On having a front door

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Tuesday, August 26, 2008
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For the first time in two years, I have a front door. I have a tree, too, and a wind chime, and even a little balcony, but it's the door I'm thinking about at the moment. We'd been living in an access-controlled building, which meant people couldn't just walk up to the door. Deliveries had to be left with the concierge, newspapers and mail in the lobby downstairs. Although we were in the heart of the city with a great view of everything going on around us, we were insulated from it. Not anymore.

The politicians got to us first. I was in the front room, an enclosed sun porch where I said we were not -- absolutely not -- going to put the television. I was watching television. With bare feet. An older lady in denim shorts comes speed-walking up to the front porch, waving at me through the window, then knocks on my door. What am I going to do? I open up and get a five-minute stump speech from the candidate herself, who's running for state-wide office. It's so vague and full of uplifting, vacuous hope-and-change rhetoric that I had to look her up afterward just to find out which party she represents or what issues -- apart from the welfare of children -- she believed in. She pointed out a guy across the street doing the same door-to-door walk in his natty panama hat, and explained he was on the same ticket. They made a point of knocking every door in the district. I decided this was pretty cool, a genuine small-town experience.

Since the one chore I happily embrace is mail collection and sorting, I like knowing just when it's arrived, which saves me several daily trips on the elevator. I still haven't gotten used to the idea that I can put outgoing mail outside my very own door and someone will come along and pick it up. That's a first for me. In Houston, in spite of living in a house, we had to walk to the neighborhood mail dump.

This week the Jehovah's Witnesses stopped by for an awkward chat. Was I much of a Bible reader? Indeed I was. Did I agree that God can help in times of trouble? Indeed I do. Throughout the ninety-second chat, I'm thinking of the hundred-plus apologetics stories I've heard from friends and colleagues, including the piece de resistance, in which a friend managed to whip out his Greek New Testament to administer the obligatory smackdown. But I found myself oddly charmed by this halting encounter, sensing that the girl doing the talking (who was apparently being chaperoned by the older, non-speaking lady who accompanied her) just wanted to get through her script, hand off the pamphlets, and hustle on. I know what that's like. She wasn't as enthusiastic as the politician. Her leaflets were full of condescending Big Brother didacticism and surreally colorful artist's depictions of an apocalyptic kingdom.

The front door is so new, I still forget it's there. Every summons takes me by surprise and finds me singularly unprepared to do anything but nod and wait and stare incredulously at whomever has just walked into my life. I'm sure I'll get used to it. I'm surprised it fascinates me so much. Who would have thought a front door would have novelty value?