Looking through the window

Gary Stevens always hoped for a happy future, a happy wife, and happy kids. Every 20-year-old’s dream in the 1940’s. He met Laura in an unconventional way, but he knew from the start she was the one. Gary was walking down the sidewalk daydreaming, as he so commonly did, not paying attention to anything or anyone. The sun was shining on the green lush grass and the birds were singing happily in the park. He was a lucky kid, born in a small town in Illinois that had been less affected by the great depression. He was doing well for him and that was all he needed.

He was so caught up in his luck on this particular day that he didn’t see a young lady with beautiful blond hair walking by, just as distracted as he was. All it took was a crack in the sidewalk and two pairs of left feet for fate to push them together.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Laura said as she tried to grab her bearings. She looked at him and Gary already a shy person replied “Miss, it’s really quite alright.” Gary awkwardly stared at the ground afraid to look at such a pretty woman.

Laura, having been raised by a strict, proper and stern mother who valued manners above all elsefelt she had to say something. “Well, let me buy you a coffee.”

“Sure, sure,” Gary replied still staring at the ground.

Upon arriving at the little family-owned diner around the corner, Gary contemplated his life choices. He wasn’t a coffee drinker; in fact, he hated the bitter taste it left on his tongue. He desperately did not want to be rude to Laura, but he could not imagine how he was supposed to drink it with a smile on his face.

He knew he was probably just being silly, as his parents always called his worry-filled antics. He was forever afraid of offending someone, constantly overthinking every comment he made and every gesture he offered.

The waitress sat them at a classic leather red booth with a sticky plastic table. The menus she threw at them read “Fred’s since 1918.” Gary carefully searched every detail on the familiar menu, one he knew by heart. Fred’s is Galena, Illinois’s only diner and it was a popular place for the locals. Since he was a kid, it was Gary’s favorite place to go. He knew everyone who worked there, and he could always recognize the sound of the creaky barstools by the counter.

Laura tried to start a conversation with Gary, just some simple small talk. “So, how long have you lived here?” This was a simple question; one Gary could handle. “My whole life I’ve never been anywhere but Galena.”

Gary immediately cringed at himself. He should have asked a question. Laura felt compelled to keep the small talk going. “I actually just moved her from the big city of New York.”

Gary had to admit that was rare for a rural town like his. He automatically asked “Why?” Laura’s eyes nervously watched the ceiling while she searched her mind for a suitable response.

“Well, I guess I needed a change from what I was there, and I have a few relatives here.”

No one had ever asked Laura why. No one had ever bothered to care, or perhaps they were restrained by their own social manners and unspoken rules. Laura found that she rather liked it. It felt different from the world that surrounded her back in the city.

The waitress came to take their order, in a hurry as she always was, and Gary ordered his usual iced tea forgetting his earlier fears. Laura didn’t even notice, and Gary was happy that his agitation seemed so minute now.

This first meeting was the start of a life spent together. Gary and Laura continued dating for three months before Gary decided to get down on one knee. He knew Laura was the one he couldgrow old together with and though he didn’t have a lot and times were rough, he knew she was all he really needed in life.

He nervously asked her parents for their blessing in a cramped living room in New York. He knew Laura wouldn’t approve as the family relationship wasn’t great, but Gary was ever the traditionalist. Her parents were reluctant but after realizing it would happen anyway, they said yes!

Gary wasn’t worried about what the future could bring, or even if Laura would say yes, for the first time in Gary’s short life he wasn’t worried. In fact, he was incredibly sure of everything, no doubt ever lingered in his voice.

He was with Laura on another sunny day with a light chill. The goosebumps on his arm weren’t from the cold, they were from the butterflies that flew all over his insides. He pointed out a bird perched on a tree and when she turned, she saw him on one knee.

Laura was speechless, this was exactly what she had dreamed of. After a minute of quiet and Gary thinking she would say no, Laura so lovingly said “Yes, of course yes!!”

It was only weeks before Laura was walking down the church aisle with tears in her eyes clinging to her bouquet of pink roses. Gary himself was teary and everyone in the crowd could feel the love flowing through the room. It felt like hours to Gary before he could say “I do!”

Before anyone knew it there were kids, a house, and two parents filled with love just trying theirbest. There were two kids who they adored, Walter and Rose. Walter the five-year-old and tiny little two-year-old Rose.

Along the way, Gary had invested in a house and some farmland that was doing pretty wellconsidering the times, life was good. They still went to the park on their anniversary and always were trying to find time to sit in their rocking chairs and look through the open window and enjoy life!

