Stain by Number

       These are my birds! I’ve had them, oh maybe as far back as my apartment on Kenville in Buffalo. I love stained glass, and once a long time ago I had an urge to make my own stained glass creations. But I never got any further than these paint-by-number efforts. A picture/pattern came with tubes of a kind of liquid lead and tubes of the liquid colors. I had to buy the glass, put it over the picture and then trace the outline with the lead and fill in the spaces with the colors. Everything would solidify, and the picture was done!

  

     The birds have traveled with me to the many places I’ve lived over these many years. There was actually a third picture – I don’t remember what it looked like now – but it was the smallest one, 8x10 or so. I leaned it against my present bathroom window one day maybe 20 years ago, and within a day, Momma Cat managed to knock it off – what was I thinking? So, it has been long gone.

       The bigger of the two birds sat in the window above the front door for all the years the girls were growing up. Whenever friends were coming over and needed directions, pre-GPS days of course, Sarah and Amanda would give directions to get to our street and then say, “go down the road until you come to a house on the right with a mailbox covered in ivy and a stained glass bird in the window over the door.” A house with that description was indeed one-of-a-kind, and the girls got a kick out of that.

       The bird over the front door worried me a little bit. I had it propped up well with paperweights holding it in place on the shelf. But what if the door slammed especially hard for whatever reason, could the glass fall and hurt whoever might be below? And after many years, I moved the bird to a sun-room window.

       When my grandchildren came along, I got to putting both birds in a corner window, placing a couch or other furniture in front so the toddlers would not be able to grab them or hurt themselves. And over time, I’ve given this window little thought – the blinds are always shut to keep out the heat of the summer and the afternoon sun.

       But earlier this month, we had the siding on that side of the house replaced. There was a lot of hammering going on. And it occurred to me to move the birds just in case the hammering caused them to jump off the windowsill. And they were leaning along the dining room chairs for a week or so.

       I got to thinking about how the grandchildren and the stained glass birds are really no longer a danger to each other. Perhaps I could put the birds in a more visual spot? So, I placed them both in the dining room window. This also catches the western sun and has the blinds drawn on hot summer days. But those days are not here yet. And when I walked into the room a few minutes later, oh gosh, those birds made me smile!

2012 niece and granddaughter 

       Of course, they are not great art, but they give me a peaceful feeling. The colors have faded, and there are cracks in them from the sun’s heat. But that just gives them more character – they’ve changed along with me over the years, albeit, much more slowly – we’ve come through a good chunk of life together!

        This third picture is the only one I could find in the computer this morning of the stained glass bird in the window over the front door. When I find a pic not so washed out, I'll replace it. 

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