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Seller Door

Seller Door

I’m not usually one to lean on others. I think of it as rude, or presumptuous to ask someone for help. This is not the best trait for living in community—something I value extremely highly. But this is something I’ve been working on for most of my life.

About a month ago, your mother and I bought our first home. I know. Crazy, right? I just started at a new job, we’ve lived in the area less than a year, just found out you’re on the way, and now we’re buying a home. While some people say you should keep the big life changes to a minimum, we like to go big or go home. And we’re not going home. (Well, technically, we bought a home. So maybe it should be, buy a home, or go back to your rental home.)

We’re quickly learning that the trio of living in a new place, moving several times, and buying a new home all usually require the help of others. Sure, you could always find hobbies to do alone, hire a few moving companies, and/or do all your DIY yourself (without any help at all), but again, we have that whole value of community that we’re hoping sticks around. Plus, I doubt your mother’s family would even let us do those things by ourselves.

When it came to buying our own home, decorating it ourselves, painting, doing the flooring, buying furniture for some of the rooms, and all those fun projects, there was one that turned out to me a bit more involved that I initially thought. And it all started with a simple door…

Your mother grew up in a beautiful home in rural Northern California. It’s not a huge home, but big enough for her mother and 7 aunts and uncles to have grown up in. Her grandparents bought the property many years ago and slowly added and improved the old house that was on the property. Her grandmother had lived in that house for many years and—along with your grandmother—had cultivated a beautiful garden, some gorgeous landscaping, dozens of oak and pine trees, and a relaxing creek flowing beside their lovely, humble, yellow house. Throughout the yard, there are some lovely wind chimes that ring and twirl in the gentle mountain wind. There are several bird feeders that welcome in the hummingbirds along with the warmth of the coming summer. There is even an old, rusty shopping cart that is filled with dirt and flowers that is a wonderful juxtaposition to the greenery and metal antiques that fill the garden.

And then in one corner of the extensive garden, near some glass spheres and homemade pottery, there is a door. Mind you, not a doorway; just a wooden door. It’s sitting in the garden, leaning against the side of the yellow house. It’s not an overly-ornate door, nor is it a very large or even a very interesting-looking door. It’s of normal size and is painted white with ten squares cut out of it and instead of windows like many doors have, it has ten mirrors.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a very strange thing to have this type of decoration in your garden. In fact, it took me years to even notice it was there, but as soon as I noticed it, I couldn’t stop thinking about how strange and out of place it seemed.

A door? In your garden?

And while there are many symbolic themes I’ve thought up as to why your grandmother would put this door in her garden—complete with ten mirrors—I have never figured out exactly why exactly or by whom it was placed there.

But I do know your mother is a bit of a homebody, and loves her family very much. Whenever we’re out and about and she sees something in a store that reminds her of something her mother or grandmother used to own, we usually end up purchasing it. She has a wonderful family, and had a pretty amazing childhood because of them, so I can definitely understand the desire to pay homage to that, or even try to mimic that in her new family (with you and me, bucko).

So a few weeks ago, when I saw that someone was selling a simple, wooden door with ten panes of glass in it, I knew what I had to do. Mind you, they were selling it in Portland, Oregon—a short, 6 hour drive from our home—but I already had a trip to Portland planned the following week for a small, but important fantasy football draft with some college friends of mine who lived up there.

It was decided! I showed my wife the ad and she loved it. I made contact with the seller and told her I’d be there the next morning.

I got in late that night to my cousin’s house—who lived just 20 minutes from my new door’s current owner—and told him how excited I was about getting a door for our new home that was almost an exact copy of my wife’s mother’s door. While not quite as excited as I, my cousin still agreed it was a wonderful purchase. Then we played COD until we passed out.

Now, to do this story justice, I have to tell you another story that’s a bit wilder. I’ll to my best to make it short.

….possibly tell story of dad buying us BMW…

So I didn’t exactly have the largest automobile in the world, or the most apt to move large pieces of furniture around. It was a compact SUV, but I figured it was just one door, how big could it be?

How big? Too big. Approximately 12  inches too big, to be exact.

