It’s a sad day each fall when I shut our front door against the growing chill. It’s a heavy door, four feet wide. And though it’s beautiful sitting between sidelight windows and the transom above, its closing silences the summer sounds of our small town.
Just a block down the street in the bell tower of the Methodist church, 16 tubular chimes, nearly a century old, mark time. All summer through our open door, I hear the Westminster sequence mark each quarter of the hour. Without looking up from my computer, I can tell it’s ten o’clock or half past three. And at noon and six, the bells call me to the porch to hear the hymns they play. This audible passing of time takes me through my day, somehow managing to both comfort and enliven me.
So do the trains—their low rumbles and haunting whistles tell of places I’ve never been, making me want to go, but at the same time keeping me content to stay home and wait for the next passing through. On days the whistle is so clear that it seems to come right into the house, rain soon follows. My dad got it right when he used to say, “If the sound is plain, it’s going to rain.”
All summer, so many small sounds come through our open door—the swish of traffic on wet pavement, the clanking of scooters on the sidewalk, the chatter of a pack of teenagers walking to the park, the melancholy wail of a neighbor’s saxophone, the laughter of a toddler splashing in the next-door pool, the clink of the mailbox lid. Behind a shut door, all these calming sounds fade away.
What’s left are the interior sounds of winter—the crackling of fire, the humming of the refrigerator, the cuckooing of the clock I picked up in the Black Forest, and the whoosh of the furnace, which makes me scramble to sit near one of the cast iron scrollwork floor grates to catch the heat.
I love the warmth of a fire, but still I miss an open door.
