KEYS

Yesterday I set my keys down on the counter at CVS Pharmacy while paying the friendly cashier.  "Wow, you have a lot of keys," he said.  I stopped.  I was clearly moved by this comment.  My mind flew back in time....

In 2003 I was left with an "empty nest" and no clear direction of where life would take me.

Then, I discovered a certificate program in teaching English as a Foreign Language at San Diego State.  Within a couple of months, I scattered my belongings among friends, emptied my apartment, donated all of my self-help books to the Los Gatos library, graduated the class at SDSU, and prepared to leave for Mexico....and the unknown.  Only one key left, to my little Dodge Neon.  Linnie, my constant companion on my wanderlust adventures , drove with me to Frontier Ford to dispose of my car and hand over my final key.  I was keyless.  I didn't have a key in all the world!

I moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico for what turned out to be an almost two year journey of self-reliance, survival, new connections, learning, peace, growth and fulfillment.

I returned to San Francisco in 2005.  Since then, I have lived so many places as I continue to trust that the universe unfolds, exactly as it should, and I am exactly where I should be, and that everything I need will find its way to me.

So here I am at CVS Pharmacy, in San Diego, December 2009, once again with lots of keys. 

I look back with awe at that special time when I had no keys at all.