About Me 004: Doors
Every step is through a door
It’s been a while since I’ve done an “About Me” post, so here is one about significant doors in my life.
1
My childhood bedroom door was at the end of the hallway, on the right side, but angled in just slightly so that, if my bed was against the wall, I could look out my door and down the hallway, through the living room, and into the dining room. The dining room had windows that looked out at the side of the neighbor’s house. It was painted a light color, so even in the middle of the night, the windows seemed to be lit up.
Once, when I was angry about a decision my parents made, I went to my bedroom and slammed the door open against the wall repeatedly. The doorknob punched a hole through the sheetrock. The gaping black abyss beyond scared me. I was grounded after that, and my dad made me help him patch the wall.
2
I slept with the bedroom door open until I was in seventh grade. I made the school basketball team that year, but because of gym schedules, our team had 6:00am practice every day for the first few weeks of the season. I had to go to bed early to get up by 5:00am for breakfast. I started closing my door so I could get to sleep while everyone else was still awake. Through high school and college, I slept with the door closed.
Sleeping with the door closed allowed me one of my burgeoning hobbies: writing. I could leave my lamp on (or, if my parents scolded me, try to use a tiny flashlight) and write into the wee hours. I wrote thousands of songs in middle school and high school, but unfortunately, I threw all those notebooks away. Why? Why did I do that?
3
In high school, I got into classic rock and listened to the music of The Doors. For a time, my songwriting was influenced by Jim Morrison’s lyrics and poetry. “The End,” “People are Strange,” and “Riders on the Storm” were probably my favorite songs.
4
I ran cross country and track in high school. My best friend was also on the team. His mom was the high school librarian, and the two of us used the library’s back office as our personal locker. What grace and hospitality Patti Tjomsland showed to us teenage boys! During our four years running distance, everyone on the team would gather in the library before practice. When it was time to go, we would all file out the emergency exit door on the back wall of the library. If we remembered, we would unlock it so we could get back in that way, too. If we forgot, we would pound on the door until someone (usually Mrs. Tjomsland) would let us in.
5
In my sophomore year of college, my little sister joined me at Western Washington University. I was so excited for her to be around, so I would often visit her dorm on the way to or from class. Her dorm was on the first floor, right outside an exit door. Instead of using the designated door, I would often (rain or shine), knock on her window and use the window as a door. Sometimes I would leave via the window, too.
6
In my senior year of college, I lived in an “intentional Christian community” called The Fort. One evening, we were hosting a barbecue or some such, and I ran inside to get something. Running at full speed down the grassy slope to the back porch, I was surprised that everything looked smoky inside our unit. And then I slammed through the screen door. It was my first ever taking-a-screen-door-off-the-track-because-I-ran-through-it experience. Alas, it was not my last.
7
In seminary, I was encouraged by a professor to attend an event at another university. I was going to go with another student, but he got sick. I should have stayed home. Instead, I drove down to Tacoma by myself to see a famous biblical scholar talk to a small group of grad students. I got to the event an hour early (traffic was not as bad as I expected). I wandered around the unfamiliar campus, but could not find the building referenced on the flier. I went to the library and searched for the event on the website. Finally, I got a building and a map. The talk was being given in a dormitory lounge. I went to the dorm. The door was locked (of course). The desk attendant saw me, but shook their head as if to say, “If you can’t get in on your own, I won’t let you in.” Frustrated, I went and sat down nearby.
When the gaggle of students and scholars arrived, I was too far away to get their attention. By the time I got to the door, they were already ensconced in their meeting room, and I was once again locked out. I hemmed and hawed about what to do. I had promised my sick peer I would ask the scholar some questions on their behalf. So I stayed. For an hour, I read a book in a little plaza, feeling very awkward. When the crowd dispersed and the scholar emerged with the local professors, I immediately went up and introduced myself.
“Well, you’ve missed the talk,” he said jovially.
“I couldn’t get in,” I said.
Later, I told my professor about the incident. He laughed and said the awkwardness probably helped to make an impression. It turned out my professor had not told the folks at the other institution that I was coming, and so they didn’t know to look for me. Long story short, an “open door” to a networking opportunity became a literal locked door that ended with an awkward—if memorable—encounter. (I look back at it now and laugh.)
8
The next door is a difficult one. In December 2017, we moved from an apartment to a house. Our firstborn Emerson had just turned 18 months old. As you know if you’ve read some of my earlier posts, Emerson died five days after we moved in to the house. That first night, before we left the hospital, we had to decide whether to go home or stay with family nearby.
