Tales of a wandering lesbian

My Keyring

I realized that keys are power when I was in High School. It was right around the time I nicked the master key to the schools in the district and made myself a copy. That key lived secretly on my keyring for three years, allowing me access to every room in the school. For a high school kid, that’s serious power.

I was reminded of that this week when, one morning while locking the house on the way to work, I realized how light my keyring had grown. I only carry keys – no fobs or gadgets – just keys. Until about a week ago, I had probably7 or 8 keys on a couple of connected rings. When I looked down at them this week, I realized that they had started dwindling. Leigh took the key to the garage off my ring, as I won’t really be needing it anymore. As soon as my house closes, I’ll be losing my house key, and mail key. I have two keys for work, which will be ending in two weeks. That just leaves the key to Leigh’s house, and the one for my bike lock – neither of which I’ll need on my trip.

I’ve had a hefty key ring for the last 15 years of my life. Makes me wonder a bit what it will be like not to have a car key, a house key, or an office key – at all. Interesting how powerful symbols are. I know I won’t have the car, house or office, but the loss of the keys really hit home. “Hit home.” That’s funny.

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3 comments

1 Kimmy { 09.13.09 at 8:31 am }

When my parents first moved us overseas when I was 4 it was the loss of keys that hit my parents the hardest. It is amazing that I can remember them coming to this sad realization and I was so young.

To this day I cherish leaving my keys at home when I travel overseas! Someday soon I will get to leave all my keys behind too. Who needs keys when you have adventures????

2 Comforts | Mid Leap { 12.27.09 at 3:35 pm }

[…] as possible, but I still tried to prepare myself for certain things.  Like not having a place of my own, or the loss of language and humor.  I expected it to be hard in some respects, in truth the hard […]

3 Transitional | Mid Leap { 05.04.10 at 1:28 pm }

[…] I thought about the loss of language.  I agonized over leaving my house and also over leaving my home.  Traveling through Italy, I experienced the newness of a foreign environment and the challenge of […]