A Window of Opportunity

Set your story within a window of opportunity, when a character finally has the chance to do something.

A Window of Opportunity 

‘The great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it’

The word window came from the Old Norse word vindauga which means ‘wind-eye’.  An opening was cut in the wall in order to allow air in and smoke out.

In 1618 a word was invented called defenestration, which means the ‘action of throwing out of a window’. Two Catholic deputies were tossed out of a window in a castle in Prague by Protestant radicals. This incident sparked off the Thirty Years’ War.

In Emily Bronte’s famous book, Wuthering Heights, Mr Lockwood hears what he thinks is a branch tapping against the window but when he attempts to break it off, to his horror he realises it is an ice-cold hand. It is Cathy’s ghost and it cries out, ‘Let me in, let me in’.

So windows have featured in history and in literature and apart from their utilitarian function, they have become important symbols. There is an expression, ‘a window of opportunity’. It means there is an opportunity to achieve something, but it is time-limited and you have to act within the timeline of the opening. In the 1960s, NASA coined the phrase, ‘launch window’ to describe an auspicious time to launch their space rockets. 

The most beautiful window I ever saw was a bay window. I had been brought up in a farmhouse in South Derry and the windows were quite small. When I went to Queen’s University in 1975, I stayed in Aquinas Hall which was Catholic student accommodation on the Malone Road in South Belfast. It was run by Dominican nuns. When I arrived I had no idea of its architectural splendour. I later found out that it was designed by Samuel Stevenson, a Belfast architect and was commissioned by a tea merchant, James Johnston and that ‘the cream-stuccoed house’ was in an Italianate style. I love architecture although I do not understand it. I only know that when I arrived and l looked at the beautiful porch with the Corinthian polished granite columns and the amazing bay windows I realised I was not in Swatragh anymore.  

I was later to learn that the bay window in one of the rooms on the ground story was celebrated by the poet Louis MacNeice in his famous poem ‘Snow’. 

I had no idea that the poet Louis MacNeice lived in this splendid house.  He was overcome by the incredible beauty of the scene of roses and the snow against the window:

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it

Louis MacNeice commented in the last line of the poem, ‘There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses’.

As I stood there in my new accommodation and looked out the beautiful bay window, I realised that it was more than just a window, more than just glass. A window represents a new life, a new chance for me. I was staying in a house where a poet had lived, a famous poet who saw that there was more than glass between the snow and the huge roses. I was going to be studying literature at the University which was my lifelong dream and in a way the window represented to me, my new window of opportunity. This was no ordinary window— this window had been celebrated by Louis MacNeice and was therefore a famous window—it inspired the poet to write this amazing poem.

When I sat in the very same room with the big bay window where the poem was composed, on a warm late autumn afternoon during my first semester, I tried to imagine the ‘great bay-window, ‘spawning snow and pink roses against it’. I thought how poetry could bring you into another world and even on an autumn evening, you could imagine snow and pink roses lying against the window pane. I thought about snow and how it could suddenly transform everything. The poet suggests that everything is not as it seems.

I was very privileged to be able to stay in Aquinas Hall in South Belfast and I was sheltered from the war that was happening on the streets of many parts of the city. 

When I arrived it was autumn and I can remember how beautiful the trees were in South Belfast. I loved nature and I was relieved that I would be staying in a tranquil area. I had moved from a quiet country area to a war torn city and the Troubles were intensifying. The UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) ramped up their murders and bombings in response to the Provisional IRA truce which had begun in February 1975. They were worried that the British would forsake them and they would be forced into a United Ireland. I suppose I thought it was in my interests not to focus on the conflict but to concentrate on my studies.

So while windows were being blown to smithereens in Belfast City Centre and many other town centres in the North, I was able to pursue my studies in relative stability. I never took this for granted. 

Wendell Berry writes that a ‘window is a form of consciousness’ and adds that it is ‘pattern of formed sense through which to look into the wild that is a pattern too, but dark and flowing, bearing along the little shapes of the mind as the river bears a sash of some blinded house.’  

And now when I drive past Aquinas Hall on the Malone Road, which is no longer student accommodation, I always think of the beautiful bay window which I first saw in 1975 and the wonderful poem by Louis MacNeice. Yes, ‘there is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses’ and as my life unfolded, some windows of opportunity opened and I always seemed to be have been able to fulfil my potential and follow my dreams.