Doors

Doors

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BAM! Neither Mickey nor I could rescue poor little Dinky from an accident waiting to happen.  After surviving cold water dousing from the garden hose this noon, he runs to a familiar way in (or out!), but his face collides with the hard plastic cubby entrance and exit door locked from inside the house.  He didn’t expect that!  Fierce barking … confrontation of sort follows.   Embarrassed, he runs the opposite way and recovers from the collision, but still, he could not escape Cinn’s playful aggravation.  There was no exit, at least for a moment.

The cubby door got me curious.  First, I was reminded of the AT&T service man of recent past, who commented after working on telecommunication systems around, say, “I have not seen a house with as many doors.”   I never thought of it, though it made me check out that to be a fact.  Off I went from room to room around the house counting exit and entrance doors.  There are five at our house: front and back of the house and three found on the sides.  A traditional house has only two – front and back.  Hmmnn …

“Just how many doors in total are there inside the house?” I asked myself in silence.  I walked around and counted entrances and exits to the laundry, to the pantry, to the study, to the master bedroom, and the walk-in closet.  That makes five already.  I was not done.  The bathroom ways alone had three, one to the upstairs deck, two toward the guest bedrooms upstairs, one to the full bath, and a half door to the attic.  Thirteen in all!  My curiosity escalates.  How about doors to cabinets and drawers?  Enough counting!

Doors don’t only open or close exits and entrances.  They, like many things, have transformed through the years and have been fashioned to accommodate utility, ingenuity, whim, and creativity.  Observe them.  Doors could slide side to side, hang up from above, fold like an accordion or balloon in and out.  

Connotations and synonyms have been attached to doors.  People are never content with one name ever, so off they go to inventing words to mean door - path, passage, breezeway, gate, way, threshold, opening.   For inventive specificity and expression likewise, we hear from time to time of a door slammed or shut on one’s face, knock on/at door, get the door.  When giving directions, we say go door-to-door, go next door, a person lives three or two doors down, see somebody to the door, get out-of-doors.  When wanting secrecy, we comment, “Do something behind closed doors!”

Doors of opportunity are most significant, I think.  They allow us to foreshadow possibilities.  “When a door shuts, another one opens.”  This adage or saying invites us to adopt endless optimism.  It beckons us to look and keep an eye onward.  It is in this mindset I want to find and wrap myself as I intentionally close a door to the very thing that has defined me. 

What doors are waiting out there for you and me to enter?