The kids were in middle school and suddenly money’s tight and the farm isn’t doing so well. Now Laura’s picking up jobs where she can and juggling a tight schedule. Buyers want to expand so they offer a little of their farmland over the years. After a while, a little becomes a lot. They justified selling it because it was for the kids, but now when they look out the window the view is just a little different.

The years go by, and they build their family and life is looking up. Yes, they had to give a little of their beloved land away, but everyone does what they have to do to survive. “Don’t they?” Gary asks Laura every once in a while, when their time in the rocking chairs gets a little too quiet as they look at the expanding world before them. “Yes. Of course, they do, Gary!” This is what they tell themselves when their view seems a little more closed in and a the sounds are little more disruptive than it used to be when they first bought the old place with a family in mind.

As the kids approached college age and money was about to get tight again, a man in a nice, ironed suit knocks on their creaky door. Laura opens it having no idea who it was while Gary’s worries continued to get the best of him. “Hi! Mr. and Mrs. Stevens! I’m Henry Jagger with Jagger & Heeler Real Estate and have a business proposal for you!”

Gary and Laura had heard this from many others over the years. These people were relentlessand usually just needed to be heard out. Laura, though for some odd reason felt that this one was different. Mr. Jagger seemed more business-like than the others. Laura would soon find out that she was right.

“I’ll get right to my offer. As I’m sure you all know, you own some very valuable land that has gotten the attention of many buyers and corporations. We have a deal that will surely exceedothers and, in my opinion, make this a deal that you cannot refuse. We are willing to offer $200,000 dollars for all of your land to build a neighborhood. We do promise a free house on the lot.”

Gary and Laura audibly gasped as their mouths dropped! They both knew what that money could do for them. They could send their kids to a good college and guarantee a bright future, where rocking chairs and parks would be met with glee, free from the worry they both felt. At the same time, walking away from this place, meant walking away from the tangible memories of this life they had worked so hard to build together.

Laura spoke for the both of them and said, “If you don’t mind, we’ll have to think about it.”

Mr. Jagger replied, “Just don’t think too long, offers like this are few and far between.” He handed them a card and left. The door shut behind him and the house settled a little underneath their feet. Laura couldn’t help but wonder if this was a warning

Gary and Laura both knew the benefits outweighed the emotional toll they both minimized of leaving their little oasis. They both felt too embarrassed to say it out loud. It made sense but deep down they felt like they were selling a part of themselves.

They sold the land and the kids went off to college without a care in the world. Though they all had made sacrifices they were good with their choices. They had to be.

Life went on and they moved into their new house.

A couple years later someone sold the park where they had met without either of them being able to say their goodbyes. Progress without regard for memories had taken this town and everyone knew it. Laura shed a couple tears for the place they could never revisit. The place where she had met the one she would spend the rest of her life with. The place where she had “yes” to a lifewith Gary, and that brought joy in good times and was such a comfort in the hard moments. Now, when she looked out their window she would see a parking lot, and the contrast was stark.

Laura and Gary eventually got over it. They had to. There was no reason to continue to fret aboutit.

Now Gary and Laura were in their 90’s and Gary had done everything he wanted to do with his life. He had a family he loved so dearly. He had grandkids he got to see almost every weekend.

Now they sat in their rocking chairs by the window for one of the last times looking out at their neighborhood that had once been so different. The Steven’s farmland had been made into a neighborhood. The air that they breathed when on that fateful day in the park wasn’t as fresh as it had been 70 some years ago; pollution had changed that. The grass wasn’t so green and the sweet smell of rain that used to flood the town was gone. The park was now full of busy shoppers withthis new thing called a shopping center. And the only thing left of Fred’s was the smell of concrete and construction.

From their window, Gary saw two newlyweds moving into the lot across from theirs. They didn’t see what was so apparent to Gary’s eyes. They didn’t see everything this place used to be, just what it was now. All they could hope was that the newlyweds always remembered with their hearts - that view out of their own window when love mattered more than anything else. That was certainly true for Gary and Laura.

As Gary took Laura’s wrinkled hand and made his final request “Laura, promise me that you’ll never have any regrets. Promise me that you’ll always know how much I love you!”

Laura squeezed his feeble hand like she had all the other times he’d said this and whispered, “I promise.”

With his final wish granted and a silent prayer carried into the stillness of the night, Gary drifted peacefully to sleep in his rocking chair for the last time. Laura sat quietly beside him, knowing as she always had that her promise had given him peace. The reflection in the window shimmered softly before her, no longer just light against glass, but the beginning of something beyond this world. And there, on the other side, she knew he would be waiting for her: the park stretching wide beneath an endless sky, the old rocking chair swaying gently, and her beloved Gary beside it, carrying the same unwavering love that neither time nor death could ever take away.