By Betty Miller Conway
My youngest left for a new job in Idaho last week. I put my winter coat over my flannel pajamas and followed her to the barn as she said goodbye to Josephine the pig and gave the donkey a quick pat. Her dad handed her a can of corn, and she dutifully threw it to the chickens, the kernels making an orange-gold arc in the air before landing in the muddy barnyard. Then I stood waving, shivering in the cold March wind, as she drove down the driveway and out of sight around the first curve on Willett Miller Road.
She left her doorknob collection behind of course. The white Subaru station wagon only had room for essentials like camping gear, backpacks, clothing, and the never-to-be-left-behind fishing pole. The doorknob collection still sat on our coffee table—an odd assortment of glass and metal in various shapes and sizes. I think my favorite might be the deep purple glass octagon I picked up at an antique store in West Jefferson. But the gold beehive shape I ordered off Etsy that came all the way from England is special, too. And then there is the smooth, brown-speckled doorknob that came from the old house that my great grandfather built in 1899. Really, it would be hard to pick a favorite since they are all imbued with so many memories.
I started the collection for Lina almost as a joke when she was nine or ten years old. We had been watching the old TV series Bewitched. For those of you who are too young to remember, Bewitched was about a beautiful witch named Samantha who marries a mortal named Darrin and attempts to live an “ordinary” human life as a housewife. Nevertheless, she could twitch her nose and transform reality into something else. Her adventures were complicated by her mother, Endora, and her Aunt Clara—an endearing but rather comical figure who had a doorknob collection which she carried around and polished. Aunt Clara had a hard time going though doors and walls since she lost some of her powers due to age. Lina and I would laugh and laugh when Aunt Clara, doorknob collection in hand, got confused and came down the chimney or landed in a broom closet instead of where she was supposed to be. The magic in the show was clunky and unsophisticated (it was filmed in the 60’s after all), but Lina was entranced, her eyes bright with excitement every time Samantha twitched her nose and changed the course of ordinary everyday life.
I bought Lina a doorknob or two from the antique store just for fun, and then the project blossomed and became a family tradition. I always tried to find her a doorknob for any milestone she reached—one for each birthday, her high school graduation, and then a special decoupaged doorknob with the Wake Forest logo on it when she decided to go to university there. Even now, I’m always on the lookout for doorknobs. I like holding them in my hand remembering that earnest, sweet little girl who took time away from her studies and busy school activities to watch an old silly television show with her mother, even after she outgrew the magic. And to think about the doors the knobs might have opened in the past and wonder what doors they might open in the future.
But sometimes I think I am like Aunt Clara these days. Transitions are more stressful for me than they used to be. I, too, find it harder to get through life’s doorways, especially the ones that send my daughters to different continents! And this spring is full of transitions. Lina came home from New Mexico for only a month before she began a new job at a school in Idaho which will eventually take her even farther away to South America. Olivia is finally getting married in April after almost three years of postponements due to covid, and Mary Ellis will be recognized for her master’s degree at a graduation in May and then will go off to who knows where. These are celebratory milestones in their lives, and I am happy for them.
Nevertheless, these milestones are reminders that we are all growing older, and that the time is passing far too quickly. Sometimes I wish that I could twitch my nose, like Samantha, and transform us all back into the childhood years when they were safely on the farm and my biggest worry was that they would eat too much sugary cereal. I know it is cliché to say it, but it really does seem like it was only yesterday that we walked the long driveway to the mailbox and waved to the mailman as he drove away. Now it is my turn to wave to my daughters as they adventure on without me.
I guess it’s fitting that all of this is happening in early spring as the farm transitions from winter to spring. The calendar may say that it is spring, but nobody told the weather! It’s been especially windy this spring. Our rail fences, which withstood 50 miles per hour winter winds, got blown over recently. The bright yellow daffodils were crushed by cold snow and wind earlier in the month. Transitions can be tough stuff! When I hear the winds blow in March and early April, I cover my ears and wonder why in the world spring is taking so long to come.
But despite my own human misgivings, the seasons change on their own schedule and without any help from me. And the animals know the change is coming. The chickens lay despite the cold, the cacophony of the spring peep frogs smothers the wind, and the horses shed their winter coats and run and buck in the field, heady over that first taste of faint green grass.
It’s hard to imagine right now, but before long, the farm will be lush and green. The chorus of the spring peep frogs will transition to the deep bellow of bullfrogs on the ponds. Full of grass, the horses will look for shade and stand peacefully, switching flies. Away from the farm, my daughters will transition into their new roles and embrace their new lives and adventures.
And I will transition, too. Although like Aunt Clara, I may have a harder time whisking through those doors and walls than when I was young and wide-eyed, I’ll celebrate the change that is inevitable in all of our lives. In the meantime, I think I will spend some time polishing and dusting Lina’s doorknob collection. You never know when there will be a new door to open and walk through.
