"THE GREEN GLASS WINDOW"

I write often about my grandparents’ house and the reason is that I lived there from age two weeks to age five.  From then onward, I spent about every summer day there and when I was twelve, my parents got divorced. My mom and I had moved close to their house: It was my constant. As a teenager and adult, I still frequented that house for my grandmother had become a widow and I loved being with her. The house was built by my step-grandfather in the early 1900’s for him and his wife who later died. My grandmother married him in 1938 moving in with her two teenage daughters—one of whom would be my mother. As for the green glass window, there were actually two of them in this large two-story house: One was on the landing in the downstairs hall and one was in the dining room. Both were half windows placed high up and could be opened with a hinge. Once you opened them, there were screens behind each. I’m sure that the glass has a name but to me they looked “Coke” bottle green.

The green glass window in the dining room mystified me for the light streamed through it and landed smack onto the shiny mahogany table sending green sparks everywhere. Over the years as a child, I must have stared at that window a thousand times. In the summers at dinner, my step-grandfather would open that window to let air into the room. Why he didn’t open up the  bay windows that were on either side remains a mystery to me to this day. Those windows were the old double hung type; I never remember anyone opening them up except the ones in the kitchen. Strange in retrospect.

I’d sit at the dining room table with my grandparents, my mother and numerous relatives nightly. Summers I remember the most because it was so hot. Here we were eating hot food, sweltering and praying for a rush of air through that green window.  It never happened from what I remember at all.

As I got older, I realized that I loved that green window because it had been magical to me as a child. When my grandmother died, my mother and her sister inherited the house. After several years of their attempts at renting it out only to see disaster, they decided to sell it. I was devastated. But I was married, had a house and a baby son. On a whim, I asked my mother to ask the realtor if I could have one of those windows; the other would go to one of my cousins. Guess what? I got the dining room green glass window—casing and all. And I still have it in my basement. Does it belong there? No. It actually would fit inside any of my new windows in this house if properly mounted. And it’s going to happen because I think I need a little sparkly green magic. Who wouldn’t want that?

Sherry Hill