My house sits on a hill. It gives me a perfect view into the house across the street, especially at night. I guess this could sound weird but really it isn’t.

The couple across the street have been married for more than 50 years. They are both in their late seventies and have a bevy of great grandchildren. I don’t know much more about them than these few facts. However, the view I have of their lives, makes me feel like I know them well.

Our neighborhood is dark at night - Carmel has no streetlights. So, when I am in the kitchen cleaning up after the kids are in bed, I can see the woman across the street cleaning her own kitchen. Sometimes she wears an apron, sometimes she has an old housecoat on. She spends a good portion of her time in the kitchen and I wonder what she cooks. I wonder if she has the recipes memorized, or if they were handed down from her mother. I see something through my kitchen window that transports me to another time. A time when a woman was first a girl, then a wife, then a mother and always a caretaker. Today’s roles are more complicated, or at least we’ve made them so.

Their days are scheduled. They stick to a pattern of activity, no doubt out of tradition. The husband still goes to work every morning and returns promptly at 5 p.m. every day. They eat dinner and then drive to the high school where they slowly walk the track, hand in hand. I know because I have passed them many times on my runs. When I see them, I want to barrel past the awkwardness and ask them how they manage to look so content, so in love after all of these years. There must be a secret, a path.

Often when I see the couple, I am filled with wonder. In today’s age, it seems as though marriages don’t last and people move around many times before settling down. Yet here is this couple, married for an eternity and living the quintessential American dream. I wish I could ask her what it is like to move through all of life’s stages. What it was like to cook a meal for a new husband, a new baby, a new grandchild, a great grandchild. What perspective she must have.

As the daylight hours have waned lately, I am up sometimes before sunrise with the kids. This of course once again, offers me a view into the life across the street. As I stumble to the refrigerator to get milk for Joshua, I see her. She is always drinking her coffee and reading the paper. He is by her side and it looks as though they move in sync without knowledge of it. Even in my sleepy haze, whereby I wonder if this stage of having young children will ever pass, I am pulled into reality that life goes by quickly. One day, I will be sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper (albeit the online version), passing Kevin the coffee before he even asks for it. Wondering, where all the years went.

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