In Enchanted April, the ladies arrive at the Italian villa at night in a driving rain. The next morning they throw open their bedroom window shutters to reveal a landscape that transforms their spirits. My favorite line is said by the lady who calls men “grabbers” and has survived on that kind of relationship simply because it’s the only type that has come her way. Near the end of the story she approaches the man who owns the villa on the terraced patio. He has been preoccupied with a woman in their party that he didn’t know is married and, probably for the first time in her life, it made this lady feel invisible. She finds him lamenting aloud about how he thinks the married woman must be “wonderful inside”. The lady agrees “that’s important”. And when he suddenly falters at the edge, she says, “Sorry. I had to grab you.” This summer brought an unexpected amount of “door and window” activity into my world, including an enchanted one.

Firstly, and in the literal sense of doors and windows, I chose to improve all the cabinet doors in my kitchen, taking each one off, giving it 4 coats of paint and a handle, and then reattaching each to its respective cabinet. Two of the doors belonging to upper cabinets are as big as I am! But there I was, standing on the counter, screwing them back into place singlehandedly. Then there was the crew I hired to seal up all the cracks and exposures around ground and second story deck doors and windows that had allowed univited pests to enter the house. There’s also the window that my cat Buddy uses to manifest sunrise every day, which makes my heart happy. And special mention for the bird poop I couldn’t get off the passenger side window this weekend that I knew my friend would focus on within minutes of her taking a seat in my car.

As for non-literal examples, I’ve felt a rush of “door and window opportunities” in the past couple of months. One of them was the Enchanted April kind of window; it gave me the dream view of what life can look like when you no longer accept only the basics of what the world can offer. Then came an open window on a situation where the corresponding door had closed a long time ago. It was fun to look inside that window again, but I could no longer find what I needed there. Not long after, while I was still basking in the hard-to-forget glory of the enchanted window, a new door suddenly appeared. It seemed like a good door, a solid door, and it was certainly a door in close proximity. But one could not describe it as anything other than an average door. Over several weeks, I periodically received a knock on that door. Just loud enough to prompt me to think, “Maybe this is the time when it will fully open. Maybe this time I’ll see what’s behind the door. Maybe there’s enchantment within.” But every single time it was a disappointment, energy wasted without apology or simple understanding of the resource drain. It was a sideways door. It was a trap door. And while I allowed that door to distract me by trying to make it enchanted when it clearly was not, I had enough presence of mind not to fall through the trap. The original enchanted, dream window had been so fortifying that I knew didn’t have to settle for this “grabber” door. So last weekend I bolted the trap door from my side, and the opportunity on the opposite side seemed to happily retreat back into its miserable corner. With all that weight lifted from my shoulders I ran back toward the dream view, with full knowledge that the enchanted window had likely closed. And from my current vantage point, it has. But the good thing about windows is that they are clear. So no matter what, I haven’t entirely lost the enchanted view.