The prompt for Sunday Scribblings is "key". While I suspect that the intention of our prompter was that we should write metaphorically about abstract keys, I am going to be very literal and write about honest-to-goodness, real-life, fit-into-a-lock keys. Dozens and dozens of them.
My children (if one can call senior citizens "children") and I (but mostly they) have been sorting Otto's belongings, clothes to go to various charities, millions (literally) of pieces of paper any one of which might be of vital importance, odd items that have accumulated during the fifty years that we have lived in our current home, thousands of slides, snapshots, photographs, certificates etc.And KEYS, all carefully marked, but not always in such a manner that it is easy to fit them to the many keyholes and locks in our large house and our Mendocino county vacation houses ("the cabins").
These are a few that daughter Candace and son Otto were trying to fit to their appropriate keyholes.
It has rapidly become obvious that husband Otto and I had become unintentional pack-rats. It wasn't that we were acquisitive, but rather that we never threw anything away. Candace points out to me that she has found at least twenty more keys since these photos were taken.
No, I'm not planning to leave this house full of joyous memories, but there will be a little more space in the the drawers and closets. I am too lazy today to photograph the boxes and boxes of pencils and pens or the two large packing boxes that Candace has filled with empty ring binders (planning to donate them to women's shelters where the children of the sheltered women need back-to-school supplies).Be sure to go to Sunday Scribblings to find what many clever writers have written about keys.
16 comments:
Sorting through Otto's belongings must be a sad pleasure. But I'm so pleased to feel that you're almost living fully again.
UNintentional pack-rats. Me too GRanny.
I mean.. you never Know when you will need ...say... a Key with no lock! Sometimes I laugh at the silly things I can't throw away!
(btw..That IS a lot of Keys!)
So many keys. Iam reminded of my mom. So many keys and finally we never locate the correct one
Laughing at the mystery of the keys, an element in so many stories that it must be a common human experience. Find a key then go looking for it's very own lock. Is that an allegory for life? You've touched the metaphorical after all. hah.
I so wish I could be there to help. Love love love
My daughter is in a similar position and cannot bear to throw away her late husbands things yet. It is nearly a year since he died.
I have lots of keys that I don't know who they belong to or where they are from. Obviously I don't want to throw them away incase they will be found to be someones precious house keys.
And I would think this sorting would prompt some wonderful memories for you, too.
My mom keeps all keys. With or without locks!
I hold myself in the doorway
how do you manage :O
my brains just popped out lookin at them!
The Key Fits My Story
I still have a box of keys that were my granmothers. I don't know what they go to,but they were hers so I keep them.I think I have a neice that collects keys I may give them to her.
the rule of "keys" is simple. never throw one away, it opens something and that something will turn up just as soon as you throw the key away. I don't know why, but I think God made it that way.
To me, it is always more fun to create and invent than to catalog and categorize and consolidate, so I am glad you have company to cheer you along in this task. Keys, though, always seem like photographs: you never know what memories they might unlock. I'd be tempted to keep them all.
How does that happen? I know exactly what you are saying. I always thought things like that gathered in a drawer, had a party, got married and made baby keys, pencils and rubber bands!!!
Be well,
b
I never throw keys away. I've got heaps! I just wish I'd labeled them all because I'm sure they would stir lots of memories if only I could remember where they came from!
We have keys from previous houses and vehicles that now live in some junkyard. Keys from an old file cabinet, an apartment in another state, keys to parents houses though they are no longer with us. They mark our lives, and we can't seem to throw them away either.
LOL I'm the opposite I throw everything away. That is a lot of stuff!
Boy, am I glad to know that at least there were no keys in my kitchen drawer that collapsed, as in one of the comments, sombody put forth the theory that things in drawers multiply! I had enough 'stuff' without umpteen baby keys!
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