There’s something magical about cupboards.  After school, I used to open them, unsure of what I wanted.  It was habit, really.  Surely there was an answer, or comfort, in the cupboard after a cold and often empty day.  Usually that’s tea with actual biscuits and clotted cream.  Let’s be honest, though, nothing about my mother’s house was clotted.  Still, I’d search, my hands waiting on the small nobs of the wooden doors as my brain decided something.  Usually, I’d find solace behind another door: the fridge.  I’d have to get passed the condiments and salad dressings she stored in the actual shelves of the door (though on occasion, I’d find a nearly empty bag of chocolate chips from her latest baking stint).  Abatement  was usually laid to bare in the dairy drawer.  I can’t believe our refrigerator actually had a drawer for dairy.  As a child I always thought it was wrong.  Gosh, it’s not like the milk fits in there.  I didn’t think about dairy as a solid, the way steam and ice don’t really seam like water.  Still, the cupboard was the go-to move.  It was The Cosby Show, Alice in the kitchen making pork chops for Peter, and somehow Tinkerbell’s glitter dust in a jar of paprika.  Cupboards are comforting.

Something magical happens behind closed doors.  Cupboards, wardrobes, and the doors of homes.  I love seeing what strangers have in their shopping carts (who the fcuk eats canned clams?  Oh, that type of guy who wears orange and has a mustache), toting items to their homes to find places for things behind more doors.

I love looking into windows, seeing bookshelves and chandeliers.  I like to imagine their lives behind their cashmere throws, seeing their imported teas beside their dented discount cans of string beans.  It’s like trying to figure out a person based on the contents of her handbag or bedside table… or blog.

I guess we’re all behind doors in a larger sense, but I’m not obsessed with larger sense… just the little things.