The timeless view from my kitchen window

The sun comes up on this sunny morning and streaks across my front lawn illuminating the view I never tire of. I pull a chair away from the kitchen table and gaze out through the bay window. As I take the first sips of coffee, the tranquil morning scene awakens.

Fall has finally arrived on Long Island’s North Shore. The signs are everywhere that the long hot summer has given way to cooler days and nights. The trees are beginning to shed their leaves of multiple yellows and oranges and reds.

My view spans out across the lawn to the mailbox at the head of my driveway. A split rail fence divides the property from an old horse trail. Memories abound of riders passing by when more horses were in the village.

The pheasants and quail have gone. They fell victim to red foxes that slowly eliminated them.  I recall a morning when five female pheasants surrounded a couple of males while pecking for seed around the bench just feet from my front row seat.  I miss them so, almost as much as I miss my children, Amanda and Matt. When my children were young, they swung on the swing that I hung from the horizontal branch of the sassafras tree just beyond the bench. That tree needed a cable to hold it up as the years wore away its trunk, and we thought we would lose it. I couldn’t hold onto my children’s youth, but I held on to the memory of them on that swing.

My birdfeeders hang from a cable between two trees. They attract scores of birds year-round. My winter residents – blue jays, house sparrows, black-capped chickadees, nuthatches and woodpeckers --  keep me company all winter until the spring birds arrive again competing for their share. I have to refill the feeders more often now. This ritual, which I have maintained for years, is comforting – feeding my friends as they feed my soul with something as tangible as what a loyal dog would provide. I think of them that way now.

Birdhouses dot across the far side of the driveway in the corner of the yard. House wrens and tree swallows built their summer nests in them in an incredible feat of nature. They’ve moved away now, headed for warmer weather.  These same birds come home to my home each year, greeted by my warmhearted welcome. They are a reminder that I share this place with them.

In the far corner of my view stands a massive Norway maple. The memory of my daughter sitting with me on the wooden platform I built between its gigantic limbs is still fresh in my mind. It pulls on my heartstrings when I’m reminded how much I loved being alone with her up in that tree gazing out over the yard to the house where she grew up. She’s gone now, but the tree remains, holding untold secrets from when life seemed so much more innocent. 

All these memories blend together forming a kind of rich mosaic in a view I never tire of. The colors of the seasons morph from spring’s vibrant green through summer’s fullness, autumn’s reds and yellows to winter’s gray and white, but the feelings I enjoy from my favorite seat remain. They never fade. They seem to say stop, remember us and take us with you.

Reader James D. Riordan lives in Old Westbury.