What's Behind Door Number Three - by Susan Haley
Some one recently invited me to speak to a group regarding my work in poetry and prose.
Where does it come from? What innermost rumblings feed the mind and guide the words to
fruition? Not being a speaker, the very thought terrified me. I’m a writer and have used
the written word for any communication of import as far back as I can remember. Speaking,
I tend to get emotional and babble. How could I possibly stand up and speak, briefly, of
the life’s journey that brought me to ‘one who pours soul onto paper’? There was only one
way. Write it. So, write it I did, and my presentation became more a ‘reading’.
What fueled the muse in me? I pondered the essences of living. The stages of growth, the
learning, the accomplishments, and defeats. The blessings and the losses. It came to me
as metaphor. “Doorways”. Life is a series of opening doors, isn’t it? Each opening, is
a life in itself. Wrestling that thought further, I clothed the premise in the triune:
Youth, Middle-age, and Aged (as in fine wine, of course), and borrowed the format of a
popular television game show. Doors One, Two and Three.
Passing through the first two doors of my life, the myriad of rooms behind them was usual
enough. Like everyone, I fell down a lot learning to walk and ride a bike, to share my cookies
and milk in Kindergarten. On cue, all the right hormones kicked in. I loved and lost the boy
next door, experienced the joys of right choices, and learned there were consequences for wrong
ones. My soul found its mate, nests were feathered, some goals were accomplished, others not.
Time flowed into the next moment. Circles turned.
It’s been said that into each life some rain must fall. Yet, the occasional thunderstorms, we
discover, often serve to water our life’s gardens, and I had my share of vibrant gardens. But,
there may just be the infamous ‘big one’ brewing in the realms of happenstance, too. Sudden
widowhood at age fifty-six slammed my door numbered two quite shut. I found myself standing,
minus my right side, at the threshold of a gaping door numbered three. I was unwilling, even
unable, to enter the room lying beyond. In an instant, my gardens were not gently watered, but
a huge field of mud.
Wallowing, it’s often called, when we simply sit and wonder at the whys and whats of circumstance
and resolve to feel sorry for ourselves. I excelled at wallowing. Oh, I worked everyday; put on
all the right faces in all the right places. I was lauded for my strength and courage by those
close to me. Amazing the wardrobes with which we adorn ourselves over our tattered underwear.
My muddy garden had dried, cracked and brittle, into an internal wasteland I was convinced would
never bear flowers again.
An avid lover of Nature, I often used its metaphor in conversation. One day talking with a friend,
he noticed a rip in my gaily-colored cape of hiding. “How are you, really?” he asked. I confessed
that the high mountain meadows of my life had disintegrated into a desert of despair and I couldn’t
find the hidden water holes. This friend, who resided in a Mohave desert town, paused and chuckled
softly. Then he uttered words that were a cool drink to a parched mind . . . “You know, Sue, the
mountains, they fill us up. The desert empties us out to fill again. Look closely. You’ll see there
are beautiful mountains on the horizon.”
I’d always had a passion for the written word. As a child, I’d proudly hang little poems on the
refrigerator door for my mother. Only my own valentines with personal verse would do, and the daily
journal in my diary was my secret treasure where truths were told. In high school, I loved the English
classes. In college, I anticipated every Literature or Writing course with vigor. While digesting my
friend’s simple comment, a sunray peeked through the windows in the room behind door three. Donning
a new shawl of resolve, I took the first step inside.
I started writing with a vengeance. Every thought, every fear, every resentment, started spilling
out on papers and scratch pads. Another secret diary came to life. I began writing poems again; poems
that made little or no sense to anyone but me. They made me laugh, so I started playing with humor
and satire. Soon, even the grocery list took on the flair of rhyme, or silliness, or the philosophy
of why to buy leafy greens.
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I started buying those blank greeting
cards and writing my own verses again for special people and special occasions.
I played with the word processor on the computer and started writing essays.
I started going to the Philosophy forums on line, just reading what others
had to offer. Occasionally, if aroused enough, I’d gather some grit
and post my own ideas and opinions. After all, I’d read a bit of
Socrates myself!
Interaction was what had been lacking in my life, I soon discovered. Oh, not
the face to face kind, the hellos and how are yous. There was ample supply of
that at work. I deal with the public. But the thinking kind. That’s what
was missing. My husband and I had always been blessed with the ability to converse,
debate, and haggle by the hour. We solved, dissolved, and solved again, the age
old questions of ‘why’ and ‘what for’ many times over
in our thirty-five year marriage.
So, it seemed only natural to branch out to the Political forums, the Spiritual
forums, the Human Interest. Any forum of thinking and discerning adults. I made
virtual friends and enemies alike. I learned, and unlearned, a lot. My always
critically organized room became a maze resembling the back room stacks at the
local library. Piles of papers, research results, URL’s, email addresses,
and websites were about to engulf me. So I put up on a website of my own. I felt
alive and with purpose again.
I’m six years into the room behind Door Number Three now. Its walls have
hangings of new friends, new places. In the corner bookcase, realized dreams
collect in photo albums of the Tetons, the Giant Sequoias, Big Sur and the mighty
Pacific. More important, it holds the copies of my two published books. The windows
now have the bright yellow curtains of new experiences dressing them.
Outside, the wild critters stay close by. The squirrels line up for breakfast
on the back deck, and the raccoons and the possums greet me when I arrive home
at night. Inside, two old lazy cats have taken to the new room pretty well, too.
The sons visit and breathe in the familiar smell of home fires burning. A cousin
came to stay with me awhile and taught me to share my cookies and milk again.
He shares his good heart and helpful hand with me in return.
Solitude must have balance, I’ve learned. Too much tends to make you grumpy
and self-centered. Though, everyone needs breathing space and ‘think’ time,
too much can shrivel you up and take the joy out of your doorways, keep your
walls a drab brown. Remember that if you have a loved one or a neighbor that
lives all alone. Share a little cookies and milk with them.
Oh, my gardens still get a good washout now and then; the occasional hurricane
still blows through and drops a few limbs in the yard. But the sun always returns.
Really, there is no lost, there is no found, only rainbows all around, riding
the tail of storms. You only have to open the doors. Oh, and invest in a good
raincoat.
Susan Haley - Author, Poet, and Spokeswoman
