WHEREUPON THE MYSTERY OF THE 7th FLOOR WINDOW IS, MEANWHILE, SOLVED
Shiny new view from balcony window – facing south (Author photo)
Once a year we get shiny-clean windows.
It used to be twice a year, as my original contract decreed — but this is a senior living building, and senior living is, unfortunately, Very Big Business in the U.S. Which means investors want steadily rising returns, and this only happens by increasing rents (constantly) or by cutting costs (regularly, as in less frequent window-washing.)
OK, now that’s off my chest.
I love shiny-clean windows. The south-facing ones (above) stay reasonably clean all year. But my apartment has one large west-facing window, a view of reflected sunrises and shimmering sunsets. I really love my west-facing window. Its view succumbs to the grime of Post Street traffic below, but that takes a while to accumulate and Mother Nature sometimes pitches in with winter gales to clean things up.
Sunset view from west window (Author photo, long ago)
So it was with great dismay that I discovered, after the window-washers had finished the western wall and moved around the corner, that half of my west window remained smudgy.
In the grand scheme of things, a smudgy window would seem to rank fairly low among what one needs to complain about. But this is my waking view of the world, my closing view of the starlit night. Must it be gloomy, even before the San Francisco fog and embers from Canadian wildfires turn the window into a metaphor for a darkening world? (Until rays of hope return with the window-washers next August, just before the mid-terms?)
The prospect was too terrible. I complained. I complained vociferously to management, to housekeeping, to the maintenance department; for good measure. I fired off an email to the Executive Director of this establishment. One should not have to suffer a grungy half-view of the world for an entire year, I argued. Send those window washers up here to witness my distress. (I knew better than to insist on a re-do; I know costs and investor returns. I wanted, at the very least, sympathy — and at best a wash from within. These windows can be popped out for such chores.)
The offending window, west view (Author photo)
The next day a charming window-washer appeared at my door. “I actually washed that window,” he smiled. “I take pride in my work, so I’m always careful that it’s well done. Do you mind if I take a look?”
I felt heard. I sensed recompense. I led the charming window-washer to the offending window. “Do you mind?” he asked again, as he leaned across the three-foot shelf that sets the window back from the room, between built-in bookcases.
That small smudge you see on the right window (between the edges of the two sliding panes?) That is where the exonerated window-washer rubbed his two fingers. I seemed to have a very dirty window — on the inside.
Next week maintenance is sending someone to perch on the three-foot shelf and wash the inside of my window — something I’m perfectly capable of doing myself, but then, all this never occurred to me before raising such a ruckus so they may not think I have enough sense to wash a window.
May your sunrises shimmer and your sunsets glow. And may your outlook never be grungy.
There is a stillness here. Sometimes it’s eerily pleasant, the silence broken by birdsong in nearby trees. But often it is ominous. Having worked as a hospice volunteer and with other end-of-life organizations, I know the sudden stillness that is death, and others here have experienced it when losing a loved one. So here we are, in a place where most of us have come planning to stay until we die – and we’d just prefer not to be thinking about it in the middle of a pandemic. Listening to the stillness, watching the quiet streets no longer bustling with cars and people – manages to equate with death and become just a tiny bit stressful.
Some of us are more obsessive than others about checking the case/death numbers posted every morning at 9 by the San Francisco Department of 
