My grandparents had a solid birch front door, four feet wide. Heavy and dense. I had to push it open with both outstretched hands, even as an adult. Once open, black walnuts, well cooked bacon, butter, always butter and the faint hint of citrus from the small orange tree my grandmother nursed all winter long filled you. And as for my grandparents, they weren't the type to be waiting at the door. I wouldn't ever call either of them comforting, but their house was comfortable. Very comfortable. Yule logs lit all day long on Christmas, greyed winter light felt warm from the wall of windows in the Great Room and the grandfather clock my grandmother's parents brought from Amsterdam shook the entire house with each changing hour. But that door, the front door stands sunwhite in memory as where all their world began. And where the outside stayed.
A front door is essential. Fundamental. Grounding. And obviously, an opening. But that birch door doesn't rest heavy as a memory as much as an established belief in how doors should be, a statement that influences how you enter into the next space. From an architectural perspective, it's a first impression you keep coming back to day after day. Perhaps it's not surprising that my home's front door (photo above) caught my eye as a smaller version of my grandparent's, solid and substantial. One I knew I wanted to enter, everyday.
While I was married, our house had (and I think still has) a fantastic front door. It seems only fitting that my grandfather, who once owned a lumber company and my once husband, a logger, would have very solid wood doors. No peek holes or windows, just a wall of wood. I remember the first time I entered my to-be husband's home and the door felt familiar, trust worthy. Some women look and see how men treat their mothers. Me, I'm an architect's daughter. I check a man's front door.
I've learned to check more than a door when trying to read a man, but let's just say a man's house says a lot about what a man doesn't say. So does how they talk about their jobs. Late one night, I asked Greg, my husband, about logging, not so much why he did it but what he discovered over the years of working in the woods. What surprised him were the scents of wood. How as soon as you would saw through the middle of a tree amazing odors would bloom--citrus, toffee and even bubble gum. The heart of each tree has a unique smell he'd say. Each holds its own unique scent. I believe him.
During September of 2008, after being married for just four months, I started getting up with Greg and having coffee with him before he went off to work. It was usually around five. I would sit on the couch while Greg went in and out that front door loading up his truck. The scent of saw dust would fill the air. Greg would load his bags with water bottles taped with duct tape, worn leather boots, a granola bar, a sandwich, maybe, but always a thermos of hot coffee and last to be passed through was the chainsaw, freshly sharpened from the night before.
But on a specific day, September 18 at five in the morning, I sat on the couch and talked about painting the living room, how I was going to bake a quiche and cut up chunks of butter. That fall, Greg had his dream job. And I had mine. I was a wife, adjuncting at the U and working at a cooking school. He was only a short drive away which is unheard of in logger lingo from our house and was working really long hours and sweating out weight in the heat. We kissed good bye. The door closed. I turned to get another cup of coffee. And the door opened and Greg peered in and said, I love you Emily, smiling. And closed the door again.
What shut that day was more than just a door behind a man on his way to work. That day in the hot afternoon sun, Greg would cut a tree that would barber chair, a tree that is rotten inside and kicks back, falls directly on the faller. Another synonym for barber chair is a widow maker. And in one swoop, C6 and C7 broke in Greg's neck, but what stayed were the millimeters, sheer threads in his body held strong between the difference in Greg being able to walk and even months later ski. The neurosurgeon told me, "it was just millimeters Emily, just tiny strands of a difference between losing his life or worse, living an unlife of being bound to a unworkable body." He was lucky. We were lucky. Or so we thought.
So much more than just Greg's neck broke that day. And so much opened. What opened for me was carrying the weight of that tree, the immeasurable weight of fear. I let it consume me and then it crushed me. And not as fast as that tree fell, but more like a slow steady fall, it split us. Sure, it's easy to blame an accident on destroying a marriage, but it's not the accident as much as what you carry from being a witness, a participate in trying to make sense of it. Thinking you can, make sense of it.
And this really is the terrible beauty in losing what you most wanted, you break into tiny pieces, dust really. And in the dust of your own self, you have to sweep up the parts you know you have to let go of. The parts you know that participated in destruction. And find the others pieces to keep growing.
