Here I sit yet again, unsure of my skills. I found another old story I wrote when I first came to the internet, some 10 years ago. Though my skills have bettered, I still don't believe I'm ready to be published.
Dad's Door
It was nothing special, just a door that led to a room off of my father's office. It was made of oak, as were all the wooden fixtures in the room. It was stained chestnut brown. The door was added on after the room was constructed, his secretary told me.
As a boy, I would often wonder what was behind it. I would point and ask him what was behind there, but he would just say it was another part of the building that did not concern me. When I, along with my brother and sister, would come and visit, I would try to sneak and open it. He would know what I was up to and stop me just short of the door. Dad knew when I was trying to see where that door lead.
That door was the source of my fantasy world when I was young. Days and nights I would spend hours imagining what was behind that door. The door lead to a land where candy grew on trees or a land where demons used their pitch forks to torment children were the stuff that came out of my dreams and thoughts.
As a teen, I would drop by his office after school, under the guise of seeing what he was doing, if he would be home for dinner or be late. He would always look at me and tell me I would not find out what was behind that door. Dejected, I would leave: my father knew me well.
The door was not in my thoughts when I left for college. I had other distractions. When I would return for holidays and breaks and I stopped by, however, it would be here and I would think of what was behind it. My father would look up from his desk and see me looking at the door.
"It still kills you not to know what is behind it?" he would ask with a grin on his face. At times, his eyes would sparkle when he said it.
"Not as much as it did when I was a kid," was my response each time. We then would laugh.
My sister was married and had children of her own, as do I. My brother is the ever present bachelor. We would all, kids in tow, still make it a point to visit my father whenever we could. The door was still there, after all these years. We never found out what was behind it.
My father passed away a week ago. Although his secretary offered to do it for us, the three of us wanted to clean up our father's office. We felt it would give us one last opportunity to get to know the man. As we entered the room, I still felt his presence.
"Where should we begin?" I asked. My brother shrugged his shoulders, not sure himself.
"The desk is a good place to start," my sister said. And we did. We emptied all his drawers. We found papers he was working on when he died and some that he was going to start on. We found various pens, pencils, paper clips, rubber bands. We found his appointment book. Oddly, nothing was scheduled for the weeks following his heart attack and his subsequent passing.
"What is this?" my sister asked us, holding up a key.
"Is it to THE door?" my brother asked. I was thinking the same thing, and I was hoping it was true.
"Never know until we try," she said as she began to walk to the door. She put the key in the keyhole and turned. The sound of the tumblers connecting properly was a sound I so long wanted to hear. My sister pushed the door open and exposed sunlight. All of us looked inside. We smiled as we saw what was in the room behind the door.
The room was like an expanded closet. My father had four rows of shelves built on all the sides. On each shelf were pictures, souvenirs, newspapers’ clippings in picture frames of my sister, my brother, my niece, my nephew, my son and myself. He, for all of our lives, had collected and stored pieces of our lives and preserved them here, in a museum of sorts, in his office.
"Whenever he was troubled or down or just needed to relax, he would be in here, looking at the pictures," his secretary said as she came into his office. "I knew about this, but I was not allowed to tell you about it. This was your father's place. He wanted this for himself."
Tears began to well in my eyes.
