The Fourth Window...A workshop essay

     The chalk screeched and squealed across the blackboard. Dr. J.G. spoke softly through his tobacco-stained chest-length beard as he drew four rectangular boxes one after the other, each much taller than wide. His hair was white, long, and stuck out under a straw hat with stickpins and a feather. A gray tweed sport coat, faded blue jeans, and worn-out sneakers made him look almost homeless. I would soon discover this rag-tag collection of antiquity was one of the most profound people I would ever encounter.

     Dr. G explained his artistry as he paced and drew what he called, The Four Window Metaphor. Each rectangle represented a window. With different colored chalk, he adorned each window with layers of tapestries and curtains. He drew the curtains tight together on the first window. He explained that we couldn’t see anything on the other side of the window. Our senses, feelings, thoughts were locked up safe inside the walls that held the window. The drapes were shown as pulled aside in the second window. Here, we see the world outside. We begin to wonder what the kids are playing out there. We see buildings, roads, cars…or explosions, death, violence. Dr. G. continued to the third window. This window looked much the same as the second, except the lower sash was raised…the window was open. Our world is expanding, our senses becoming aware of a world larger than ourselves. We can not only see the smiles, but we hear the laughter. We are able to make a connection between the rich colors of flowers and their sweet smell. Our senses are stimulated and our interest aroused. Yet, many times, we off-handedly acknowledge the open window and go about the timeless tasks of cleaning our room.

      The fourth window had no glass. Dr. G. drew an image of a man half in and half out of this window…an escape from here to there. We consciously leave our safety zone of blind comfort hidden behind the windows? What internal strength needs to be mustered to deliberately run to the fourth window, smash the glass into glistening shards that fall through the sunlight, and leap through the portal into places unknown? Dr. G’s Four Window Metaphor is a multi-level epiphany into worlds of understanding about how we choose our paths, where those paths will lead, and why we stand in the place we now occupy.

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     It was chilly the day we buried my Dad. He died on a Sunday last March. The sky was clear and blue, the ground cold and muddy, the air still and crisp. I stood for a long time, after everyone had left, looking at the casket, the grave…and saw nothing. At the memorial service, I heard people saying, “Remember when…”, “I remember…”, “There was this time…”. Yet, I heard nothing. I was locked in my own room, my own world…hidden safely behind the curtains.

     I have a few ancient black and white pictures…the ones with the scalloped edges and a date on the back. I have the stories from my mother, from my siblings…and I have hidden pathways deep inside my mind, my memories. In the weeks and months that followed, memories of my childhood flooded my world… memories of play, of learning, cuts, bruises, toys, and boyhood experiences. They became exploding manifestations of images pushing on the insides of my eyes. Without warning, memories were emerging. They were smashing the glass out of the window and building a bridge for me between then and now.

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     Memories are the neural journey into our past. We repress, pass by, cover over, attempt to erase, relive, revive, rebuild memories. We each have intimate ownership of our memories. No one on Earth has our memories. Events happened the way we remember them. Each memory occupies a special place in our own history, our own journey. How many times do we stop speeding in frantic laps around our room and venture out into the obscure world of memory? How important is it to us to open the window that separates yesterday and today, walk through repression and join them together into singular and coherent world of serenity?

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     Four months had passed since Dad died. Processing that kind of event is a life-long thing. The effects are far-reaching and profound. On a hot day late in June, I decided to drive to Florida and watch the last space shuttle take off. The first week in July, I took off in my truck to witness history. 

     There are no words, no videos, no pictures able to describe a shuttle launch. The magnificent power unleashed by those rockets, the cone of fire creating the millions of pounds of thrust, the eruption of smoke billowing around the launch pad, the majestic flume of vapor left behind the hurtling orange fuel tank…and the noise. A roar that shakes the Earth, shatters the air, sends shock waves through palm trees for miles…and rattles windows. The affair lasts a mere few seconds…then it is a memory.

