Saturdays with Seniors: Window Gazing with Gabriela

Today’s guest blogger Gabriela Freese, pictured here with her 16-year-old granddaughter, Nina.

I am pleased to feature Gabriela Freese as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Her parents immigrated from Germany to South America; she and her twin sister were born and raised in Paraguay, and Gabriela immigrated to Chicago in 1959, where she met her future husband, a German immigrant.

After receiving a degree in denistry from Loyola University, Gabriela had a practice in Oak Park, home to the world’s largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings. How better to embrace America than to purchase a home designed by FLW? They did exactly that, raised their children in that home, and after retiring, Gabriela moved to Admiral at the Lake in Chicago. She’s been a writer in the memoir class I lead there ever since the class started, and she continues to participate now as we meet via Zoom.

The Window

By Gabriela Freese

Looking into a chocolate store window, nose pressed against the glass…as a little girl I’d imagined smelling some of that haunting aroma. And tasting it, too! Intense moments like that have a way of resurfacing every off and on, and this time it resurfaced as a simile of what I’ve experienced in the last few months. The shut-down began in March. Not really an ideal time of the year to be outside, so the first few weeks sheltering in place were rather welcome. My usual activities cancelled, days were wide open for me to decide how to fill them.

I began by sewing fabric masks, using material donated by the quilters in our building. New regulations for all residents at The Admiral — and our workers, caregivers and staff, too — required lots of masks, so I sewed on and on.

After about 120 masks I decided to diversify. I put away the sewing machine and decluttered my files instead. My to-do list was shrinking. I felt so accomplished!

However, by the time I started yet another cross stitch project, the days started getting longer, we had a bit more sunshine, the ‘nose pressed against the window’ feeling became more acute.

On my daily walk I checked for tiny green shoots on bushes, on trees. I remembered how many ginkgo trees were along each path (those are my favorite trees). The smell of warm earth was as good as that of chocolate. I greeted even the weeds.

Slowly I exchanged winter coats for lighter coats. The walks got longer, and, indeed, one day little green things appeared everywhere, as if on cue.

What a joy to see that normal things were still happening at this time of pandemic illness. Not only that, the little shoots had turned into beautiful leaves, into flowers, into beacons of color and growth — to the point where they now need to be trimmed. This recurring phenomenon that nature puts on for us is what we see through the window of our choice. Of course we cannot see COVID 19 – the virus itself is invisible, So all wee see is the devastation it causes. But pausing to look for something that lifts our spirits can help us come out the other side. All we need do is choose our window and…start looking.