From the outside looking in.

Louie and I were driving home from a basketball game and we drove through little towns that had tiny old houses with the lights on.  This brought back the memories of when I was a kid. I voiced out loud that I wonder what people in those houses were doing. Family time? Reading? Cleaning? Cooking? To my surprise my husband told me that when he was growing up he did the same thing. When he walked through the neighborhood he would see people at the kitchen table and imagine what they were doing. It was such a fun conversation since I never knew anyone did this but me. He told me by name who lived where and what he imagined they were doing. Knowing these people today made us both laugh since he was not too far off from his imagination.

Growing up in Germany and living in an Army housing area, you pretty much walked everywhere you went. I look back fondly on the walks I used to take with my mother and dog, Susie. We would walk all through the housing area and talk about things that happened during the day and just enjoy the evening. The buildings consisted of three stairwells with three apartments on each side of the stairwell with a connecting basement. There were 18 families per building and then there were maid quarters that were amazing (another blog! ) and families coming to and leaving Germany would stay in them when needed so these were referred to as temporary quarters. The large front window allowed you to see into the living room and the back window gave access to the dining room. In the evening when we walked every unit had lights on and you could see straight into the apartments and see what each family was doing. I loved this. I would imagine all these wonderful things going on in each family and often would be a bit jealous if they were playing family games or laughing and having a good time. Husbands and wives would be snuggled together  watching one of the 5 shows that we had access to.  I would imagine where the family came from and what their life was like. In the winter the windows would be a bit fogged and it painted a picture  that  Norman Rockwall could have done. Kids in pajamas sitting around the dining room table playing games and eating snacks. Their lives seemed so perfect. I often wondered why our life was not like that.

Later I realized, my life was exactly like that! What I did not see through those frosted windows was the stress of raising a family in a foreign country, the mounds of bills that needed to be paid, parents disciplining their children to raise caring and productive citizens, kids arguing over who had the last turn at the spinner on the board game, the tears from a broken hearted teenage girl whose boyfriend broke up with her, the aching heart of a teenage boy who wants to be in the U.S. with the friends he just left behind…….what I did not see was the burden of life. What I did see was the reward of getting through each day.  If someone would have looked into our window they would have seen a loving family living the military life and holding on to the wonderful moments of just being together; just like all the other families we shared our lives with.

I know now, no matter how grand or how dilapidated a home may be, when you get a glimpse of the family inside, what you see is a mere snapshot out of  an entire album of life.