Keys

I’ve been back in Seattle for over a month. In that time the winter winds have blown, snow has fallen, and the days have gotten longer. I continue to have the odd feeling that I was never away, that nothing has changed, or that everything has changed and I recognize that nothing is familiar at all. It is very confusing.

When I was traveling, the only key I had was to my car. It was easy to keep track of. I didn’t lose it; I never locked the keys in the car. On nights that I stayed in a motel I would have a key card most often. It seems that motels have given up on keys – I suppose too many get lost or taken with the folks who spend the night.

For over six months I was living a simple one key life. Then I went to Hawaii and there I had to care for the keys to my friend’s house and keys to a car. Still it was simple and I kept track of the tools to be safe in a house and get around.

When I returned to Seattle, keys came back into my life and within a few days I had my own cars keys back as well as the keys to my house (though I still wasn’t living there since my tenants were still there), keys to my friend’s apartment where I was staying, keys to my mail box and keys to my ex husband’s house who was caring for my dog. A lot of keys----and I lost them.


I went to walk my dog and somehow lost all the keys except the one to the house where the dog was. I knew I had driven to the house so my car keys had to be somewhere in my ex-husband’s house I thought but no matter how much I searched I could not find them. I went over and over and over the house and still no keys. Finally I realized that he had an extra set of keys to one of his cars and I had an extra set of car keys back at my friend’s house. I got my extra keys, got new keys made for my friend’s apartment (I had to go to her work to get her keys to have them made) I had to go to my tenants to get their mailbox key to have another made only to have those keys made wrong not once but twice!!!

What a mess. I keep thinking that I had to have my keys somewhere but I just couldn’t figure out where. I walked the neighborhood with the dog thinking perhaps I had dropped them. Nothing. Finally I surrendered. I had lost my keys. I had made replacements and even though some love tokens that were on the key ring where gone I would be ok. I had new keys. It wasn’t the same but it was ok.

Two weeks later while tossing a small backpack into the car as I was going somewhere, my keys fell out of the pack. There was an extra pocket on the back of the pack that somehow I never checked. I had looked through the pack dozens of times to search for the keys, I had shaken the pack trying to listen for the keys but I didn’t find them – then.

I started to laugh. My keys, the key to my life back in Seattle had been with me all along. What I thought would gain or lose by going on my adventure was with me all along. So often I look outside myself to find meaning or encouragement or support when I really have it within myself. For over two weeks I had carried my own keys with me and had never known it. Perhaps that is true of my faith and hope and happiness as well.

There's No Place Like Home

On Christmas night I caught the end of The Wizard of Oz on TV. They show it at this time of year. I had tuned in right at the moment when the Wizard’s balloon was taking off and Dorothy had missed getting in because Toto had run away. She was heart broken – how would she get home. Glenda the good witch arrives and tells Dorothy she has always been able to go home whenever she had wanted to. She asks her: “ What have you learned?”

The scarecrow asks too: What have you learned, Dorothy?
Dorothy: Well, I - I think that it - it wasn't enough to just want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em - and it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?

Glenda says, “That’s right” and goes on to show her how to click her heals tree times and say “There is no place like home, there is no place like home, there is no place like home.”

I started to cry and repeated with Dorothy – “There is no place like home.” Dorothy had to learn that her hearts desire was in side of her (her own backyard) So to have I . I ran away to find the other side of the rainbow – to search for a place where bluebirds fly. And I found many places like that but not my hearts desire. Like Dorothy I had to re-find my brains and heart and courage. They were with me all along; I just didn’t know they were a part of me and not about where I was in the world.

I can’t click my heals to get back to Seattle, that will take a plane to do. And I may not be in Seattle all the time in future as well. My home, in the end is within me, and the people I love. The search I have been on has taken me back to myself. I self I never really lost, but I had to find out like Dorothy that it was mine again. Wherever I go, I take myself with me and the ‘home’ I have inside is what will sustain me and help me to share and be with others.