Two months ago I wrote the following poem:

The Doors in This House

In this house I must keep fighting with the porch door,
They close all throughout this house but don’t latch.
The only way to win is to slam it hard
And wiggle the handle wildly.
He wakes from the other room,
It’s past noon
And is yelling at the sound.
We aren’t sleeping well
Too much, too little, too wrought with nightmares.

The doors in the house have glass nobs
And indiscernible metal that might have once been brass.
From room to room they differ
The nobs come apart and smash to the floor
Leaving you stranded on the other side.
The sound makes him angry.

The wood is gouged but beautiful
Even with Ramen stains in the kitchen,
and misled paint in the bathroom,

In the living room
There’s acid burn from that time with the lime and the Samurai sword.
These doors and this house have grown completely off kilter.

But above almost every door is a shim
A “dziadzio” fix and we find them all over the house,
Places that with time and creativity – he supported
The next three generations that have lived and live in this house.

The doors in this house, with out fail, fall apart all the time.  The hinges don’t fall off but the handles screw apart and the side opposite you crashes to the floor, you have the nob on your side in your hand, and you’re stuck, closed door in your face, no way in.  The kitchen door has been this way especially lately.  I think it’s missing a screw.  Every time the handle is turned to the right, I can feel it unthreading and the mechanisms inside won’t turn to let me in. Or yesterday when the handle to the spare bedroom down stairs just came apart and I was shut in a room when I was trying to get out to the bedroom to check on Babu!  Well what do I do?  I start turning the kitchen door nob to the left and it works out perfectly and I managed to put the bedroom door handle together enough to get out and then left the two pieces of it on the bureau for Adam to fix.  Babu was fine in the moment it took me and she needed no help at all.

The poem shows the house to be a little antagonistic but this is how things are here.  It’s not easy.  Things that should be aren’t and it causes it’s damn share of frustration.  But we navigate it, fix it, and move on.  I’m getting the hang of it while this house is getting cozier.  Both are happening every day.  We got new appliances to replace ones that his great grandparents had installed once upon a time, my garden has become mine, for better or worse, and my writing space is just as it needs to be.  I’m thinking the same thing I did the day I can home from my last day of teaching:  “I’m home.”

For the Discover Challenge:  The Story Behind a Door