Earliest Home Memory—Windows in My World (October 10, 2005)

Bradley House viewed from backyard (January 1966)

      I was 3½ when I moved to Davis, California, with my parents, and my big brother, Michael.  He was 5.  We were both very excited as we were moving into the whole upstairs, and would each have our own rooms.  We had shared a room in our little house in Klamath Falls, Oregon, so this was a big step for us. We arrived in the fall of 1946.  Our house was at 233 Rice lane, between A and B and First and Second Streets.  The leaves on the big trees outside our house were beginning to turn beautiful shades of red and yellow. 

     I loved living upstairs.  My bedroom was at the front of the house.  I had two windows.  One looked over the front yard.  I could see the giant oak tree at the side of our yard and behind it the giant redwood tree in our neighbor’s yard. The other window overlooked the driveway and the big trees that lined it. I spent many happy hours looking out those paned windows onto the beautiful green world below.

     When we opened the front door, we were in the entry hall. There was a coat closet, the telephone cubicle and the stairs rising to our upstairs world.  There was a short banister on that stairway and every chance we got we would slid down that banister. What fun!

     To the left of the entry hall was my parent’s room; it was right below my room. That fact I found very comforting.  To the right of the hall was the living room.  It seemed huge to me.  There was a fireplace on the front wall in the middle of the room.  I can still see the Christmas stockings hung by that chimney with care. There were two lead-paned windows that looked out to the front of the house. There was one window at each end of the room, on either side of the fireplace. To this day, I love driving by and seeing those warm and welcoming windows.   At the farthest end of the room was a very large paned window that looked out to the hedge between our house and the neighbors.  On the back wall was another good size window that looked out to our patio.  And a little to the left of that were French doors that opened onto that patio.

    Remarkably, in my youth, I managed to break panes in both large windows and the French doors.  I jumped through the French doors.  I was leaping for a stick my brother threw for me. I was pretending to be his dog and crashed head-first through one of the lower panes of glass.  I rocked over backwards in my little red rocking chair through the window at the end of the room, headfirst. And I managed to break the other window by falling off the back of the couch, which I had been sitting on. I was so rambunctious, I’m sure my folks often wondered if I would live through my childhood.

   Beyond the living room was our formal dinning room.  It had a huge paned window that looked out to my swing in the back yard.  My seat at the table faced that window. What a treat!  I still remember, when I was five years old, standing at the dinning room window and staring out at the snow falling on Christmas Day—what a thrill that was!  My brother and I couldn’t wait to get outside to play in the beautiful white icy flakes.  The snow didn’t last long, but we made the most of every minute!

     The first thing I remember my father doing in the back yard was hanging a swing for me!  I spent a significant amount of time on that swing every day.  I can still feel the breeze blowing around my braids as I swung higher and higher.  I would often swing until I would rock myself to sleep and awaken by thudding onto the ground, beneath my treasured swing.

     To the left of the dinning room was our cozy kitchen.  I loved “helping” my mother in the kitchen, even as a small child.  To this day I look back on the wonderful hours my mother and I spend talking and working together in that kitchen.  I loved every minute of it.

     To the left of the kitchen was our back porch.  It was a laundry room and a pet feeding area.  I always had a dog and my brother always had a cat.

      To the left of the laundry room was the basement door.  This led to one of our favorite playrooms in the house.

     I would spend the next 15 years of my life living in that house and another 10 years visiting my parents in that same house with my husband David, and our four children: Kelly, William, Thomas and Kate.  They, too, got to look through all the beautiful windows in my childhood home, and they never broke even one pane of glass.