Mary Frederick Ahearn

An Open Window

The curtains, her thin, white summer ones, flutter in the slight breeze, cooling my aunt’s room on that late summer afternoon. This is where I retreat, content to be quiet and solitary, to read, nap, and to listen to the grown-ups downstairs as they visit and catch up with each other’s lives. The bed is soft, the linens freshly laundered and smelling of sunshine. Nan’s favorite (and mine) pale blue blanket rests at the foot of the bed, at hand for the cool, upstate night air. This is a place of peace, of refuge which I remember even now with a deep sense of repose. A place and time of simplicity, of love.

Downstairs the aunts and uncles, happy in one another’s company, talk of their days and of days long past. I listen, half-awake, to their stories of farm life, swimming in the cool waters of the creek, of thunderstorms crashing down Katy Jane mountain, their mother’s pies. As their memories float upstairs, I feel their love floating there too. Soon my Aunt Nan will come in to ask for help in the little kitchen. It’s time to join the grown-ups now.

memories
grow memories
those blue flowers
she loved the most
left at the grave

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About the Author

Mary Frederick Ahearn lives in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. “Writing is a great joy to me, and with it, the interaction with wonderful poets from all over the world. Reading, photography, and being out in the natural world are delights and solace for this introverted soul.”

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