A Door or a Window?

Now tell me...
would you rather be
a Window... or... a Door?

Dr. Seuss, writing as Theo Lesieg

During the winter one needs to get a little creative to have fun with the children. Too cold to be out and play, ride their bikes or just to take a walk --yes, they are sub tropical-southeners little wimps after all. We bought some board games (the Indiana Jones version of the LIFE game is awesome, and so is the newly acquired "HI-HO! CHERRY-O"), and have been playing with them constantly.

For the last two months or so, and while Ginger's teaching her uncc classes, the kids and I have been going to the coffeeshop for coffee and milks. We usually sit there for an hour making up stories, playing "real" or talking about school (and every now and then annoying the fuck out of other customers when the kids get into a fight). After getting intoxicated with our drinks we usually stop by Charlotte's only? and best comic bookstore (right next door from the coffeeshop, and they also have a blog) to see what's new and for the kids to admire their favorite real-size action figure: spider man.

IN case you haven't noticed or had got so used to it you didn't even remember, let me remind you that winter days have a tendency to exit early. These days show up late, shittily dressed in monochrome gray, wearing nothing but the rags left from a year already gone and half forgotten. And they leave you like the people you never really cared for: unsurprisingly and leaving only a cold air and a bad taste in the mouth.

So by the time we hit our last stop the temperature has gotten considerably colder and the sky's almost completely dark. The library in the corner of the plaza and central ave. seems like the perfect place to take shelter from another winter night. The children's section of the library is tucked into a corner with a big window that faces the sidewalk and the parking lot. How many times have other people seen us running from the van to the library...? Trying to stay warm and away from an uninvited darkness that has shown up earlier than expected.

In our last trip to the library, the kids got Dr. Suess' "Would you rather be a Bullfrog?" book out. One of the questions there is

...would you rather be a Window... or... a Door?

As we read the book last night at the coffeeshop we decided we rather be windows. Doors get on the way, they open and shut, keeping things in and out. Doors reveal and conceal, they block the flux of life. Windows create the illusion of a continuum of life: a window is a see through surface and a mirror.

Last night it got dark while we finished Dr. Seuss's book sitting by the window at Starbucks. The window and the night became one dark surface, a spectacle of life to the viewer or bystander on either side.