The jamb was the side of the door. The vertical frame on either side of the opening where the hinges lived and the latch caught and the weatherstrip sealed the gap. The jamb was the door's embrace. The door swung into the jamb the way a person walks into a hug. The jamb held the door and the door held the room and the room held the family. The prehung door unit comes in a box. A box is not an embrace.

The jamb was mortised. The hinge mortise was a shallow pocket cut into the jamb with a chisel. The carpenter held the hinge against the jamb and traced the outline with a knife and then chiseled out the pocket until the hinge sat flush. Flush meant the hinge disappeared into the wood and the door swung without rubbing. The carpenter's chisel work was invisible when the door was closed. The best carpentry was the carpentry you could not see. The modern jamb has a routed pocket cut by a machine at the factory. The machine does not use a knife. The machine does not trace.

The jamb wore out at the latch. Every time you closed the door the latch hit the strike plate and the strike plate hit the jamb and the jamb absorbed the blow. A hundred times a day for fifty years is almost two million blows and the jamb took every one. The wood around the strike plate compressed and the screw holes enlarged and the strike plate wiggled and the door stopped latching. The landlord put in longer screws. The longer screws bought another ten years. The jamb never complained. The jamb took the beating and held the door.

The jamb told you about the painter. Every jamb in every apartment was painted. Layer on layer on layer. The first coat was the original color. The tenth coat was the current landlord's idea of white. You could read the history of the apartment in the layers of paint on the jamb the way you read the history of the earth in the layers of rock. Cream over green over brown over yellow over the original varnish. Every layer was a tenant. Every tenant was a year. The jamb was a calendar painted in landlord white.

Nobody looks at the jamb. The door gets all the attention. The door is the thing you open and close and slam and lock. But the door does not work without the jamb. The door without the jamb is a piece of wood leaning against a wall. The jamb gave the door its purpose and the door got all the credit. The jamb was the best supporting actor in the building. The jamb never won the award. The jamb held the door that held the room that held the family. That is the award.

See also: Sill, Threshold