Doors

SAW a little girl playing with the glass swing doors, her mother occasionally calling her back to the table for another mouthful of fast-turning cold food. People wait patiently outside while she has her fun to come in. There's a big old sign reading 'Push' only of course she can't read yet. She can't even force the doors open wide enough for her tiny frame to pass through at this age. Anyway she's pulling in the wrong direction, pulling it towards herself and yanking rather desperately, putting the whole of her rather meager weight into the effort, basically hanging off the metal hook where her hands have planted themselves. But it won't budge and as people come in pulling the door towards themselves, she's amazed that it won't work for her. Steps to take would be to pull, not push. That's what they did, right?

SEE so many doors so much that after a while maybe I get sick of it. I don't want to read te big old sign with instructions on the door, telling me what to do and how to do it. I want it fast and furious and oh so perfect. I want the doors to swing open for me without me having to yank or shove or stick my foot into the closing gap of that mouth of a doorway to the point where I hurt myself just trying to maneuver through and past. Into what's behind the door.

Smile and get up and pass by. Gently wait, a patient mother almost, for her to let me through, then slowly push the door away from me. Pushing doesn't make it go any further away. Pushing yourself to do more is in fact equivalent to pulling the door towards you. Only tired peope trying to go back through the door ever pull it towards them instead of pushing themselves forward to reach. They think they are entering something new but really it's just something, some kind of memory they left behind somewhere while running one day. They might find it in the lost and found section though. The dusty little place in the back of their minds where a little child lurks and pretends to be just like all these people who pass her by and know what to do.

Words rising to my mouth a lot. I wanted to tell her so much about beauty and benevolence, and some things I thought were as close to a definition of beauty and ugly, as I had realized so far. I wanted to whisper in her ear all the things she was going to have to look in the eye and laugh and scorn at, even if at home later she cried. I wanted to tell her that she would know so
much someday, someday very soon, if she would just work out how to open that door.