My windowless office recently disappeared overnight, thanks to a wrecking ball, when the Yellow Springs Family Health Center was deemed so past its prime as to be beyond repair. For several days after the clinic was demolished, hills of scrap and debris remained,  then trucks hauled away all remnants of the building that had been. It feels as if my office was disappeared, that, like an Argentine leftist taken to a secret location, it must continue to exist somewhere beyond my knowledge and reach.  For twenty-five years I had been enclosed by the four walls of my now phantom office. I had seen psychotherapy patients and consulted with medical residents there, and consoled clinic staff who sought solace within the confidential space I offered. The articles that I wrote, as I worked my way from assistant to associate then full professor, were tapped out on the keyboard of my clunky desk computer, a box within the office box.

Each of the five thousand plus days I passed in my office I longed for windows. It took many years and a sabbatical to Cuba to realize that my yearning for a view was metaphor for wanting a bigger life. Then I left, determined to create more than metaphor. That was five years ago.  Now my windowless office has become all window.

Yesterday when I passed the vacant muddy site on my way to share coffee in the village, a pool from recent rains filled the space formerly occupied by human enterprise. A solo tree, planted in memory of a beloved clinic patient, stood next to where I used to sneak out the back door. I wondered if the tears shed, the articles written, the professional experience hard-won could really have existed now that the container of the office did not.