He didn’t like his house, at times.

Plumbing leaked. He perpetually found a soft spot here and there in the flooring. The eaves drooped. Doors squeaked upon opening during the winter months. The bedroom was abnormally hot in summer and abnormally cold in winter.

He’d let the yard go then realize it would take a herculean effort to whip it into shape … so he’d let it go just one more weekend.

He didn’t always dislike his house. Often, he realized the things he didn’t like were things of his own making. Things he could fix or change. No matter, more often, he greatly enjoyed his house.

But inevitably, the dark feelings would return. Something would squeak, or droop, or freeze, or swelter, and he’d dislike his house, causing him to spin thoughts of selling it and moving somewhere else.

But if they sold the house, what would they do with the door?

They couldn’t leave the door behind and he had no idea how to take the door with them if they moved. He often wondered how they might take the door with them if they ever did move.

Wouldn’t be easy. It was no regular door. No opening and closing thing on hinges, meaning it never squeaked no matter the season.

No, this particular door was a sliding door. It slid open and shut. A door that spent its open hours nestled inside a wall.

Markings lined the exposed thin strip of the door. Ink-pen slashes of a variety of colors and widths marked the door’s side from nearly its bottom to nearly its top. Repetitive letters and a rising series of numbers accompanied the multiple slashes.

The door marked time spent in the house. It chronicled journeys traveled inch by inch, year after year.

The door marked his children’s heights upon each one of their birthdays.

Three children, varying degrees of ages and height, lifetimes etched by a variety of pens into the paint of the exposed side of a sliding door.

No matter how upset or angry or disappointed the man became in his house or with himself, he would look at the sliding door and he’d think again.

He could overlook the drips, the droops, the overgrowth, the fluctuating temperatures, at least for a time, and he’d see his house was his home, the family’s home, always.

He would look at the door and then at his sons, the growing and the gone, and all of the many memories associated with this home. And he could not imagine living anywhere else. For the sons may grow and go but the door and the memories would stay.

And if some day, he and his wife decided to move, he would endeavor a way – despite never figuring a way to stop this or fix that – to remove a sliding door, or at least its exposed side, and take it with them.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.