Once, when I was four, my mother went to church down the street, leaving my sister (who was three) and me with our father, who remained in bed, asleep.  At which point, I decided that my sister and I should go to church, too.  We’d been to church before, but never by ourselves.  We’d never stood alone on the church steps in front of the double doors that now loomed over us like a wooden angel with a giant pair of wings.   Would we be able to open the door on our own?  Should we knock?  Somehow we managed.  I don’t remember how, but I do recall holding my sister’s hand as we clomped down the aisle in our floppy boots, feeling mighty pleased at having gotten through the door by ourselves.

My son graduated from college this past weekend.  It made me think about door as metaphor.  One door closes, another opens.  At this same college a few years ago, some students  erected a kind of pink uterine tent where the door was a vagina.  I didn’t get a picture of that.  It would have been interesting, to say the least.

I am fascinated by doors.  The look of them, the idea of them.  The ins and outs of them, the open and closed.  The splendid endless variety of them.  Sometimes they are scary.  Sometimes, daunting and formidable.

And sometimes they take my breath away.