Closing Doors

      I remember just where I was standing when I first heard someone on the radio say it  – “When one door closes, another opens.”  Okay, now I know it’s a cliché and not necessarily true.  But this was back in the 1940s.  My father had just died and we’d just had our first child (named for him).  I was standing in the kitchen of our $18.50 a month apartment (servants’ quarters of an old mansion, no central heat) the first time I heard that platitude, and  I was unaccountably comforted.

      These days, though, doors are closing, period.  That’s it.  No new ones opening—or hardly any.  (Okay, maybe this blog.)  I’m compiling an interesting list of Old Age Closed Doors that I look forward to sharing with you, but for now we’ll just consider the earliest one and the latest.

     The first thing I had to give up because of advancing age may have been Wearing High Heels. 

Yes, friends, I wore these shoes – must have been back in the 1960s.  Even when I could no longer do so, I couldn’t bear to get rid of those patent leather beauties. Then when I was finally cleaning out the back of a closet my daughter caught me tossing them.  “Hey, don’t throw those away!  They belong in a museum.”  So we photographed them for the record.
     And the latest thing I’ve had to give up?  I’ll let you know in a few weeks.  Just had a call from the host of our local public radio call-in show; can I come in on the 23^rd for the noon hour to talk about real estate?  And for the first time ever, it occurred to me that I might not be able to hear the phone-in questions.  Didn’t have any trouble last time, but that was six months ago.  I hesitated, and he said “Well, you know those headphones have volume controls.”  And I responded with the title from that fine book I reviewed for you last week –

“SHOUTING WON’T HELP!”

Stay tuned.