DOORS

By: Leslie Kramer

When I dream, I dream of home. Some version of it.

For me, anywhere with a lot of doors feels like home. Doors are comforting in their capacities. They let in, they keep out. When my doors are open I can peek in at some familiar arrangement of furniture and pictures on the walls. Feel that rush of comfort in my knowing. If they are closed, I can imagine what is behind them. Does what I think is there really exist when I am not looking?  Or does what is there need my eyes to see it to exist? That’s silly. These are things my rascal brain wonders.

In my dreams, I never see what I expect to see when looking through a door.

Sometimes a room full of plants and old furniture that I didn’t know I had. A whole room hidden. Secretly collected and stashed away for me to stumble upon. Great patterned carpets over dark cherry hardwood. The musty smell of books wafting about. And lavender. There is always another door to go through revealing more space. Unexplored in my own home.

The thrill of the unknown living room with grandma’s old black and white television with the turn knobs, click click click - and the avocado and cream paisley couch I gave away after college. I still have it! In my dreams.

There they are. A huge mirror framed in dark wood on the wall behind the couch. It reflects another door. More doors. Sliding glass. More unknown. Every night before the new doors evaporate I wander. Now is now. Then is dream treasure.

Through the sliding glass doors into a new miracle. Sunlight and old pictures in photo albums with the clear plastic page covering over the sticky white backing are piled up like a dragon hoard in an undiscovered sun porch. Long and narrow and washed in yellow, sparkling dust specs glimmering in the beams of light. How did I not know this was here?

A reading nook with built in shelves covered with books, hard covered and askew, a cozy chair with huge arms and wooden claw feet. A fireplace and pillows of every shade of butter. Better than nostalgia. I walk in and out through those doors. Baffled. Ecstatic. Amazed at my discovery. Perfect in my contentment.

That house with the forgotten joy, forgotten doors is sometimes home. When I wake I mourn my already-lost temporal delight.

Sometimes it is darker. The house is darker, and cold. The floor cracks, great gaping crevices scatter along the floor. The house is collapsing.

The doors are closed. A hundred doors in a hallway. Misty, like tule fog, and the cracking sound. I know I am alone and yet I feel someone else is there. I can sense them with no sight. I listen so hard my ears ring and the crackle of floor – boards and tiles – gets in the way of my listening for my someone else. I want to see them. I need to find them. Part of the house is falling away. I run in bare feet on hard wood. A side of the house collapses and I am still safe floating with the ghost of a feeling that I am not alone. I need to keep running.

Get through the door. Get through the door! But which one. I just choose. This one.

Always different but always the same. I close the door behind me and it is ice, smooth on my back. I am in a bathroom with white tile floors and a huge white clawed bathtub. Smells like fresh linen and wood-fire smoke. Blue accent tiles on the walls. The blue bathroom carpet warms my feet. The pattern in the carpet shifts and changes under my feet. Paisley to plaid, abstract to art deco.

I look in the mirror over the sink and my face looks foreign. Not mine and not not mine. It is older and younger. Haunted. I know death. The real empty of gone. I am afraid. The urge to cry comes and fades as quickly. I reach to the face in the glass in front of me – it changes. It is my face. Fear is forgotten instantly. The melancholy remains.

To the next room. Door in - door out. So long as there is a door the house can collapse. Whichever door I am through is safe. I will never collapse with the house. I hear it shattering around me. It will not take me. I know this. I am sure.

Just keep running. Door after door after door. I can run forever – never tire. Somehow.

That house with the crumbling ache and fugitive doors is sometimes home. When I wake I am relieved that I made it out again and I am back in the light.