Bedroom Doors
Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 7:24AM | by Otter Some people can’t sleep with the bedroom door open. Some can’t sleep with it closed. Some can’t sleep on the door-side of the bed.
Some of us just like it quiet. But way down deep in our evolutionary wiring is the certain knowledge that we’ll be murdered in our sleep or our offspring will die if we don’t sleep the right way, attentive to the environment or secure against it. So we close the door to protect ourselves, or we open it to keep aware of what’s going on around us
Some of us like privacy. Some of us doubtless do vile and interesting things that were once illegal in Massachusetts in the bedroom.
Some of us are possibly self-conscious about our snoring or what we look like when we sleep. Some are afraid that when the axe-murderer comes, we won’t hear him in time. Some of us are afraid if we lock the door we won’t know the house is on fire.
So we close the door and maybe lock it. Or we fling it wide and stack books in front so it doesn’t close.
When you have a sick person in your family, the door stays open. Every time you wake to the creaking of floorboards or the creeping of dreams, you look down that long hallway. Sometimes the light is on. Sometimes the gentle whisper of a garment tells you things aren’t right.
Way down deep, something in your evolutionary wiring that might be called “compassion” fires off like a rocket, blasting its way past the just-woken fear that a monstrous predator is coming for you. It takes something of that fear with it: you fear that a monstrous predator is coming for someone you love, someone upon whom you depend to step on the floorboards, to turn on the light at the end of the hall, to pluck you from the sea of dreams, and to make her way on thin and fragile legs back to bed one more time.
Reader Comments (7)
I sleep with the door closed because I know that while I'm sleeping, I'm unaware and the door opening will be my only warning.
Also, there is a katana in by bed.
That's a scary picture. I sleep with the door open, lights off, and pillows all over. :) Why is the door open? Just so I can easily hear when a thief sneaks into our house.
A thief in the night, a quiet call for help, responding to the need for love, hope, comfort, chasing the bad dreams, loving any way we can.
Door open for me - always - even when I was little. When I was little it was because I could hear my parents, and so I knew I was "safe" - plus, my Daddy was a cop, after all. But it was really my mom who made it safe. Even as a teen the door was kept closed UNTIL bedtime, when I needed to open it - just a little bit, anyway. Now, I do it because I want to be able to hear the kids, to let the dog roam the house and check out anything suspicious as she deems necessary (tho sleeping on my legs is usually what she deems most necessary.) But always, always I stay up until DH comes home from work.
Unless my mother is visiting.
When I was a child, my mother coming home - after a night of bowling, or maybe my parents had had a police related social function - well, once my Mom was home, I was truly safe. I could go to sleep.
What a shock it was the day I realized that my children felt the same way about *me*. That if there was something happening - be it a scary noise, or other real or imaginary fear - I was *MOM* and I could make it better. Didn't they not see the fear in *my* eyes? Didn't they not know that that noise that had scared them had me just as scared? No, they didn't, because I was Mom, and I made things better.
My Mom will be up visiting in a few weeks (2 of my kids have Birthdays the same week.) The week she is here, I will be able to go to bed whenever I want, not needing to wait until 1:30am for DH to get home from work if I am exhausted. Because my Mom will be here, my 71 year old Mom, and so, of course, she will keep us all safe. Because she, of course, is not afraid of anything.
(and on another note, I hate sleeping on the door side of the room, but I always end up on that side. bah.)
I waited for the door to creak and quieter feet supporting a lighter frame to appear -- legs half covered in a too short bathrobe. The voice would name and question in a tenor: "Bobbie??" Then head back to bed, or, slowly, the feet would make their way to the kitchen and the cooking smells of morning. It was their time, and my job was to be inobtrusive as long as possible in those few moments before we remembered how few mornings like that we would again have.
I also sleep on the door side of the room, which is strange considering I usually sit on the opposite side of the room in classrooms and the like, with my back to a wall, so I can see anything that might be coming before it gets there.
Maybe it has to do with the positioning of the bed itself. I don't like being against the wall (can't leap out of danger fast enough when hindered by bed?). And in pretty much every bed I've ever slept in, the left side has been against the wall and the right has been toward the door, so when I arranged my room in the house I just moved in to, there were only two possible places for the bed to be because the left side needed to be against the wall.
I don't ever remember my mother being a source of security, though. I'm sure she was when I was very very young, just as all mothers are. (I know my three-year-old niece can't sleep at night without her mother at least being in the house.) But I don't remember her ever "making everything better," unless it was in an instance where her grown-up knowledge and experience could solve a problem better than I could.
Door open or door closed, it is difficult to sleep when someone you love is sick.
I sleep with my bedroom door open so my dog can prowl the house. He is the watcher who stands guard and keeps me safe while I sleep.