How Seemingly Mundane Things Can Change Your Life

Just today, I stepped out of my car and dropped my keys. In a puddle. No big whoop. When I picked them up, my world changed. No, it wasn’t the muddy keys I had to put in my pocket or the worry that my remote door opener would no longer work. It was the fact that my leather keychain, the one I purchased at “Futons in Paradise” circa 1994 had finally given up. I shit you not, I have had the same keychain for 26 years. It’s the one inch by three inch piece of brown rectangular leather with a stamped sun that I have carried with me for the majority of my life. That piece of leather clung to my house key when I peddled home from beach parties five minutes too late in high school (and yes, my mom was checking). It held the jingling of the first car I drove, the “Alice Mobile” (grandma’s old hand me down Ford Escort). It carried my dorm room, apartment and house keys for my four years at Ithaca College, where I met some of the best friends I have in this world. It was with me through my 14 years of home ownership, during which time many keys were added that I have no idea what their actual function was. The most recent keys added to my sunshine are the ones for my storage unit and my friend’s house, where I now live temporarily while I get my life in order after my failed marriage.

I dropped my keys stepping out of my car to check into my hotel room. The fancy schmancy suite that I reserved for a night so that I can have a change of scenery. The night I’m spending on my own – now writing this – to mark a phase of my life complete. I’m not celebrating. I’m not happy to have gone through the hurt of having to leave a marriage. But it happened. And I’m a firm believer that life gives you signs, however mundane and silly they may seem. The sign I received this afternoon is that all the places that keychain has led me in the past 26 years are now part of my history, as is Leather Sunny Face. I won’t forget a single stop of it. But it’s time to open new doors (lame, I know – blame my keychain).

And now that it’s no longer attached to my keys, I know my days will feel a little different. I won’t be able to bite the leather strap to hold the keys when my hands are full of schoolbags or groceries. I won’t feel the familiar touch of something substantial other than clanking metal. It’s weird that, when you get used to touching something consistently over 26 years, the absence of it can really change your life. I went out to dinner tonight, walked to the restaurant from the hotel and left my keys on the nightstand, like some foreign object that didn’t deserve my attention. Who knew that a token so small as a keychain could hold such significance? Not me. I will say that, as much progress as I’ve made in getting my life on track in the last 2.5 years, I still feel like I’m in limbo …

I decided that I will avoid buying a new keychain until I move into a more permanent place with my girls. When I have a new address, a new name, a new focus, I will also have a new token in my bag to open the doors (so corny, but I can’t help it) that hold happiness and positivity for the future for myself and my worthy rugrats.