I could not explain why she did as she did but everyday at 11:00 margaret would come and sit in that chair facing the window. She carried no books, no paper, not even a pen. She never moved and i was often led to believe she had fallen asleep with her eyes open. Doing this in a library irritated me. Why could she not do this at home. With all the resources a person could possibly need at their fingertips, she used nothing as I slaved away studying and reading. Why? I would ask. What is she thinking about? As days would pass I began to stop asking myself and started guessing at the answer. She was much to old to be waiting for her husband or even a son to come home from a war. She was too well kept to be homeless. Maybe she was a writer waiting for her inspiration. She might have some deadly Illness and she stared out of a window, using the library as a waiting room to join the ones that had to leave her behind. Day by day would pass and with each one a more time consuming elusive story would be created. Maybe she was a fugative, tired of living as someone else. It started to consume more and more of my two hour time block of study time until I came to the library for the sole purpose of investigating the life of the lady at the window.
I woke up this morning with a purpose. I too would pull up a chair and do nothing but stare next to Margaret. Much to my dismay, when I arrived; she did not. She was no where to be found. Like a fire, my imagination was engulfed with scenarios. They found her. And with that thought, I sat in Margaret’s chair facing the window. To this moment I can not tell you what was outside that window. The window frame acted as a television of my imagination. For the entire two hours, my mind dumped itself out to the window. It was captivating like no book, and emotionally connectable unlike any movie I had ever seen. My alarm went off, bringing me back to that chair in the library facing the window. I understood exactly why margaret sat here. We spend our lives taking in the world around us, but spend very little time giving it back.
This is my testament to the lady at the window, who I named Margaret, because she changed me without speaking to me. I actually hardly saw her face. But in her lied a lesson that she could not keep to herself. I once week sit in that same place just to give back. I have yet to see her since, but whether realizing it or not, served a purpose that was greater than anything she could have read or seen in that library.
