Doors

Some days it is hard to push through the door. Pushing the door outward on a cold drear day in midwinter is very hard. Biting wind and those stinging bits of ice or sleet that will pelt your face make that rightward twisting of the doorknob difficult, so very damn difficult. But you got to be ten miles from here in twenty minutes.

On a sunny day it is hard to twist the knob from the other side. Daffodils explode yellow from the ground. Birds engage in a call and response so enticing you don’t want to go in. Awake and aware in nature’s cathedral the urge to linger is so very strong. The light, the warm light, so fills the mind. Rays falling randomly are driving away the petty annoyances. Bills and flyers will remain on your table and desk long after dusk has come and passed. Leaving that door closed is so easy as you sit back in an old wrought iron chair in the garden.

We are all the same. When you come to a door you make an evaluation. Is it in or out? Your mental process either happens quickly or it can take minutes, hours or months. Asking a girl out for that first date by knocking on her dormitory room door requires you have a plan in mind. You had better be able to explain why you were there on her floor by her memo board if you lose your nerve.

On those other occasions when you heard the harmonies of voices and the strumming of guitars inside a pub your active thought does not even enter the process. It like the two old compatriots driving north and the one asleep in the backseat asks as he awakens, “Where are we?” The driver says “We are passing Spike’s Keg O’ Nails Tap.” The passenger sitting up asks, “Why?” Some doors open just that easily; there is no question and there is no hesitation.

On occasion interior doors leading to spaces that we have chosen to walk away from for months or years haunt us. It might be the office of a deceased spouse up on the second floor of the house. It might be the bedroom door for a child that had passed too soon, any child passing goes too soon. Maybe it leads into the junk room where the projects and parts of things to be completed (and the broken things) migrate. Standing in front of those doors especially places where the sense of another lingers can be very hard indeed.

In our lives we will open hundreds if not thousands of doors manually or by stepping on a mat triggering an automated arm. We may hit a brass circle with an icon that tells us this place is accessible for the differentially abled. With joy we will open doors. With hesitation we will open doors. With anticipation we will open doors. With trepidation and sorrow we will open doors.