I went home last Saturday to a house with no door and no wall.
"Mom, why did you take out the door?" I asked as I put down my back pack. The bell boy was in the garage, taking the screws from the door when I arrived.
I did not wait for a reply and my mom gave me the "It had to go" look as she set the table for lunch in the adjoining room.
I knew the door was old and needed to be changed for the last ten years. I just did not expect that Saturday was the day it had to be relieved from its miserable existence. Not that I had any attachment to the door, or the wall where it was attached for that matter.
You see, we live in an building which used to be hotel. The unit assigned to us used to be a taxi room on the first floor and a family room in the 2nd floor. There were 3 rooms and 3 bathrooms but no kitchen. It was decent, except for the plywood that separated us from the garden and from the outside world. Imagine the garage doors in Hollywood movies that were lifted so the car can park. It was like that. The material, however, was weak even a 5th grade boy can kick it and it would collapse.
But without the door, I suddenly felt naked. I felt that our family was exposed to the world. We had lost our privacy.
My mom sat on the sofa and finally said, "Maybe one of my legs has a mind of its own. Everytime I get out, I hit my leg on the frame of the door." I notice two small bruises on her, definitely marks from a manager with a bunch of keys, hurrying to open the gate because of a hotel guest arriving. She hit her leg on the way out.
But this did not convince me that it had to be taken out. I said to myself, "I think she should look where she is going." After all,it provided some sense of security to our weekend family and most importantly, it hid all accumulated dirt and disorder from public view.
Anticipating this, my mom had the torn green and white vinyl removed. The floor underneath was filthy, especially the part under the stove. The bellboy was instructed to scrub the floor with a giant polisher to remove the black stains and one decade of dust that settled on the maroon flooring.
At least it the dining area will look respectable after my mother’s spring cleaning.
But then I worried about the possibility of robbers. What if they came in and stole our pots and pans our 25-year old refrigerator? What if rapists went up to our rooms? What if the giant rat which resides in our garden stole our food while we were away? Even our three lazy stray cats do not have the guts to eat this rat!
My youngest brother came in later in the afternoon and commented on the loss of the door.
"At least now, the sunlight can come in and it will be bright during the mornings!"
Point taken. "But what if it rains?" I countered.
"Sister, it’s summer."
I realized later in the afternoon as I typed a graduation speech, that the heated discussion of my parents was not really about the repair of the door or the wall that held it. It was about "unearthing the dirt underneath the vinyl cover, exposing it to the sunshine for all to see and scrubbing it in an effort to remove unremovable stains."
But sadly, after two hours, both of them had not agreed how best to replace the rotten door.