It's taken me years to admit this. I had it easy, I could blame something else other than some of the parts of my own self. You won't find a lot about this in the late night web searches on dot.coms for surviving the metallic loneliness of divorce aka, dealing with you own weaknesses. Believe me, I've read them all. Sure, you can find how to deal with shame, guilt and anger, but how to deal with the weight of your own fear is different. You think if you shut it up that it might lighten. It just sits there until it resurfaces and then you face it head on.
And usually you face it, when you least expect it.
This past May, I had the fortunate opportunity to travel to Portugal with a very good friend, Jaime, who was also turning 40. We are born just four days apart and we wanted to ring in our birthday together. I wrote about it here http://emsmiddlewest.blogspot.com/2014/06/seeing-near-far.html in greater detail, but what I didn't write about then, was what I had to face.
On the eve of my birthday, Jaime and I were in Lagos and had found a fun bar to toast in 40th birthday eve and given that we wanted to spend the day clear eyed, we went to bed just past midnight. We went to sleep and I passed out easily and Jaime, who wears an eye mask and ear plugs ( Yes, I snore at times, poor Jaime) went to sleep consciously.
I awoke around five and heard voices, muffled really and couldn't make out either the words, the language, but heard sounds coming from what I thought was the roof, where we had a patio attached to our room. I peered over to see Jaime, who in her own single bed was fast asleep. I waited. I heard ruffled footsteps above. I waited some more. I couldn't seem to make out where or what was going on, but all I knew was my heart, raced. I was awake.
I heard a body slamming against the door and in an instant I grabbed Jaime's hand, which had been outstretched from the side of her bed and I said the two words, I don't ever like to admit or say, to anyone,
I'm scared.
Jaime woke and squeezed my hand back.
I leaned towards her and said, "Jaime, I think someone's trying to break into our room," I waited to see if she was fully awake. She squeezed my hand again.
We heard the sounds above, the rumblings, the heavy footsteps.
Jaime said, "Emily, that's not someone coming in, that's someone trying to close a door."
And it went silent. Jaime kept holding my hand.
We stayed in that moment and then there was the same sound again, but I heard the door, differently.
Jaime was right, the door was being shut, tight.
We let go of our hands and talked for a bit, laughed for a moment and like some old pattern I have held onto, I immediately felt awkward, embarrassed. But then something shifted, in that moment, I felt something in me leave. I hadn't thought that the sounds could be the sound of a door closing, the sound of leaving. In that dark of morning, I realized I had been afraid to let go of my fear. Keeping my fear, let me keep something of what I had felt was lost. If I let it go, if I really let go of my fear, what would open?
And what's opening is me. Sure, I'd love to tell you I have moved away from fear, but quite the contrary. I'm accepting that it will be there. Even across the Atlantic on a tiny spit of land, in a room of tile and white, you can find what you think you've hidden. It might even just wake you up. And trust me, you will open it, if you dare, and what will bloom might be as unique as the scent of a tree and as familiar as your grandparent's own home. You will know it in your body that you have to let go of what no longer is open, to you. You will feel fear, but know it is not all of you. And in this knowing you will find that you are responsible for what you fear. And it's your responsibility to those you love, those you keep near, to know when to let go, and close what no longer keeps you whole.
Red Buffalo in your Bedroom
The tartan print shirt in wool, unfolded
but fallen on your bedroom floor
in October, is full of pine smoke
and sweat, a scent you can name
through a locked door. You outline
the perfect arch of jaw in sleep,
hold the weight of hand folded
into hand, your own five leaves left
which is the going rate for loss.
The price to hold a season
long past bloom, the shade
of years rooted in red and black.
Alone, your own eyelashes move
over pillow, a prairie drifted by snow.
Each lash lifts the fall of a tree
in a wood abandoned and left
for grass, wind and absence.
You return to the the print of the shirt
a still life of man in winter. When men
cut trees and returned home
full as wet wool, kept a fire lit.
And your bed, once an island
of two, forests a new green
you keep, open.
Loved reading this- miss your posts here
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