Behind Closed Doors ~ 1

Behind Closed Doors

An ordinary looking brown box, forgotten in a dusty corner, had been found in a last sweep. The attic had been cleared of a lifetime of treasures. How could this box have been a treasure? The brother and sister looked at each other, sharing the same thought - ‘one more item for the trash’. When they brushed fine attic dust away, curiousity got the best of them. Doors. A tiny brass key hole. The doors opened more easily than expected.

A flood of forgotten stories from their grandfather’s knee poured from within. Sunday..November...30.  The day and date posted across the top, with hidden knobs that turned to the next day and date. The white slate on the inside of one door - “Grandfather wrote lists and notes on there!”  “And look! There’s a drawer at the bottom!” Crisscrossed ribbons inside the other door where a dried rosebud had been tucked. Their grandmother’s picture, a young bride, had been in the little frame above the rose bud. Brother and sister talked so fast their words tripped over each other. Soon they fell silent with their memories and the remembered feelings of waves as their grandfather rocked them in his old chair and spun yarns of his youth.

The siblings had been at loggerheads over the last many years. Coming together over this old seaman’s writing desk had crumbled the footings of their irritations and angers. The walls, while not tumbling down, were definitely unstable. Behind the closed doors of the old box, there had opened an invisible, shimmering picture of their childhood friendships. No key for the little wooden doors, lost in some crevice or crack years before, brother and sister each held a key to their own lives. Could they accept each other, live their own lives, and renew their friendship?

The old writing desk did not go to the trash. Each year, at Thanksgiving, brother and sister’s families met. The ordinary looking brown box was brought out. Stories and yarns spilled from the little desk drawer, the upright slots for letters, the doors, and, of course, every one wondered what happened on Sunday, November 30 long, long ago.

“All stories are true. But some of them never happened.”

~ James A. Owen, The Search for the Red Dragon