Doors....

Sometimes insight comes from unexpected sources.  Or maybe it's "out of the mouths of babes...."  I was teaching 7 ESL first graders late in the school day.  We were tired, maybe a little silly but they were working hard on learning words for parts of houses.  I pointed to a picture of a door.  "What's this?" I asked.

Darwin answered, "A door."

"Yes, good," I said, "that's a door.  And what do we do with doors?"

Many answers poured forth: we go out, we go in, we close them and open them.  All good.  I pointed to the classroom door and said, "Is that door open or closed?"  

"Closed!", they exclaimed, as if I were so silly that I didn't know a closed door from an open one.

Then Kevin spoke up in his solemn voice.  "I have to say something," he declared.  He thought for  a long moment and then said, "First you can not close a door unless you open it."

He was talking about literal doors.  That's not what I heard.  To me it was the second chapter of my personal ring saga.  For me to be able to close the door on my past life, I had to be willing to open it up, to take a chance on the pain of taking off those rings that symbolized Mark's and my love and our commitment to each other.  I have to recognize that that door is now closed but I can open another one.  Early I wrote about being a "liminal person", standing on the threshold of who knows what.  Maybe someday I'll have the courage to step through that door.