The Missing Windowsills

Windowsills, like the Yuletide season, have always sparked warm memories and held a magically special appeal. Decked out for the festive season, they brightened homes in the dark days of the winter solstice and provided a venue for the creative members of a family to display their talents. Sadly, as the years passed, broad window ledges that begged to be decorated in celebration of the season disappeared from architectural plans.

As a child living in my grandparents’ Victorian home, I’d loved its venerable, cracked windowsills. Those dear old ledges had heralded the changing seasons as much as the first colored leaf of autumn or the premier robin of spring.

Late fall saw condensation gather along their inner ledge; in winter, it turned to ice; in spring, a puddle my grandmother mopped up with rags. In summer the cracked and peeling paint these changes had facilitated necessitated scraping and applying a refreshing coat that gleamed in the sunlight.

The windowsills’ functions varied from season to season as well. In winter they became mini-greenhouses with pots of parsley, chives, and the like that provided fresh seasonings. In spring they held multiple small containers replete with earth and seeds in preparation for the growing season ahead.

Most memorably, each Christmas, before the commercial onslaught of outdoor lights and plastic decorations, my grandmother would decorate the wide sills of her bay window with Christmas cards from family and friends. These would be nestled among pine boughs trimmed with red ribbon salvaged from the previous year’s gift-wrappings. Always the first part of the house to experience her talent for festive trimming, her decorated windowsills marked the advent of the Yuletide season for our family.

In other months my grandmother used her window ledges to display prized collections. Miniature porcelain cats, elephants, horses and even frogs were proudly placed where they could be enjoyed from both inside and outside her home.

Other windowsills throughout the house became places of safekeeping. Important objects were often deposited there.

“The keys are on the windowsill above the sink.”

“I put the letter on the parlor windowsill.”

“I left my wedding ring on the bathroom window ledge.”

Beyond their uses in my grandparents’ house, windowsills have proven inspirational to artists and photographers. I wonder how many pictures exist of cats hunched on these ledges, staring wide-eyed at birds beyond the glass or out into the rain or snow. And what about all those Victorian images of children and lovely young ladies leaning or seated on them, gazing wistfully outward as they waited for some person or event to put in an appearance.

This artistic fascination with windowsills carried over into fiction. Heroines leaned upon them as they waited for their lovers; villains pushed bricks, flowerpots, and other heavy, blunt objects off of them onto the heads of unsuspecting victims, and romantic heroes hoisted themselves over them in anticipation of eloping with their ladies fair. In musical ballads, bluebirds reputedly lit upon them as symbols of hope and joy.

On a personal level, who hasn’t rested their elbows on a windowsill as they waited for someone or something to arrive? Who hasn’t leaned over one to wave a fond farewell, perhaps even shedding a tear or two in the process? Windowsills have been involved in many emotional moments in our lives.

But, then, for a while, modern architecture all but eliminated these wonderful, multi-purpose catch-alls. In my first new home, it would have been difficult to place anything of interest or value on the minuscule edges provided in houses built in the latter part of the 20th century. Attempting to lean on one was out of the question.

But last summer, at our cottage, I experienced my own small architectural romantic revival. Our carpenter, installing a new double-casement window over our sink, created a windowsill! An actual six-inch-wide, flowerpot bearing, key-catching, knick-knack holding windowsill! Granted, I’d have to climb up into my sink to lean or sit on it but it’s beautiful and nostalgic and inspiring just the same.

The varnish had barely dried when I placed a potted African violet on it and stood back to admire the effect. And although we don’t usually spend Christmas at the cottage, I’m thinking I might just make a pilgrimage up there this December to trim that wonderful windowsill with pine boughs, red ribbons, and recycled Christmas cards.