I felt that if we stayed somewhere else that night, we might not ever go back to this house. So we went home. Some folks went before us to pick up all of Emerson’s things (toys, clothes, dishes, etc.) and put them away into his bedroom and shut the door. We did this for emotional survival. Over the next few weeks, we found other items—every item was a new grief—and threw them into the bedroom, only cracking the door wide enough to stick our hand in.
The room was a dark pit at the end of the hallway. The door had a mirror attached to it. Every time we passed, we saw our own grieving bodies reflected back.
The door was always closed. We had not finished unpacking when Emerson died, so we still had unopened boxes in his room. A few months after his death, we found out Allison was pregnant with Finley. We knew we would have to go into that room again.
I went in first. I would open the door, pause, take a breath, then step into the room. I would stand and let grief and sadness fill me. Then I would leave. Over the summer, we had to start getting the room ready for our October baby. Allison entered the room for minutes at a time, building up a tolerance. We began to unpack boxes, sort clothes, hide or throw away items from Emerson’s last days. We decided to keep the crib Emerson took his final nap in. We got a new rocking chair, a chair with the product name “Finley” (it felt like a sign).
The room in which Emerson died, the room blocked by a door of grief, was now open to receive his brother.
9
At the end of 2021, we took a vacation to San Diego for a week. My parents drove over from Arizona, and my sister and brother-in-law were there, too. We shared the news that we were pregnant with our next child, Callen. We flew back on New Year’s Eve. It was one of the coldest weeks in Seattle history, with temperatures down to about 12 degrees at night.
We had to dig our car out of the snow at the airport parking lot. The roads were plowed, so getting home wasn’t too bad. We pulled into our driveway with Finley asleep in the backseat. When we approached the front door, we heard a rushing sound, as if melted snow was raging in the gutters. I unlocked the front door and pushed it open. But it stuck.
I could only open it about six inches. Something was pushing from the other side. I reached in and flipped on the light. What I saw didn’t make any sense. The ceiling seemed to be pulled inside out, hanging down into the living room. Insulation and sheetrock were piled on the floor. Water poured from a hole in the ceiling, and about three inches of water covered the floor.
Our pipes, in the uninsulated attic, had burst while we were on vacation (likely that very morning, but still about 14-16 hours of non-stop gushing). Long story short, we stayed with family for a few days before working with insurance to find temporary housing (hotels for four months, apartment for another seven months). Thankfully, we had home insurance, and thankfully, we are renters, so we did not have to deal with the structural aspects of repair. We only had to manage our possessions and temporary lodging. We returned eleven months later—with one child more than when we left—to a remodeled house.
The door to Finley’s / Emerson’s bedroom was no longer a flat, dark-stained wooden door with a mirror attached. Now it was a white door with two recessed panels. Sometimes the doors in our life change, though they open to the same room.
10
“Every step is through a door.” I wrote this a few years ago in one of my butt notebooks. At the time, I was thinking about the cliché “when one door closes, another one opens.” This proverb is often used when a path (a door) seems closed to us. Sometimes, when we have a big decision ahead, it can feel like multiple doors are open—we want something to close, to help us make our choice!
Then this phrase, “Every step is through a door,” came into my head. Every moment is a door, a portal to the next moment. Our lives are a series of rooms, of situations, which we enter and exit, one door to the next. Each moment offers us a choice: which door do we move through? How does that door affect the next room we enter? What series of doors—what path through the maze—might we desire to take, and what path do we actually take?
Of course, that metaphor can get a bit too convoluted. My point is that each decision, no matter how small it may seem, is a doorway we enter. While some doors may be called “good” and others “not-so-good,” there is always the next door, the next moment before us. (And, as Emily Dickinson says, there is “God at every gate.”)
The End & The Exercise for You
This was an interesting exercise to do. Take an inanimate object, and write about the significant moments in your life involving that object. What are “doors of significance” in your life? It doesn’t have to be doors. Maybe it’s mugs or socks or blankets or faucets or toilets or hammers or pencils or hats. Pick an object, write about it. Learn what you can about yourself from the exercise. If I were to expand this piece, I might write a “biography / self-portrait” from the perspective of the doors in my life, and would include more mundane doors as well.
There is no grand theme or conclusion from this post. But I hope it demonstrates that our lives are more than just the events we regularly rehearse. We can discover unexpected insight from objects or relationships as well. The random memories cozying in the “nooks-and-crannies” of our minds may contain just as much wisdom as our well-told anecdotes. Try out the exercise; tell me what you think about it!
I really like the form of this, Nate. Small memoir on some of the doors that have been significant in your life.