I belong to a facebook group

I belong to a facebook group called “view from my window,”

which has two million six hundred forty-two thousand

nine hundred and twenty-one members, after just two years.

as soon as a dutch woman named barbara duriau began it,

in mid-march 2020, comments under posts began to include

friendly complaints about how long people had been waiting

for their own post to show up, yet when I put in my last name

— and then add my first, since already eighteen people from

the city of burlingame, california, have chimed in —

I see my own post pop up, from late-june 2020, so early on that

it only has twenty-three likes and one comment under it.

in comparison, a post from just a half hour ago from iceland

is already at one thousand likes and a hundred forty comments.

I don’t cite that because I’m jealous but to show how quickly

this group has grown to be essential to people worldwide.

we yearn to see pretty views, yes, but also to feel equalized

by the act of submission, that most vulnerable of animal acts.

the text above my photo says: “olympia, washington, 3:49 p.m.

this is the state that had the first US outbreak — and we’re

flattening the curve now! neighbor cat henry makes an

appearance in this backyard shot,” then there he is, the eye

drops down the middle of the T made by partially-drawn blinds

and the thick mullion, to find a black cat loping along the edge

of the house’s shallow shadow and the green and brown lawn.

within the two bedroom window panes framing the shot, all the

contents of that backyard are in view, from the wooden fence

at the back with bamboo fluff hanging over it, to another one

along the right side, and a short chain link fence along the left

with an apple tree’s pink and white blossoms crowning it.

in between, there is the garden shed with its covered carport

that we would just relax under on the teal adrirondack chairs;

a clothes line stretched from there to the fence at the right

covered here in multicolored flags of kid and adult clothes;

the yellow ribbon of the fallen badminton net parallel to that;

a white plastic laundry basket on the grass between them;

and in the foreground, just past neighbor cat henry, the brown

rectangle of our seed start tray, which we put there every day.

it was certainly bucolic there, however as with all the posts

in this facebook group, we are only seeing half the story here.

what we submit eagerly is the inverse of our vulnerable side.

as I sat at the desk before that split window to take this photo,

I was probably applying for one of the ninety-six jobs it took

for me to get work again, still not until six months after this.

in other rooms of that three-bedroom rental house it had

taken me two years to find — and which we would lose the

next year when it was put up for sale — were my kids with

occasional scary symptoms; guinea pigs that they would

later decide to get rid of; and a girlfriend I later broke up with.

all of this and more is the real reason for the popularity of the

view from my window group: the solidarity brought by not

being the only one out there hiding so much out of frame.

the masses of humanity back up and back up, ostensibly

to capture and share something out there, but in the process

we all bump into each other and have each other’s backs.