Today our preparation for a calm departure from our home to the airport took an unexpected turn when Ray came into the room and said, “I can’t find the car keys.” Rachael and I calmly went from room to room, looking on tables and chairs while Ray searched through his pants and jacket pockets. No luck. Then we eyed the dogs suspiciously. “I think I put the keys on the coffee table,” Ray said. Rachael dutifully headed out back to see if our overly-curious corgi was the culprit. Unfortunately, after ten minutes she returned empty-handed.
During this time, I started the process of lifting ever pillow and cushion in the den, moving the coffee table and the armchair and getting on my hands and knees to peer under the couch. Nothing. Ray went upstairs to search in the bedrooms, bathroom and his closet. Rachael returned and I suggested she go through her dad’s suitcase, which she did. Again, we all came up with nothing. I went back upstairs, retraced all of Ray’s steps and starting thinking of other options. “We can just take the van,” I said, coming back downstairs. “The Landrover is blocking the van in the driveway,” Rachael pointed out. By this time, we were all looking in the same places we’d looked just a few minutes before. I was quietly thinking, Okay, do we call a Lyft? Or borrow Rachael’s car? No, we couldn’t do that since we didn’t have time to take her home.
About this time, we both heard Rachael call from the living room. “Found them!” We walked in and she was pulling them out of a box that Ray had brought in for her to work on next week for eBay. “They were lying right on top,” she said.
Ray and I hugged her, grabbed our bags and ran out the door. We were rerouted three times by Siri due to heavy traffic and finally arrived at the car lot where we keep our car. As we stood at the counter, we watched the bus waiting outside drive away. We both sank down in the chairs in the waiting room. Ten minutes later, the next bus arrived and got us fairly quickly to the Southwest terminal since it’s Terminal One. We rushed through security and headed to our gate. I suggested we look at the screen to see exactly where we were going. That’s when we saw that our flight had been delayed from 5:45 to 6:20. We looked at each other and laughed.
So here we sit at the gate. All that hurrying to now just sit and wait. Not that I’m complaining. I’m just glad we made it at all.
Thank you, Rachael, for finding those keys!
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