Windows and the soul

Tuesday 1 September 2009

We have beautiful windows in this house. Daddy, the architectural purist, got them from a place that does traditional-house restorations. They are true early-1700s-style, with the correct flat 1-inch-wide mullions. They are not 'double-hung'-- only the bottom sash slides up. They are single-glazed (one piece of glass per pane), not double, so we rely on real inside shutters for added insulation against the cold (and for security). All the panes are the same size-- in the Colonial period the carpenters orded glass panes from England and made the windows to fit them. And they do not have regular full-sized screens.

All three of our houses, the one in New Jersey, the one in Delaware, and Terncote here, have the same kind of windows. When he was building the beach house in New Jersey, which was the first one, Daddy devised a system by which the screen only covers the bottom sash and the sash slides down outside it. The sash has pins that you slide into the frame to lock the window in place. The screen has pins you can slide back to remove it. I usually leave my windows locked up at the first notch (about 12 inches). My room is up stairs so no one can get in and there's just enough of the sea air to make the room very pleasant day and night.

It was very late when I went to bed (actually early this morning-- I won't say what hour!). I had left the door to the side gallery open as usual and the windows at the first notch, and the room was cool but not chilly. At about 6.00 am I found myself incomprehensibly awake. The dawn sunlight beamed in from above the ocean in a brilliant white light. Outside, birds were chirping. Trees in the side yards hissed in the breeze. The bay lapped patiently at the bulkhead. Far out across the channel and the island, the surf along the beach was the incessant white noise that is a background to everything you hear here. And I lay on my back in the bed, sleepy but alert, my legs apart under the sheet draped lightly over my naked body. I was intensely comfortable.

The inevitable came over me and I soon found myself massaging gently, with the sheet pushed down past where my hand needed to be. It got very powerful very fast and soon I was pushing harder and harder and getting anxious. I whined a few times-- I had not thought I could have been too loud till I realised Jessy was looking in from the door. Seeing me so engaged she whispered, 'Are you all right?'

I only murmurred impatiently, still going.

She nodded and tiptoed into the room, looking round for a moment. I usually sleep on my back with the empty pillow to my left, and she sat there on the edge of the bed and kind of watched me go on. Oh, she knows what I look like doing this, especially what my hand was doing. She looked down on my face with a sweet expression half of sympathy and half of devotion, the kind of devotion only a sister can have. I went on, holding my left arm up over my head, holding back my hair I guess, and wriggled a little to give my other hand more room. I think I whined again-- it was so slow in coming!

'Do you want me to help you?' she whispered, looking down into my eyes.

That gave me a start. 'Help me?' What did she mean?

She nodded and reached up and took my free hand, pressing it tenderly between her palms. 'Just relax. You're doing fine.' And she smiled a little.

I nodded, nearly breathless, and slowed down just a little. That did help. I had been too impatient.

'There, there,' she said, squeezing my hand.

'Oh, Jessy....' I sighed very deeply, relaxing, and it came.

She held me for the whole thing, till I was done trying and had no strength left to fight back the aftermath. When I had given it over she turned round and looked about the room, at the windows standing open, at the morning sun streaming in, at my pretty light-blue sheets pushed down till they covered my thighs and no higher, and at my hand still in place, my palm covering myself as though I were trying to be modest. And she looked back down at me and smiled. 'If you need for me to bring you anything, I will.'

I smiled up at her with a happy sigh. 'No. You don't have to. I'm fine.'

She leaned down and kissed my forehead, patted my hand and then let go, turning on her bare bottom and getting to her feet. 'I'll bring this closed, just a little, then... if you want.'

I nodded. 'Thank you, sweetie.' We met eyes then. 'I love you.'

She responded to that immediately. 'I love you too.' And then she tiptoed out, like an angel, as silently as she had come in, leaving me grateful for my afterglow.

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