Open

There once was a girl who lived safely in a yellow cottage on the edge of the woods with her mother, father, and two lovely sisters. From dawn to dusk, she explored and pretended, nurtured and was nurtured. She was safe and she was free.

One day, it was time for her to leave the comfort of that circle of light. She stepped into the woods and saw every door in the world stretched out before her.

Each day, she wandered a little further and opened a new door. Laughter spilled out of a blue wooden door with lemon-colored curtains. Music she’d never heard or imagined before drifted out of a door of perfect pink crystal. She walked through a heavy velvet curtain and found herself on the warm Savannah and she felt no fear. They were heady, wonderful, bewildering times.

Until one day she pushed open a door and found a room that seemed empty.

“Hello!” she called into the echoing chamber. Her hello bounced around the stone walls. Then a sound answered back.

Laughter.

But not the joyful sound she had heard so many times before. This laughter, she immediately perceived, was unkind, tinged with judgment and something she couldn’t name. She slammed the door shut. But the sound continued to bounce around her head.

The doors in front of her, which had seemed so full of life and promise, now seemed like maybe they would be better left shut.

She didn’t stop roaming past doors, but where she once flung doors open and stepped wonderingly through them, now she tentatively knocked. Or passed by without more than a glance. Looking at the doors from the outside was nice. Predictable. Safe.

Sometimes she would see someone else approaching a door and she stood on tip toe behind them, trying to catch a glimpse over their shoulder of what would meet them on the other side. Was it safe? Was it a trick?

For years, she continued this way. Leaving more doors closed than opened. Until one snowy winter day she saw a door that stopped her in her wandering. She caught herself reaching for the handle before her mind could catch up.

No. A door so lovely, so iridescently entrancing must be a trick. Her heart pounding, palms sweating, she froze with her hand inches from the door. It seemed to pulse with possibility. Tossing reason aside, she turned the handle.

It stuck closed. She jiggled the handle in disbelief. Stepping back, she looked the door up and down. Doors had always opened for her before. She leaned her weight against its immovable surface. She delivered a swift, irritated kick.

I’ll come back tomorrow, she said to no one in particular.

Day after day, she returned to the door. Knocking. Prying. Attempting to pick the lock. But her knocks received no answers, everything she tried to slide between the frame and door broke immediately, and there was no lock to pick. Her desire to open the door consumed her thoughts.

One morning, as she sat, legs crossed, staring at the door in the early morning sun, trying to discern some secret she had missed, she realized that in her obsession with opening this door, she had left no time to wonder what she would find on the other side. Would it hurt her?

She stood and put her forehead against the door.

“I just want to see what is in this room, “ she whispered.

Slowly, and then all at once, there were a series of clicks from the other side of the opalescent door. She stepped back. Then, hand shaking, she reached for the handle. The door swung open and sunlight streamed out, lighting up the snow that swirled around her feet. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.