An Empty Carabiner Keychain

Only a few months ago, a coworker of mine teased me about the excessive number of keys on my Carabiner Keychain. I countered his wildly offensive jest by listing what each and every key was for: 3 for the office, 4 for my apartment (one of which was for the laundry room I never dared enter), one for Amanda's and one for my bike. HA.

As I left for the airport today/yesterday/what the hell day is it?? I noticed that throughout the past month I have eliminated key after key...I handed in the office keys with a lump in my throat, closed up the apartment with a sigh of exhaustion, locked up the bike in storage with... uh oh... I think it's locked to a bike rack on Jarvis... (bye Bike), and then finally returned Amanda's key. All this is to say that I went from looking like a superintendent for a 28-story office building, to someone with an empty carabiner keychain.

Now the exhausted emotional part of me sees a metaphor here. Keys suggest permanence, property, ownership and being grounded. They remind me of routine in how they map our day-to-day journey.... I go from this place, to that place, and back to this place, and at each of these stops I leave "stuff" there, MY stuff, that needs to be locked up until I come back and I will come back because I have a key... you see? Routine, predictability.

My empty carabiner keychain however... suggests either that I will be using the carabiner for its proper purpose and go rock climbing (highly unlikely, Zilkhas aren't climbers), OR it is a symbol for my giant across-the-Atlantic leap from my Toronto routine to a new upcoming routine (as in day-to-day routine... not like a dance routine, though that would be fun) .

Alas, I cannot scatter my belongings in various locked spaces around the city of Accra just yet. But hopefully in a few weeks, my lonely little carabiner keychain will collect a key or two and that feeling of settling in will follow.