Open the door, and let nature in and the kids out.

By Walter Steinwald. Originally written January 27, 2015.

Image by Walter Steinwald.

​From its very birth, we have been using the door to form for ourselves a new womb, a place to stay safe warm in body. It has been a medium to grasp the shadowy world beyond, through story and analogy. It gives a child safety when fleeing to their room and hiding under the covers with it closed. It seems, for us all, to incarnate a provisional constancy of sorts. But, lately in our world, perhaps the door has become a wall, not this temporary barrier closed in time of storm to be reopened when calm has returned. Rather, it seems the door has become a barrier to everything and anything all the time, a place we hide our vulnerabilities from one another, soothing ourselves from the lurking dangers out there. There is talk of children not going outside, not playing in the streets, local parks are lonely, bicycle sales are down, but with this great thing dividing the “out there” from the “inside,” isn’t there an irony that adults can take control of?

​There usually is a good reason for inventions, some need fulfilled or a task lightened, but then come the dragons of misuse and overuse.  Interior climate controls and a well insulated home are wonderful inventions; easing our life and even simplifying it, so we can concentrate on the more ethereal ways. Is there reason, though, to hermetically seal a home on a breezy summer evening, with the lilac and the rustling of leaves floating about? Is there good reason to keep the face of our home tight in early spring when the whole earth outside is waking up and knocking at its winter shell?

​Though we know with every strain of lilac there comes a gust of diesel fumes and the singing leaves are overwhelmed, nearly, with the engines climbing and falling, breaking and rising again. The natural along with the un-natural forces certainly justify, not only, a door but a rather thick and powerful one.  And so we must be impractical at times. We remember the pansy that has made its way up through the crack in the sidewalk, forcing us to step over it and admire it, with the same voice the light tinge of bird song or faint taste of grass hovering on the wings of fumes and smoke can convince us that “out there” is worth having, not only seeing, and enduring some little sacrifice in obtaining.

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A reaching out can be more readily accepted when respect for the door is increased and a meditation on what it means has begun. Its function in literature and the arts, bears overwhelming examples of the terminal value placed on it. The closing and opening to symbolize beginning or end is ubiquitous, so that giving reference to a single or even multiple examples borders ridiculous. We need to think of any story randomly. I’m reading Chance by Joseph Conrad right now and I began tallying the number of times a door is used as closed arms to shut things out or open arms to welcome things in. I count somewhere near ten and I’m only half way through it.

Perhaps this understanding is a kernel that flowers in our adulthood or some universal intuition adults share with children, because they see it much the same. Being around children all the time I wonder at them often and one thing I see is their use of a door. It more often than not means security: safe and not safe, a stark difference from one side to the other. Any house they build from sheets or branches or what have you is not secret until there’s a door and it is closed. No matter the strength of the structure, it is the door that offers isolation. It holds the secret in the place.

With this grave understanding, what does it mean to them when we keep ours shut?  What are we protecting? (Are we protecting or is there a luxuriance in keeping to oneself?) What dreams a child must have about the outdoors when all avenues to it remain shut and locked. There, in the beyond, must live myths and legends, friends and beasts; the child’s fantasy paints wide and brightly. And they are certainly true in their faith, for out there holds many secrets and any one is greater than any fantasy. Through an open door this faith will only gain strength, intricacy and solidity. Opening circulation with the outside, by freeing those avenues and portals, by inviting it in, it in turn invites us out.

With leaving the door open, I’ve seen how it broadens the play space so that boundaries include indoor and outdoor without notice of the door threshold, acting not as a bridge or transition from outside to inside but rather as an equalizer, making one a little like the other. The play activities remain constant in or out of doors. The sewing, coloring or figurine play, the what’s happening is the same, only the place is changing. Another way I see this is with figurine miniature-world play. The boundaries for the miniature world are unaffected by the interiority/exteriority of the house. When the territories of the miniature world grow too large and bump into the house, or vice versa, the figurines are not “inside” or “outside”. Their world has not changed. The house with its walls and open door is just another platform or stage.

Opening the doors and turning off the climate control necessitates accepting outdoor things in the house: flying insects, smells, pets, noise and miscellaneous things the kids will find to bring in. These are the repercussions and they can make one cherish doors and windows at times, but these same hurdles can be used as teaching and ennobling devices.  For instance, when trying to keep insects at bay we found a high quality insect net to be great use. From this, we have all become fair at identifying local flying insect species with help from my ten year old son.  And with home education, the jumping up, grabbing the net and running through the house, punctuates our work with excitement and levity. All in all,  that aspect is not much trouble.

The smells and the noise have also been a great teacher. They show us that acceptance is much more than a word. To live in community one must allow for many things and awful smells from the auto body shop down the street or the terrifying noise from the braking of tractor trailers at the intersection are only a couple of our tutors, often rigorous. Often the drifting things are lighter to bear than those that are carried, pulled or slopped in with little hands.

What the kids bring in from outside can be used as a measure of comfortableness with an outdoors home. This scale is—if not completely, at least highly—situational and individualistic, so that the main caretaker can be the only real judge. As the treasures become messier and the children become more at ease with the outdoors, they seem to find their own balance with what is appropriate or just plain troublesome in or out of doors. The inside/outside toy demarcation thins to nearly nonexistence. It dissolves really to a labor gradient, so that before Raggedy Ann and Andy are brought out, time and means to wash them is assured first, and the same with sticks, leaves and the like, means is made to contain them, first. It also reveals manipulating things to fit with the landscape of indoors or out. Not only the stuffed animals, blankets, pillows and things that function much better indoors than out, on the whole, but even those things more peripheral to place. Weather it is the grocery bag kites or the large dog food bag tailored to be a raincoat, one for the dog and one for them, or parading along the street with a plastic caution flag from lumberyard and a flower crown, I see the open-door play attributing to their spirit of interpretive functionality, and owing its breath to the lighthearted ease an open door creates in a home; contrariwise, keeping those doors closed sympathizes with common rubrics and keeping with the popular categorizations.

Opening our homes to let whatever is “out there” in and whatever is “inside” out certainly breeds ghosts of freedom. Though the door is not used like the sword as a historical or cultural marker, its expression certainly varies throughout both. And this sets one to wonder about our current use and the effects of our understanding on the door and our analogical use of it. With children, I’ve seen nature come into the home, invited, and the home go out into nature through the doorway. This may happen despite a closed door, though it is an odd thing to say. Here the examples of demarcation of indoor and outdoor effects were not scientifically tested (yet) and so not necessarily proving  anything one way or another. It is poignant to note, though, that when one thinks of the word prison, it often conjures up a small darkened cell filled with secrets, bereft of nature.

​And protected with a closed door.