Shameless Nostalgia

When I moved from the house where I grew up in Grafton, WI, I secretly took with me the knob from our front door. We had to replace the old locks anyway so I rescued the the handle from the garbage where my dad had tossed it. I still have it in a box under my bed at home. I’m not sure what it is exactly that makes it so sacred to me. There’s something about all of the people who have touched that handle over the years as they entered our home and my life. Most of them I probably won’t see again, though they played a large part in my life as I grew up. I remember standing at that door waiting for my dad to come home from work, watching out the window for my brother to bring the car back so mom could drive me to dance class, peeking to see how deep the snow was, or accidentally slamming a basket ball into it. Every major event of my life to the age of 14 was preceded by a photo taken in front of that door.

So today, over my lunch hour, I stopped in to look around the architectural antique shop at 13th & Mst. And it’s a heavenly spot. It’s filled with old doors and windows and light fixtures, molding, and columns, sinks, and bathtubs with feet. And it’s as if someone opened their front door and invited you in to snoop around for a while. Rooms filled with doors, and every one of them has inhabited hundreds of lives. And I kind of feel better about loosing my door, because so many are preserved here, lost by someone, but found again in some manner in this place.