometimes popped out of socket and who waddled slowly sometimes and ran awkwardly at other times, would not have been if I was actually in their midst.  But, detached and seeing the full scenes unfold, my empathy expanded in a way it would not have from my own narrow perspective if I were struggling to keep up or be included.  I developed a narrative in my mind, and for the first time in my life I think I understood the power of the individual narrative and the value of the panorama to its development.  And I suppose the added gift of that injury and recovery was that I was so relieved, overjoyed when I finally was back on my feet and able to really be and play with my sisters again; and my brief absence probably made them more receptive to me upon my return too.

So that is the first reason for titling and couching this blog in this way.  The second is because I have always loved New York, adored it.  I couldn't wait to escape as a young adult into its depths on my own with a college friend and just explore it through and through.  I visited New York City often after that first big sojourn, and really overcame my fear of heights amidst its concrete canyons.  As a child my father had taken us on many trips, to see many sights, and always I become a little woozy, a little anxious in high places.  I remember clutching my father's leg when we were all up in the Space Needle in Seattle, and not letting go, closing my eyes tightly in the glass elevator going up going back down.  But when I got to New York years later, and that first time so soon after my father's death, one of the first places I went was to the top of the Empire State Building, and later even higher, to the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, Windows on the World.  I remember looking out from that vantage point and being overcome.  It was breathtaking.  And I know it was touristy and kitschy but I always went to Windows on the World when I visited New York, even took my then husband up there no matter the ridiculous tourist premium you paid for a meal or a drink at that destination (his particular pet peeve).

In late August of 2001 I was in Seattle with my own three children and took them up to the Space Needle.  My daughters were captivates, but my son clung to my leg, got woozy, asked if we could please go back down.  I picked him up in my arms, not that he felt comforted being that few feet even higher inside the Space Needle.  I had a very strange experience then as I stood with him just inside the windows to the outside observation deck looking west toward the Pacific.  In my mind's eye I saw a jet fighter launch something at us, a missile probably, and it severed the top of the Needle from the base.  It was very brief, but very vivid, and I was immediately in a cold sweat.  I understood it was just some kind of a weird vision, but I imagined myself just pulling all three children into my arms so I could hold them close as that top began to make its way down to the ground.  I never had any other experience like that and I took my children back to the Space Needle a few more times (although my son really doesn't like the heights).  I took them to New York two years later, although, of course by then there was no Windows on the World - although we all went up to the Empire State building's observation deck together. 

I know a good deal about physics, but I am not sure about the space time continuum.  I think that moment in the Space Needle was not so much a premonition of something that was to come, as a vivid understanding,  a personalization  in an unguarded moment, of tragedy, powerlessness, I suppose, but also the overwhelming power of love.  I felt absolutely no fear in that instant, but I did feel an instinctive need to hold my children about me, to embrace them, even if I could not protect them.  I'd had similar sensations sometimes when we'd be driving along the narrow, winding river road between Sacramento and the east bay of San Francisco - of the car going over the levee and into the river, and my assuredness as a strong swimmer and cool-headed person that I could scoop up all three and get them to the surface.  Because we want to believe we can.

So this blog was named windows on the world because it will bear witness to a lot of things I see and do and experience, but it will also be about that empathy, that understanding that has to be at our cores to understand the human condition.  When you're up high and have a clear view you think you can see almost everything and it does take your breath away, but the things that are really important, the reason we are alive, are things much closer to the ground - those we love.  You don't have to be up high to see them, and things that seem very small and far away really aren't.  Everything, everyone is the same the world over - and yet each moment of joy, wonder, each dip into loss, despair - is unique but also universal.  And, of course, we cannot let our fears or our anxieties overwhelm us, limit our experience of the world and of each other.  We should all be each other's window on the world when we can be.   It is my intention to be communicate the everyday, the ordinary and the extraordinary, as I see it and feel it and it is my hope to connect and bring positivity out into the world in that way.