Life Is Like a Door

I was about twelve years old the first time I heard my Uncle Luke say, “Life is like a door—never trust a cow, because the sun can’t swim.”

It was one of those sayings that leaves you with a polite smile and the uncomfortable sense that you’ve just been handed wisdom in a language no longer spoken. Luke was full of those kinds of sayings. He’d toss them out mid-conversation like horseshoes at a family barbecue—wild, rusty, and occasionally landing close enough to make you think.

That particular piece of advice came during a morning of fence-mending on his old spread near the Mas River. I’d managed to pinch my thumb in the wire stretcher and was hopping around on one foot, using language that my mother would’ve washed out of me with a bar of Lava soap.

Uncle just leaned on the fence post, spat into the dirt, and offered that peculiar line as if it were gospel. Naturally, I stopped hopping and stared at him like he’d just quoted Shakespeare through a kazoo.

“Excuse me?” I said, thumb throbbing and ego bruised.

“Think about it,” he replied, and then walked off to the truck to get more staples, leaving me to ponder the greater mysteries of livestock, doors, and aquatic celestial bodies.

Years later, I’ve come to believe that what Uncle Luke lacked in clarity, he made up for in poetic nonsense. But still, I’ve tried to apply that phrase to life’s odd moments, like a compass made from spaghetti noodles—wobbly, but weirdly comforting.

Take the “never trust a cow” part. That checks out.

Cows are majestic in their way, but they’ll also give you a blank stare as they back into a half-finished gate, take out three planks, and then look surprised as if you did it. I’ve been led astray by more than one pair of big brown eyes and a flicking tail.

You learn quickly not to assign logic where cud is involved.

And “the sun can’t swim?” Well, that’s poetic truth if I’ve ever heard it.

The sun might rise and shine and bake the road until your tires weep, but if you drop it in a pool, it’s just a fancy spark before everything goes dark. Which I think might’ve been his way of saying even the mighty have their limits.

As for the door part—“life is like a door”—I’ve come to like that. Doors open, they close, some squeak, while others stick.

Some folks barge through, and others knock politely. A few never open at all unless you push harder than you’re comfortable with.

I don’t know if any of this is what Uncle Luke meant. I suspect he just enjoyed watching me squint at the sky and try to figure it out. But I’ll tell you what, that phrase has stuck with me longer than most textbook wisdom ever did.

So now, when someone’s having a rough day, I’ll sit down beside them, pat their shoulder, and say, “You know, life’s like a door. Never trust a cow, because the sun can’t swim.”

And they’ll look at me sideways, same as I did years ago. Which is how I know I’m getting old, and possibly wise.

But mostly old.