     I stood leaning against the box of my 4x4 and watched the vapor trail linger, threaded through the clouds like a tether between the rocket and the Earth, between a world of everything, and a world of nothing, like a bridge between now and then. There, standing alone among thousands of people, thoughts of long ago when the space program first started, began to find their way out of my head.

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     I grew up on a farm. It was five miles into town…a mile south to the canal bridge, another half mile to the corner just across the railroad tracks, then west another three and a half miles. Many times I’d ride with Dad in the old Chevy farm truck loaded with hampers full of tomatoes headed for the Hunts plant. There, the tomatoes were stewed and processed, then bottled in tall octagon glass bottles as catsup or canned as sauce. At night, we could smell the sweet, rich aroma of the boiling tomatoes drifting through the trees like a late summer swamp fog.

     Locked in a cold war of propaganda, the United States and the USSR were in a space race. President Kennedy announced that the US would win the race and land a man on the Moon before the decade of the 60’s was over. Nights were dark on the farm back then. The concept of light pollution was as far away as computers and spell check. We would stand outside at night, Dad, Mom, my brothers and sister and I, smell the stewing tomatoes, and Dad would point out constellations. Sometimes we could watch a tiny speck of light reflected from a spacecraft as it raced across the sky.

     I watched as the space program was born, when humans first entered space, stood by during the maturing process…now I watched as the manned space program died. Book-ends, a bridge between now and then, a life span, a bridge made of memory. Emotions flowed there as I thought about Dad and how he took the time to teach me about the world around me, how unburdened I felt by uncovering the past, and how enlightened I felt as I found myself on the other side of the window.

     There are many such stories, such bridges, like the go-cart Dad and I built when I was seven or eight…later in life, I built and drove race cars. Racing was and still is my life’s passion. One of those old black and white photos is of me. I was four and driving an old Farmall A tractor…I have made a very successful and rewarding career operating heavy equipment. And there were the guns…I still own my first 22. Dad bought it for me when I was six or seven. The list is endless and circular encompassing every segment of my life. There were model airplanes, model cars, baseball cards, bicycles, tricycles, toy trucks, cap guns, hand tools, power tools, mud puddles, summer rain, swimming holes, fishing poles, things to see, things to do…we were poor, yet we had so much. Many of us today have so much, yet are so poor. Much of the world lives tucked safely compartmentalized behind prejudices, judgments, and bitterness…never realizing the bridges, the history, the memories. We hide from our memories as we boldly race against time without regards or cares to where we have been, or to what traces we leave behind.

     While I was still in Florida, I met up with a friend…a girlfriend from long ago. We have recently been reacquainted…it had been many years, since before I was married, that we had seen each other. I thought about her many times…wondered where she was, if she was married, kids, if she remembered the times we had. Over the last few months, we have written, talked on the phone, exchanged pictures, stories, and memories. The sharing of memories has created a friendship of monumental proportions. We had gotten together once before a couple of months ago. She was visiting her mother in the north and I was traveling close to there on business. That meeting was very warming and emotional. Yet when we met in Florida, it was different. The newness of re-acquaintance had faded and the friendship, the ease of sharing had replaced the newness. We shared our memories with each other. We exchanged and compared, brought out from deep compartments the essence of those days when we shared life and related how those times have influenced our journeys. Our friendship has been a shared awakening for both of us…perhaps I am not the sole owner of my memories after all.

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     My life is a journey from back there to somewhere ahead, with today being the sum product of there to here. My memories of back there, the paths I have taken, are in essence who I am today. Everything I have become, in some way, has been shaped by where I have been…my experiences, my lessons, my memories. As I sit writing, remembering, I think about The Four Window Metaphor and of the many allegoric levels that apply. I am in awe of the multitude of windows through which I peer and pass through—and I wonder if my Dad had those same memories as I…I wonder if in life part of him shared those memories, my memories. I wonder how many windows I share with him…with family, loved ones, friends, and acquaintances…and when I am gone, when I have completed my journey here, when I have passed through the Fourth Window of life, I wonder—do we all share windows?