The new car wasn’t quite as big as I’d imagined and I wasn’t about to throw it on the roof. Even if I wanted to, we didn’t have large amounts of tie-downs or ropes with which to secure it.

So, what’d we do? We sat in the door seller’s driveway for 15 minutes and kind of freaked out for awhile.

We thought about leaving the door there and going back to his house to get some rope and then come back for the door, but I had plans with another friend in less than an hour so that wouldn’t work. We thought about asking the door seller if she had some rope, but were too embarrassed to do so.

Finally, after racking our brains and thinking of just about every bad idea at least twice, my cousin had his lightbulb moment. As we were walking out of the door of his apartment that morning, he had put on a sweet-looking blue bracelet. He had made it with a mutual friend of ours a few months back in a symbol of their friendship and bro-ness. They made the bracelet out of five feat of parachute cord.

It was time to unmake that bracelet.

Technically, these types of bracelets are for just these types of emergencies, but at the same times, I’m sure it wasn’t the easiest of bracelets to create. However, he didn’t hesitate in tearing the thing apart because he knew it was the only way we could get this door in the car and tie down both the door and the trunk.

We spent another 15 minutes tying down the door and drove slowly and securely back to my cousin’s apartment. The door lived in his apartment living room for twenty-four hours, until I came back for it, which is when the story of the simple door got even better.

I spent the first two nights of the weekend at my cousin’s. He’s a blast to hang out with and one of my best friends, so that was cake. I had planned to crash on another friend’s couch across town on the last night, in order to see as many friends as possible in the short weekend in Portland.

For whatever reason, I had to go pick up the door from my cousin the night before I skipped town. The plan was simple. We’d use a similar technique to get the door into the back of the SUV, but use some actual bungee cords and tie-downs, maybe some real rope this time, and secure the hell out of it. Easy, right?

However, right when I was leaving my friend’s house to go pick up the door, my buddy jumped in the car to come with. Sweet. Done deal. Then I had the bright idea of bringing another friend. Hey, we’re moving heavy stuff, right? The more, the merrier.

Wrong. The less, the merrier.

As soon as I parked outside my cousin’s apartment, I had my own little lightbulb moment, except this lightbulb wasn’t yellow and bright, it was shocking, sad, and extremely disheartening.

You see, in order to get the door in the car, we had to put down the back seats. That left only the driver and passenger seats available for people to sit in. I may be a high school graduate, but I’m not a genius.

After a long period of more ideas, some good, some terrible, we finally got the door in the car, and my two buddies—both of whom I’d asked to come drive across Portland with me so we could hang out together—sat together in the passenger seat beside me. Now, neither of these guys is overly large, or smelly, and in fact they both were college roommates for years together. In fact, I doubt this was the first time they sat on each others’ laps for car rides before. But still, this was my doing, and I felt horrible.

Mind you, these are some of my closest friends, and were roommates with me in and after college. These guys are the most solid people I’ve ever met and I’m honored to be able to hang out with them, call them, and text them as much as I want to. While I probably would have been pretty annoyed if a friend of mine had asked me to hang out with them on a car ride, and then told me to sit on the lap of another friend of mine, these guys couldn’t have been nicer about it. In fact, they were smiling and joking around the entire ride back.

These are the kinds of friends that you both want to ask favors from, and never want to ask favors from. They’re quality people, so you know they’ll say yes, but at the same time you know they’ll always say yes, so you don’t want to push the boundaries at all.

The entire drive back to their place we had a door hanging out of the back of my SUV and my buddy’s head halfway sticking out of the sunroof. I don’t know how we escaped law-enforcement’s grasp.  

The next day, we somehow figured out a way to get the entire door into the car with the trunk completely closed and my head only being slightly tilted to the left. It wasn’t the most fun six hour drive I’ve ever done, but we finally got the door home. To our new home.

So years from now when you’re off and married, maybe having a kid of your own, and possibly even buying your own home, when you’re significant other asks you about the door in the garden with ten panes of glass in it, you’ll know just what I took to get it there. And just how complicated a simple door can be.

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