My daughter and I have very different relationships to doors. Specifically,
we think about and use the front door in different ways. The door is old,
as old as the house, which is older than me. The doors wood is sound but
the metal of the handle is not. It is loose in its operation and in its fitting.
In the winter, my daughter will come in the house “just for a second” and
leave this door open for the cold. In the summer she will do the same for
the hot. Mostly, when operating this door, she will close it enough to
create some friction between the door and the door jamb, but not enough
so it is in fact “latched.” In this state and in the absence of wind or the dog
the door will remain like this indefinitely. But if the former or the latter
should arrive the door will open and stay like that until it is returned to its
proper position by someone that is usually yelling. If they are yelling “Jesus
Christ!” it will be me. If they are yelling “Don’t Yell At Me!” it will be my
daughter. Sometimes my daughter will apply the correct amount of force to
the door so that it will both close and latch properly, but this is rare. More
commonly, she will apply three to five times the necessary momentum
required to close the door, resulting in a sound that reverberates through
the house and the neighborhood, as if to announce “I Am Home” or “I Am
Leaving.” Sometimes this sound will comfort me because I know I won’t
have to get up to close the door when it blows open or the dog pushes on it.
Sometimes the noise makes me cringe for the six glass panels arranged in
two rows of three (or three columns of two) which are located in the upper
third of the door. The glass has so far survived the force of my daughter so
then I worry about the hinges. But the hinges remain solid and rooted to the
door jamb. I replaced the lower right pane of glass (as seen from the inside
of the house) when I got back from Indianapolis. I did this after my daughter
had returned from a walk to “cool off” and thought she had been locked out
of the house, so she broke the glass. It goes without saying that the walk didn’t
work. I was on an airplane when this happened so I didn’t hear the sound of
the glass breaking, and I am glad of that. I have tightened the screws of the
handle and latch until they now merely rotate in place. I’ve filed and moved
the strike in the jamb twice. Last Sunday I went to the hardware store to get a
key made but instead I bought a new lockset and handle for the door. It was
expensive. Installing it in the door took the rest of the day because it is not
the same size or design as the original because that size and designed is so
obsolete the hardware store man had to suppress a smirk when I showed him
a picture of it on my phone and asked for a replacement. This morning my
daughter left the door part-way closed twice. So I’ve had to close and latch
it each time when the wind pushed it open. She just went out again and I know
it isn’t latched but I haven’t done anything about that yet. Now the dog is barking
to come in, first at the front door, now at the back, as if he thinks he can’t be
heard or as if each door is the entrance to a slightly different house.