Doors

What’s your front door like? Mine’s green with a brass knocker. There’s a letter box that’s shiny and a handle that isn’t. There’s one of those outside lights that looks like a lantern, which I like to think is elegant but is mostly dusty and covered in cobwebs. (I’m a rubbish housewife because I’m either at work, or blogging about random things like doors).

This is how my front door looks like now: –

But I have a long term front-door-plan. This involves: –

1. One of those tall pointy tree things in a pot either side.
2. Shiny brass bits at all times.
3. A thick old fashioned doormat with WELCOME! or similar (BUFF THE BRASS WHILE YOU WAIT)?
4. A sticky out piece above to keep the mat (and people) dry.
5. A fanlight.
6. A big old Victorian house to go with it.

There’s something about a door, particularly one you’ve never opened. Maybe it’s the lure of something new, something stunning on the other side. Once, in the Croydon IKEA, my son opened a door by pressing a bar that said “DO NOT OPEN!” A siren went off which was so ear-splittingly loud that everyone backed away and covered their ears with other body parts (mostly arms and hands, while their eyes swivelled towards us). A yellow-jacketed man tried, and failed, to turn it off. Then another one came and they both tried. Finally they took off their jumpers and wrapped them round the alarm. It began to sound as though a giant duck was being strangled in the car park. Despite the temptation to run, we just stood there like good Brits, waiting to apologise. My son was crimson by this stage and hiding behind me. I was a shade of red too. I did apologise but what I wanted to say was, “Hail, good Swedes (or employees of…)! Let me tell you something about the non-Swedish psyche. If you put a sign like that by an unopened door, someone’s going to press it. If he hadn’t, I’d probably have done it myself.”

These are doors that I’d like to open: –

This isn’t ; –

Impressions are misleading though. I once visited a shanty house in Turkey. It looked decrepit with cracked cement and a peeling door, but the inside was beautiful; cool, dark, filled with crimson rugs and candles. There were long cushions and a slender stove brewing tea in a double kettle. Probably cold and damp in winter; on that hot day it seemed the most inviting place on the planet.

The doors in my life have feelings; the one to the book shop (pleasure), the church (peace), work (deep breath), home (yes!). I travel through them all the time and mostly I don’t notice them much. Until I’m standing in front of the other type of door, the ones that open and make you want to run; from change, disappointment, loss. They make you long for the usual doors, even the work one, especially that one, because it leads, you realise, to a place you’d much rather be.

Famous quotes about doors : –

“Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else” Tom Stoppard.

“The doors we open and close today decide the lives we live.” Flora Whittemore

“Knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Jesus

And if you never doubt that God loves you, which I mostly don’t, apart from on planes and once briefly during an OFSTED inspection, then you don’t have to worry about the doors. Because the pretty ones are exciting and the ugly ones are surprising. And the worst ones – the change/disappointment/loss ones – are wider. So two people can go through holding hands, one of them carrying a lantern. There may still be pain, but there’ll be comfort too, and in the end it will be alright. Because the last door, the gold one with the WELCOME! mat and the thumbs-up sign, opens on the greatest adventure of all.

And there’ll be something new, something stunning on the other side…