Break On Through to the Other Side

Today two big guys came to our house and bashed a hole in our wall. Well, they measured it, then they sweated, went under the house, did some stuff to the water pipes (or so they said), took out a saw that I'm pretty sure they used to amputate legs in Civil War days and then there was suddenly a hole in the wall.

Your bedroom looks really weird with a hole in it, it looks dwarfed, like it's going to spill out into the yard. (Can I even say dwarfed anymore? Do I have to say Little Peopled?) The room, I KNOW, did not change shape or dimension in any real way, but it DID change, in every way, as the hours passed. At first it looked like a big mistake, like we were going to be living real up close and personal with nature, and as a natural girl, I like nature but I don't like to sleep in it. The room looked shrunken to Chicklit size, a raft of a room beside the pool. The pool, in fact, introduced itself in a way it never had before and wanted to come inside and meet the bathtub.

Then the guys covered the room with plastic in an ET- medical experiment way and continued cutting and making general banging noises behind the white opaque shield. The room started to look longer, I can't explain it.

Then at the late hour of 7 pm, the door is in. The French doors, and we all sighed and sat on the floor of our bedroom in front of the beautiful doors, that look out on green bushes I just trimmed, and blue pool cover and red barn and yellow dog laying in the grass glad we're all staring at him. The air blew in and we had made a new space and I see why astronauts like space travel. Its refreshing to see new angles on old things.

One of the workers, Tim, could only smile with half his face, like he was saving the other half for something REALLY funny, he was from Alabama, an actual white guy, and I told him I loved the South, I miss humidity. He actually turned to look at me on that one. I do love the feeling of walking out your door at 11 at night in August in the South and being completely and disgustingly sweaty. He lives at the beach in Ventura now. Like moving from a sauna into a rainstorm.

The other worker, the leader, had arms like hippopotomus legs, bulby in a good way. In an I Could Lift Your Piano Off You In A Fire, way. We loved both our guys.

Nathan sat there from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., just sat there. Took pictures. He loves busy-ness. Wreckage. Concise work. Tools. He loves to observe. Then he did mow the lawn and I made him an apple pie. Well, everyone.

But sitting in front of those open doors, with our beautiful wood floor leading out into nowhere, out into the wilderness of our backyard, the kids laying on me, eating smoothies we made, Moose sitting on the bed, Barry and Nathan stepping in and out of the threshold - it was like a picture coming to life. A moment we could feel of summer, of this life.

(See the title, get it? The Doors?)