But her presence is everywhere. You won’t know it from this winter photo, but
she has the most hodge-podge, mismatched, labyrinth of a garden I have ever
seen. Yes, I have sneaked up in the
twilight hours and investigated. In the
season of life, it grows over immensely.
There are secret passageways everywhere and odd little ornaments peeking
out from the strangest of places. There
are things that don’t belong in gardens at all, but somehow they are right at
home in her garden. There are odd
lights, too. Not of the solar variety
that is common, but of the will-o’-the-wisp variety, the kind that twinkles and
shimmers here and there, beckoning the unsuspecting traveler, tricking the
lonely wanderer, enchanting the solitary lover.
There is this feeling, this strange feeling that if you
were to enter her garden, it might be hard to find your way out again. Yet you feel compelled, called as it
were. To compound it all, a few years
ago she added an old wooden door with the number 58 on it. That is not her house number, just the number
of the door leaning against the crooked tree.
As the seasons and holidays come and go, she adds and takes away silly
decorations from the door. It’s as if
she thinks the door is inside her house and not propped up against a frozen
tree outside. No, she’s not crazy. Well, no crazier than me. And yes, I know how that sounds.
But, you see, there’s a problem, and that would be
me. I have this almost uncontrollable
urge to walk up to the door, open it, and go right through. “But you’ll hit the tree head on!” you
say. No, I don’t think I will. It all depends on what you expect to find on
the other side and what you expect out of the door itself.
Because doors have a meaning! They are entries and exits. They keep things in and they keep things
out. They close things off. They partition and hide things. They act as transitions from one place to
another. And just because you yank them
out of their traditional spots and place them haphazardly elsewhere does not
mean that their inherent function changes.
If I took a teacup out of my cupboard and placed it on a ski lift, it
would still be a teacup and would function as a delivery device for hot tea, as
always.
“For heaven’s sake!
It’s just a decoration!” you say.
The hell it is. It’s a door, and
by its inherent nature that means I am on one side of it only. You can’t be on both sides of a door at the
same time. It’s one or the other, and I have
a sneaking suspicion I’m on the tedious side.
The ancients had special gods for doorways that were
called liminal deities. These gods ruled
over boundaries, doors, and thresholds.
Yes, these things were considered so important that they had their own
deities. The ancients knew that when you
crossed from one side to another side, something magical occurred. There is the crossing from life to death (and
back again), the crossing from one season to another, and the start of a new
path that lies on the other side of the door.
The door is the dividing factor from one world to
another. This is why traditionally a
groom would carry his bride across the threshold. He took her from one life and brought her
into another. Her feet were not to touch
the threshold or the spell would be broken.
He changed her and transformed her by carrying her across, and then she
in turn built a new home and transformed him.
Crossing the threshold of an open door represents the beginning of a new
choice, a new life, a new idea.
The old woman knows what she’s doing by placing it
there. She’s issuing a challenge. We country folk are an odd sort, I’ll grant
you that, but we know a provocation when we see one. We know when we’re being tested. I’m not the only one who stares at the door,
either. I have seen others doing it as
well. Some of them looked quite
vexed. Cowards. Someday I’m going to walk right up to that
old woman’s door, open it up, and walk straight through. I highly doubt I’ll be back on this side of
it again when I do. It’s a prearranged
agreement with the god who sits upon the threshold and bides his time. That’s the one thing gods have an
overabundance of: Time. The rest of us have to keep on walking
through the endless doorways.
