The thing about doors is, you cannot see past them until they open.
When I look at some of the pivotal points in my life... moving from one home to another, getting married, the birth of each child... I can barely reconstruct what it felt like to not know what I now know. But yes, there was a time when I had not met this baby who has forever impacted my experience. There was life before California, and pre John. I look at the pictures, and they tell me as much.
There have been other junctures that were thrust upon me with little warning. Some of these entailed stepping through physical doors, like the ones in the emergency room. For which you can never be prepared. Yet in crossing into a whole new realm there are possibilities, even the frightening ones, that make last week obsolete. Well, not obsolete in that they were indeed the precursor to now, but in the sense that you can never go back.
Would I want to go back?
When we arrived in Pennsylvania, uncertainty hung to our ankles like shackles. Maybe I would land a job to help pay for our first mortgage. Hopefully John's new assignments would pan out. Perhaps our homeschooled kids would adjust to the classroom.
Then the doors of change swung open. My mother lost her apartment in a flood and moved in with us. I took a pregnancy test. John thrived in his position leaving behind the stress of uncertainty.
The current door is heavy. Pushing to find the rhythm of retirement means leaving behind what is familiar. Yet when I still myself enough to listen, I hear a clear voice.
"Come in. Come in."
