The Windows

There’s something of magic in that glass, and the windows stay with the house

The windows are the best part of the house.

Over the years the broken panes have been replaced with factory glass, but many are still original and the sunlight which passes through is simple and splendid. Blown and imperfect glass refracts the light in wavy sunshadows that play upon the walls, like the sparkling ripples on the surface of a lake and the bubbling laughter of brook water as it tumbles over rocks, except that they are silent. The sunshadows in the house through antique glass are quiet and calming.

The windows are made from solid wood milled in the mid-1800s. Before that, from an old-growth forest, the wood in the windows stood tall in the ground with slow grace. It has been a part of the world out spanning the modern lives of people.

When it was purchased, the new owners of the house carried out lengthy discussions as regarded the fate of the old windows. One school of thought was to replace them all. Cracks in glass had been repaired with tape. Lead-painted, they were chipping and flaking poisons into the house, unhealthy for the little girl who was to move upstairs. Some were painted shut. The budget to fix up the house wasn’t much, and it needed a new roof. Replacements were cheaper.

The wife argued in favor of restoration for the authentic two-over-one lights that had functioned well since the time the old house was built. Distrustful of buying ‘new’ for the sake of short-sighted convenience, she stood her ground and fought for the patience the old house deserved. She used building science to explain stack effect: cold air up through the floorboards from the basement and crawl spaces, out through the attic and holes in the roof. The house needed insulation, not new windows. With $100 and the NHSaves program she even brought in an energy auditor who ran a blower door test sucking all the air in reverse through the house to pinpoint drafts. The windows weren’t leaky.

The windows stayed with the house.

A craftsman was called in. The couple was glad to hire the restoration work out locally to a small business owner who was good at his trade. While he worked to build them wooden storms for outside, the family spent their first winter in the home. It takes a cold New Hampshire winter, exceedingly long, for a house to prove its worth and its warmth, to shelter a family and become a home.

Jack Frost had always just been a spriteful little myth in old poems. That winter, while they waited for their storms, he leaped out of the pages of books to play and paint with icicles on the windows. Single pane glass, handcrafted over a century ago, was his slate. Each morning the family awoke to the most dazzling displays of ice and light. As the sun’s warmth melted away the cold nightly musings of the winter fairy, the little girl etched her name in the frost with her fingernail to take credit for Jack’s art.

In subtle ways people have forgotten the world, the rhythm of the seasons. Whoever built the small old farmhouse had known them. Had known that afternoon sun through a row of south-facing windows was a small blessing during the heart of winter, helping to make the wood pile last a little longer. Had spent more time out of doors, living more in harmony with the world, tracking necessary work and labor to the changes of a year. The windows are more than mere windows. They are a connection to the past.

Each spring the storm glass gets replaced by screens. All through the warmer months the windows stay open. They let in the fresh air. They let in the sounds of the world. First the peepers as they thaw in the mud and cold fog, when it is still too early to keep the windows open overnight. Then the birds. The chickadee, synonymous with early spring days, gives way to the spiraling song of the veery thrush as summer sets. The heat brings the crickets and the constant trill and rattle of all the little insects — a buzzing hum that underlies all the days the dirt is awake.

Because the world outside the windows is so wonderful, whoever built the small old farmhouse had not wasted time on adornments but had carefully considered functionality, had a mind for a cross breeze through a room on a hot summer night. The windows are plain, but they are a model for self-reliance. The present homeowners are sharing in the advantages of that functionality and comfort. They do not rely on electricity to power a cooling unit that would also force them to keep the windows closed and shut out the world. Being natives of New Hampshire, they treasure self-reliance. They value that trait of the old-timers, for whom independence was not a grand ideal but part and parcel of every day. Independence of thought drives a can-do attitude and that is what makes a person responsible. A responsible person has a care for how they live. They look out their windows and see the world as it was, as it is, and as it should be.