I am thinking about the gate because I am up against it now. I’ve got my back pressed against it, feeling the remnants of last night’s chill air in the iron hinges, although the day is warming quickly and soon the metal will be hot to the touch. It is locked and impassable as always. Usually I give a decent half-hearted search for the key to open the gate. I tend to be good at finding things. “Where was the last place you remember having it?” is the mantra I recite to my children when searching for a favorite pencil or Sam Squirrel or a library card. And mostly that works. I also take pride in my ability to think like a lost object. If I were a key, a rust-flecked key no larger than my thumb, where would I fall? How would my shape and weight direct my fall on this stone and moss path? Or would I fall in among the greening grass and clover, maybe nestle alongside a gingery scented violet, snug inside its heart-shaped leaves? And how would my color, mud-brown-rust-red, hide, or highlight me? You see? I really get into the thinking behind a lost something or other. But this gate! This gate. It’s so big and strong and locked and keyless and as old as dirt and twined with ivy vines, and, did I mention big?
So I lean against the gate and scan the grass for a key. At this point I usually sigh, pick up my notebook and pen, and head home, resigned that the gate, once again, will not open. Not for me and maybe not for anyone. It’s possible, I reason, that it’s the wrong gate. Maybe I’ve made a wrong turn somewhere. But this seems unlikely since I find myself here so often.
I should tell you a little about this gate. This gate is my nemesis. It is a roadblock. It is my writer’s block. It is also a gate, a way, a portal! Whenever I begin a piece of writing that I think has potential, when the words flow as easily as the ink from my favorite gel pen, I pay a visit to the gate.
And what a lovely gate it is, in a very Secret Garden kind of way. It is tall and sentinel and thick with vines that have almost obscured the keyhole and latch. I have never seen beyond the gate. I haven’t an inkling what lies beyond, but I had a dream once when I was 18 about beautiful rolling hills of green, an endless expanse of verdant waves. I took one look at all this green in my dream, slipped out of my shoes and ran joyfully through the grass. I’m not saying I think that’s what’s on the other side of this gate, but I might be hoping just a little.
I also harbor great fears about what lies beyond. Sometimes I worry it will be a landfill with obscene quantities of bedbug infested mattresses and disposable diapers. Not a pleasant vision. I try not to think about that too much. Mostly I am drawn to the gate and perplexed by it. Why can’t I seem to get beyond the gate? And more importantly, why haven’t I really, truly tried?
And so here I am, in this moment, again, and yet it feels new. It always feels new. Hope is resilient. But today is different. Today I don’t want to leave. It is just now, in this space of lingering, of allowing the gate to remain closed, that I feel movement. If I can’t or won’t open the gate, maybe it isn’t time just yet. What if the gate wants me simply to stay? What if I lean against the vines and iron hinges all afternoon? This is where I am now, leaning and listening. The gate is not just a portal, not something to simply pass through. The gate has a story of its own and now that I have my senses tuned I can hear whispers made by soft breezes and tales spun from pea vines--a true opening.
