When I was three I sat on the floor hugging the doorframe.

My youngest sister called me yesterday and we talked for quite a while. At one point she asked, How many people do you think really know me? I don't know.... Three? I replied. She pondered for a moment and then replied, I was going to say two, but I suppose you're right. Papa probably knows me too.

In high school I participated in peer counseling, a program where students were trained to listen. We met with some professional counselors who taught us some of the basics of being a good counselor: learning not to make judgements, not to relate our stories when we should be listening to others, learning ways to help people feel secure talking. Much of our training involved working through exercises with our fellow counselors. Role-playing, trust-walks....

It surprised me. I've never felt close to my father. Not cold, but removed. We share a bond of family. There is a support and closeness and a willingness to let me find my own way and be there if I need him. But I feel that he doesn't listen when I talk. He makes judgements prematurely. He attempts to make connections between my stories and his own. Essentially, he doesn't make a good counselor when I need someone to talk to.

I had a chair. A wooden seat about booster seat size that my father made for me. I remember it was smooth. Lumber worn by touch. Marks where I had crayoned on it. It was in the kitchen, on the linoleum floor where I could push it around and sit on it. Or stand on it to reach a drawer.

We were living statues once. We could volunteer to set a stage. Use other people to form a scene -- a literal or representative landscape from our lives. The idea was to put people into a scene and then ask them to relate how it felt to be that particular person. And after that, have the ability to reshape the scene, to change what that time of our lives had been to what we would have wished it to be.

When I went home for Christmas I didn't feel connected to the place. Or to the people. I couldn't remember it, think of it, as the place I had grown up. As I sit here, I remember pushing toy cars down the lines on the kitchen's yellow linoleum floor, pretending the lines were highways. I remember tracing the patterns on the family room rug, seeking the points of symmetry in the design. I remember running down the hallway to dinner, jumping to see if I could touch the top of the kitchen doorframe. I wonder why I didn't to do any of these things when I was home.

A chair upended. A man, foot placed on it, one hand raised. Glaring. Power, impotence. A woman. Afraid, defiant. Mouth open, yelling in the shadow of the man. A woman off to the side. She plays with something on the floor. Relaxed. Oblivious. A woman. Standing straight, standing tall. I crouch at her feet, wrap my arms around her legs, and look in on the scene I've created.

Our house was robbed. My father made wooden bars from 2x4's and nailed them in the windows. He removed all the doorknobs on the interior doors, replacing them with deadbolts. Before we left the house every day we locked all the doors and then locked the keys in the closet. A robber would have a hard time entering. My soul had a hard time leaving. I never smelled sun-warmed blankets after that. I never examined the pattern a sunbeam made on the floor. I never watched the squirrels running on the telephone wires. I never opened a window.

I don't want to change my scene, I said. It's a part of me. It's shaped me. It's made me who I am. It felt horrible at the time. But I wouldn't be me if it didn't happen.... I'd like a hug, though. Yes, mother, father, sister! And... my doorway. My Doorway, hug me please!

Is there a time in a child's life when all he needs is touch and love? Is there a time when he learns that it is okay to show emotion? Do we find that we grow up fast to leave the nest only to find that the things we wanted to leave in order to do aren't things we can do when grown up?

I was not ready to let go of my past. I clung to it. Defiantly held it. It held me. It gave me permission to hold back. To not reveal myself to the world. To not open that doorway for fear of what was on the other side. To avoid being hurt. It was a piece of my foundation. A lesson learned early. How do you love people so full of anger? So eager to hurt one another?

I want to walk down the darkened hallway, hear voices from behind the door. I want the door to slide open and morning sunlight to spill out. I want to hear laughter. I want to see my parents sitting at the kitchen table talking, drinking coffee. I want to sit on my chair and hold the hand of my doorway friend.

Did I ever hear my parents laugh? Did I ever see them show affection openly? I remember blinking back tears in my father's lap when I was angry at him. I remember my mother telling my sisters to ignore me when I cried to get attention. I remember climbing a tree my father planted for me and rubbing my cheek against its gently textured bark. Hugging its solid woodness to me.

I am three. I walk down the darkened hallway. There are loud voices from behind the kitchen door. Shouting. Yellow kitchen light floods over me as I slide the door open. I slide the door open and my parents are fighting. Yelling. My father's foot comes down on my chair and breaks it. I crouch down small and squeeze the doorframe. Tears.