Wooden Doors

"I thought how unpleasant it is 

to be locked out; and I thought how 

it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in."

—Virginia Woolf

There is a story to these doors. I saw them and they took me right back to another time in another place. I was five years old, a schoolgirl at Peterborough Primary School in London, England, where our family was living that year. I have no time to tell of it now. I am so very busy at work, in a way that brings home to me that I had been treading water, executing diligently but without true engagement, which I think was my way of protecting myself. Engagement is a whole lot harder! But I will be back to sort through the splinters probably, because today I see all kinds of connections between these doors and who I became. Childish acts can leave such indelible marks on a life. And yet the children are only being children. There is no one to blame.