My back door

My back door keeps blowing open at 4:00 in the morning. I know what time it is because I sleep, often, in the living room - my bedroom is adjacent to my husband's home office and he works until 2 in the morning, while I like to turn in by 10. So when I hear it creak open, I look up, and there is the time, green and glowing on on the Cablevision box.I also know because often, like today, I am already awake - and thinking about things like fear, anxiety and sleeplessness. This is when I think about those things - and work them through on little rectangles of index cards.I have not been a worrier for years.I remember when I was a worrier - and what that felt like, back in the day. I grew up in a kind of worrying soup - you know what I mean? In that way that we live in the stew of whatever our family is, all simmering together until we are old enough to take our particular flavor out on its own.So I know worrying - and worriers - the way one knows a critical and humorless great aunt; a cousin who drinks too much and says, always, the wrong thing - that uncomfortable but familiar old sweater - that itches.I don't wring my hands or wait up late or fear the collapse of our particular house of cards. Oh, there is the occasional thing I wish I hadn't said; the phone call I wish I hadn't made - and that damn email I sent once that I will always regret. But I don't worry much.At least I didn't until my mom got sick last year and I was pulled into the orbit of her life - and into the soup - again. Lately, I find that I've been worrying about her worrying.The patterns are there, buried in my psyche like old tire tracks in a field; and sometimes, when my defenses are down, like at 4:00 in the morning, fresh from sleep, I realize that I'm losing myself in her story - or the story of some other family member who is worrying about something that is not mine.And then, since I'm up and lying there - my worry tracks open, other things slip in: What about Dad? and What if my book never sells? and Why am I lying here, scribbling notes  in the dark when I am sure that all the other bloggers and writers and daughters are fast asleep?Which is a ridiculous thing to be sure of when in fact, I am (almost) certain the opposite is true.Freaking reptile hour.Today, since I was up anyway, I moved to my desk. Now, I'm sitting in the glow of the computer, which is comforting - with its illusion of a great crowd of listeners. As if I am not alone. As if the door is not blowing open.I wonder what all of this means: The blown open door. The sleeping on the sofa. The green glowing 4. The invisible audience listening.And the gust of fresh air that blows into the room, what of that? I can hear it whistling around the farm, a song that I've been listening to since my children were small.Sometimes, it feels as if I'm being called and I lie in the dark, awaiting the visitation or vision that will change my life. Other times, it feels as if the thing that I call for has arrived - the transformation, the big change, the clearing wind that will rush through the rooms of my life, kicking up dust and tossing 'round the curtains.It can feel as if someone has come into the kitchen. And a few times, I have called out the name of one of my children - they are 20 now and both prowling the middle of the night, as 20-somethings do.The one time that it was one of my children - the time I heard the door push open and called out and my son answered, I jumped - more startled by THAT than I am by this blown open door.He was tiptoeing by with a girl and, when he saw I was awake, he came back downstairs. Don't worry, he said. He'd put the girl to sleep in his sister's bed. She's a friend, he said. I didn't think she should drive.Which reminds me that I am also, sometimes, worrying about these children and the angst-ridden lives they flow into and out of - which seems a part of being 20 and 22.At this hour, it all runs together like dreamscape - flashes of imagery that, if I lined them up end to end would tell me a story about myself. A story of an opening door. Of tiptoeing and a girl I do not know.We should certainly replace the lock. And my husband wrapped the door in bubble wrap - really, he does things like this - to make a tighter seal, which may make it, instead, easier to blow open.Still, it blows open and when it does, I get up. I turn on the outside lights and check for prowlers. I re-lock the door, and I block it with whatever is handy so it can't open again. Then, usually, I go back to the sofa and I lie in the dark listening to the wind.---Later this morning, I woke again and pulled open The Book of Symbols. I do this at random, opening to any page my hands choose. It's a form of divination, and with 800 pages of all of the symbols of the known universe there at my fingertips, quite effective. Here's the reading:Goat, Sword, Black, Blessing.I sit with it, wondering what it means and also, knowing.(Note: This is the process that led to the Soul Call Cards. Amazing things can happen in the middle of the night... with words and symbols and open doors.)