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 six digit mortgage. The only other home we owned briefly was a five digit commitment in the eighties. Hopefully John's new assignment 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 the past three. 

 

The uncertainties that swirl around this country, and the environment make it impossible to predict what happens next.  Yet when I still myself enough to listen, I hear a clear voice.

 

"Come in. Come in."