The Keys to my Heart

By Connie Cavanaugh –

Four drivers, two keys, one car – no matter how you add it up, it equals frustration. No one has the time to get more keys cut because we’re too busy hunting for the two keys we allegedly have.

I was working at my desk when my iPhone™ alerted me to a haircut appointment in fifteen minutes. Grabbing my purse, I lunged for the key rack. No key. Where was the one all by itself on a Free Willy key chain that I shared with our two driving daughters?

I ran to my youngest daughter’s bedroom and barged in. She was working a string of night shifts as her summer job and had to sleep during the day. Our encounter was not something I’d recommend in Good Parenting magazine.

“Where is the key to the Volkswagen?” I demanded.

“Mrrphh kublah, zzzz.”

I waded into a room that looked like it had been recently vandalized and began flinging clothes aside in an effort to find the floor and perhaps, the vagrant key.

Peeking out from under her pillow she moaned and mumbled, “I never drove the Volkswagen last, mom, you did! Please let me sleep!”

“If I drove the car last, the keys would be on the key rack!” I huffed, all righteous indignation.

Sitting up in bed with tears beginning to spill over, she reminded me she hadn’t slept properly for a week and now she probably wouldn’t be able to fall sleep again. She assured me she had nothing to do with the lost key.

By now, I was hopelessly late, frustrated and not totally convinced Willy wasn’t somewhere under the one of the piles surrounding me. I called my husband at his nearby office and he came to my rescue. He rushed into the foyer where I waited, ready to hand over his Volkswagen key when something caught his eye and stopped him cold.

“What’s this?” he asked. He stepped over to the key rack, bent down and picked up Free Willy from the floor directly below. “It looks like Willy made a break for it….”

“I am the world’s worst mother!” I wailed, tears bursting forth. Gerry was a bit dazed by my emotional reaction but he gallantly assured me that it wasn’t so. I managed to get a grip on my emotions long enough to endure the haircut while seated in front of an acre of mirrors that reflected the person I most despised at the moment – The World’s Worst Mother. Every barren woman I had ever known, biblically and literally, came to mind as I wondered why I was chosen to procreate and not them. I questioned God’s wisdom.

On the way home I stocked up on some provisions. Tiptoeing around so as not to reawaken my exhausted daughter, I set up a shrine outside her bedroom door with two 12-packs of cola and several gift certificates for free pizza. Atop this was a lengthy note confessing my grievous sin and begging forgiveness for blaming her for my own misplacement of the key. I left again to run more errands.

By the time I returned home hours later, ready to grovel, my daughter was already up and gone. She had obviously read my note, removed a can of cola and taken the pizza certificates. Ripping off a corner from the note I had written, she penned a response I’ll never forget: All is forgiven. Hey mom, you can yell at me again tomorrow. This could be a lucrative enterprise!!! xoxoxo.

I no longer questioned God’s wisdom. Thank God for children. They teach us grace.