Keep Your Eyes Open

It is foolish to shut one’s self inside a wardrobe, even if it is not a magic one.

Lucy, from CS Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” knew this of course. That’s why she left the door partly ajar as they played hide-and-seek in the house of Professor Kirke that rainy afternoon.

And like Lucy, when she walked through the back of that wardrobe into the snowy forests of Narnia, I know it’s foolish, too, to step forward without looking back at least once or twice at the comfort  that is a snatch of wood from the back of the wardrobe door, glimpsed through snowy boughs.

But like the Pevinsies, listening to the warning of Professor Kirke after they returned, I know looking to go through that wardrobe again into that magical world won’t work again.

That’s not how Narnia works, he said. You’ll find your way back, but never again through that wardrobe.

Today, we signed the papers on selling Mom’s house, the one Dad built for hear in the early 1990s. We went back shortly after for one last time, to heave an antique piano – one that crossed the plains of the United States first on a train and then by covered wagon – to reach the shores of Bear Lake.

Never again. Through that wardrobe.

If I were to walk through a wardrobe into the past, however, it would not take me to the house on Romrell Avenue. Instead, it would take me here.

That’s the other house Dad built, back in the 1960s. That’s where I grew up.

And yet.

Never again. Through that wardrobe.

Because, though the house may still be there, its secrets were the people who lived there, not the bricks and wood and stone that make it up.

The house, the yard, the rooms – they seem big in my memories. To visit them again now, they’d probably feel small. And by the looks of Google Maps, a bit cluttered.

Gone is the garden.

Gone are the rock paths Dad built through the yard.

Gone are most of the trees, too. And the lilacs, the strings of lilacs.

Gone.

Never again. Through that wardrobe.

Gone too are the people. Mom and Dad, gone and waiting. The others, still here, but scattered. I remember each of them in that house. One sister strumming the guitar while the other pulled fluff out of a mattress to throw at me. One brother scaling the garage wall to show off a basketball trick, the other in football uniforms, running plays.

And others – playing in the dirt, staying out until even the light of summer was dimmed.

Never again. Through that wardrobe.         

  

And yet. . .

“Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia,” said Professor Kirke. “ But don't go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don't try to get there at all. It'll happen when you're not looking for it. And don't talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don't mention it to anyone else unless you find that they've had adventures of the same sort themselves. What's that? How will you know? Oh, you'll know all right. Odd things, they say-even their looks-will let the secret out. Keep your eyes open.”

Keep your eyes open, he said.

I will. The magic will find me again.