The Window

Usually, I look out the window while laying on the couch. This window has a direct view a tree. You can see the neighbours on the other side. They're probably only eighteen or so feet away. Fortunately, we really like our neighbours and they like us. For me, though, the tree is a special friend.

"What kinds of plants are those?"

On top of the bookshelf are the only two plants that I keep at home. The rest of my plants are at my office at work. Years ago, pre-kids, I had a lot of plants at home. Anyway, the plants on the bookshelf are a spider plant and a golden pothos. We've had the golden pothos for ages. It was originally in the kitchen on my wife's home during undergrad. So, we call it the "kitchen plant".

If you want a little bit of the kitchen plant, let me know. We must have made dozens of cuttings by now and given them away to people. Golden pothos is very easy to take care of. It is a great starter plant for indoor gardeners.

"Do you ever hang out with that tree?" Every morning, I get up up before my family and come downstairs to make coffee. This usually happens just as the sun is rising. I like to look out the window and watch the sun rise on the branches of the tree. It is a special time of day: very reflective and quiet. Sometimes, I say good morning to the tree and tell it my hopes for the day. So, yes. I suppose that I hang out with that tree fairly often.
"What's that heart shaped squiggly thing?" That's a symbol that I made for our wedding. It shows a sort of infinity sign folded to look like a pair of hearts. Some other ways to think of it is as a pair of people, seen from above, holding hands. Someone said that it looks like a butterfly. You can see it prominently on the wedding certificate. My mother's best friend, Juliette, is a stained glass artist and she made this stained glass version of the wedding symbol for us.
"What's on that bookshelf?" This is the "active" bookshelf of stuff that we might want to look at on a daily basis. Right now, it's got a handful of books about parenting: And then there is a whole shelf of photo albums. My wife put them together during her last maternity leave. There are albums of vacations, her highschool years, and our childhoods. We love flipping through them. They're way better than "screens" for our daughter Mira. The last shelf is full of library books. We live very close to a public library and it's not uncommon to have 10~20 books out at a time. Right now, I'm on a Mary Oliver and Albert Goldbarth kick. They're both poets who write literary essays. Thick, heady, beautiful stuff.