My Door
Essentially, a door keeps the inside in and the outside out. Entrance is by agreement, not by force, unless the occupant has transgressed the rules of their host community, or is harbouring secrets and treasures, as did poor old Tutankhamen. Doors can be sinister when they hold captives, or when they deny access to rights, but to most of us, our door - should we be fortunate enough to have one - is gateway to our own sacred space. This past week has seen the violation of a nation’s 7,000 km of front door, and its people have been forced to flee the safety of their personal homes. It makes you think …
My house is down an old lane with a soft spine of grass and daisies, fringed by wallflowers and Welsh poppies.
It has two entrance doors. During my fifty year occupation, I have failed to favour the grand Victorian portal at the front. All life here comes and goes through the back door - once an elderly and draughty pine banger, replaced with white PVC when I succumbed to snug hermetic sealing some twenty years ago.
Doors, of course, have two faces. Viewed from within, a decorative window throws welcome light into a gloomy quarry-tiled vestibule, as well as offering a warped and frosted evaluation of my callers. It wears a recently fitted chain, as befits the now hard-of-hearing and less trusting occupant. Bang in the middle is a brassy letterbox that can never replace the clangy thrill of its predecessor. And in pride of place in the lower frame, is the ever-open, ever-muddy catflap. This has afforded the dignity of both freedom and sanctuary to many furry housemates, as well as their reluctant quarry.
To the left hangs a multi-purpose army of coats and scarves at the ever-ready. Alongside them an old mirror for the hasty credibility check - installed after an accidental exit sporting a charcoal facemask. On the opposite wall, a random collection of seldom worn hats perch above a 'door's open' telltale windchime, and a printed card entreats all departees to please leave the planet as they would wish to find it.
Now we step outside for the world's first impressions. From the lane, there is a narrow and often breezy gap between the walls of my house and the neighbouring barn. In spring, there are floral sentries at the entrance: on one side a mound of deep blue campanula; on the other, a stand of proud yellow Welsh poppies. The latter originate directly from a snatched handful of seeds when my grandmother had to flee her beloved Pembrokeshire home on discovering my mother's pending and inopportune arrival. They sprang up brightly across London wherever she lived thereafter, and I am proud to have brought home that tradition to wheresoever my heart perches.
High on the wall a solar sensor light relieves the total black of the night. Five paces in, a projecting stone wall confronts the visitor. A buddha face looks them straight in the eye, and two large shiny mosaic stars twinkle hello. On the ground, an array of potted plants - usually nosey busy lizzies and cheeky-faced pansies. Amongst them squats a weary but smiley travelling buddha, and a few dusty chunks of protective quartz. Probably some old hippy lives here, then …
And there, beyond a tired black dragon doormat is the very regular white door with a regular brassy letterbox, a regular bing bong doorbell, and a regular muddy catflap.
Welcome to the old hole in the wall that has been the threshold to other lives before me, and to my world for almost fifty years. A portal to my small and ephemeral space, to my ways of being, and the things I hold dear. The gateway to constant change, to beginnings & endings, to hellos & goodbyes, to the welcome & the not so welcome, to surprise & indifference, to hopes & fears, to joy & tears, to life & death, to treasure & trash, and the everyday hithers & thithers, in sickness & in health. And to love in all her guises.
Welcome, and peace and goodwill to all. Amen.