Arctic Entryway

In Alaska we lived off post in a military neighborhood. My non-army friends called it the projects because all of the duplexes looked just alike. Aluminum siding, beige paint, they were not interesting enough to be ugly.

The one feature that was interesting to me when we first moved there were the front doors. You'd walk in from the cold and instead of a living area you were in a room roughly the size of a walk-in closet. Then you passed through another door to get into the living area of the house. It's called an Arctic Entryway. They're pretty useful. It gives you a place to kick the snow off of your boots so you don't track a mess into the house. It also provides a buffer between the frosty air outside and the warmth of the house. The idea is you don't have both doors open at the same time. Think of a pressure lock on a spaceship. The idea is you don't bring the cold in from the outside.

I've written before on how hard this season is for me. Christmas Blues, SAD (seasonal affective disorder) whatever. If we could just skip ahead to January 3rd or so, that'd be okay with me.


The problem is that my sadness pours over onto people close to me. I try to keep it from driving my personality. I don't ever have unhealthy thoughts, I don't go on drinking binges or swallow pills. Nothing like that. Usually what happens is I go out to a mall or a bookstore and some Christmas song comes on and WHAM, I feel like crying. Or I get angry. It doesn't happen every day. It doesn't drive me to behave poorly. But I smile less. I don't participate, spiritually, in the season. I pray for it to pass and then celebrate survival of another Christmas season.

Maybe what I need is an arctic entryway. Perhaps this season calls for a buffer zone, a vacuum lock that allows me to knock off the chill before I encounter someone else's warmth. I'm perfectly willing to come in out of the cold, I really am. I try not to sulk (or pout or cry thus putting my name on Santa's naughty list) - I try not to wear my winter coat inside.

So let's try that. If you see me isolating myself. If I'm not getting into the spirit. Call me in from the cold. Let me know you've lit a fire and that there's room for me near you. And then, give me a minute. I need to knock the snow off of my boots. I need to close one door before I can open the other. It helps knowing that my family, my girlfriend, my friends, are on the other side of the inner door. It's good to know that when I close off the outside chill, my fingers may still be a bit numb from the cold, but when the next door opens, there's something good waiting for me and nothing has to follow me in unless I let it.

I hope that in midst of spending money, and driving around trying to give due time to our friends and family that we all have a good Christmas in spite of the season. I hope those of you with a little bit of extra warmth in your homes will let the rest of us in from the cold.

Peace,

Caulfield