Finally, it is open window season. I write that sentence with some trepidation because for all I know this is going to be the snowiest June on record, but for the moment, it’s definitely time to open the windows and let the warm air in.
Open windows attest to the wisdom of our decision to build holes in our houses.
The window by the love seat in my kitchen opens out on hinges, like a small door. I can recline languidly and stare out at the day and feel the breeze on my face. I can see the neighbor’s hummingbirds sipping nectar. I can hear bees.
Still, it’s not a great window. A hinged window can never be a great window. The very best experience a hinged window has to offer is closing it, that satisfying, solid thunk when you push the handle straight down and the flange swings up against its polished nubbin and sighs to a stop, aligned once again with the universe.
Old-fashioned double-hung sash windows–those are the great windows. Do you remember the first time someone took apart a sash window for you, removed the long strip of wood so you stare into that unexpected cavity and see the counterweights hanging there, secret household machinery?
They require maintenance; they are sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity. They are temperamental, like aging opera stars. But when you get one in a good mood, when the sunshine
outside and the grooves inside combine to make the window slide up as if it were running on rivers of butter–is there a better feeling?
Candidly, there is another experience almost as good.
Do you have a car with power windows? Can all the windows be controlled by the driver? I do not have such a car, but I have driven one. I have driven one opening and closing the windows, playing a little symphony of wind and tire hiss and the low hum of the tiny window motors.
Also, it’s a ballet of glass, but I am unable to appreciate it fully. I am keeping my eyes on the road. For my grand finale, I take all the windows down so they each rest in their nests inside the doors, then bring them all up at once.
Ssssssssss-thwack! Silence. Perfect.
There are many office buildings with windows that do not open. That tells you all you need to know about current commercial aesthetics. The architects will say that it is necessary, that safety concerns and economic tradeoffs dictate the hermetic sealing of all employees inside the giant industrial capsules.
Not true. I worked for a time in the Palmolive Building in Chicago, which had been renamed the Playboy Building as a courtesy to the new owner. The Palmolive Building had windows that opened, great horizontal slabs of glass that moved up and down on metal runners almost effortlessly, a miracle of the Industrial Revolution.
I had a corner office 15 floors above the street. On fine days, I could open the window and get the afternoon breeze off Lake Michigan. I could sit in a desk chair with my feet on the sill and do actual work while experiencing actual serenity.
And if I did not like a manuscript, I could make a paper airplane out of the first page and throw it out the window. Down it would float into the canyons of the Near North Side, down and down like a white bird, nobler aerodynamically than it ever was literarily.
And it was not litter until it hit the ground, and by that time it belonged to the ages.
