Closing Doors

Throughout life, doors open and doors close. The openings are exciting: The closings are not. One might look at them like chapters in a book except for with chapters there is always a continuation. If we do not realize this, closing doors slam. It’s gentler if we acknowledge, early on, that there are stages of life—however small, that we need to understand.

The birth of my second child illuminated this process for me. In my post The Gift, I traversed the trauma of my baby’s first moments, days, and weeks. I remember vividly saying to myself the door to childbearing had closed. I simply could not bear carrying a child to term and nearly losing her or him at birth.

There are times we need to force doors shut. The situation may be poor, and we need to move on. 

I have seen many doors shut during my life. The openings are fewer. But the memories that lay beyond shut doors are still there. Sometimes they’re haunting. When we have unfinished business behind closed doors….

A particular memory behind one of my closed doors still haunts me. It’s this:

These are pictures and a discussion of blown inputs on a microscopic circuit. Yes—I know—who cares, but I did and still do. The problem dug at me, and I knew my proposed solution would negate the purpose of the device. 

This device had to be fast, like this:

My proposed solution (which I never spoke up about) would skew the speed of the device. When you work on your computer, you expect things to come up quickly—in the blink of an eye. If this device reacted slowly because of a circuit change—oops….

But I never piped up and got a. “Yes or No.”

My point? We travel on all sorts of roads in our lives. When we close those doors, we sometimes leave unfinished business behind. We also leave behind the people who could give us answers. It’s time to let go. Grumblegrumble Tickletickle But it’s difficult to do. 

( I remember little about the work I did, but this blares at me. The truth was, you just had to be damned careful with the device. Static electricity would blow out those little dark spots arrowed on the first circuit photo. Rub your foot on a carpet; touch the device and poof. Lucky me to be responsible for such a device. I kept a can of Static Guard on my workbench. )

Close the door on that one.

My work felt unfinished. Have you left unfinished business behind? Let it go. It’s healthy to move on in your journey. There are new adventures—new explorations. Old business will just hold you back.

This one’s for you Milos Djukic. The memory is a good one for me—exciting actually. But then—I was an egghead. Quality is poor, and the scan sucked. Looks better in real life. All those little electrons show up in the scan.

Copyright 2017 Joyce Bowen