Dear Lucy,
I was thinking about Anne today. I know, it doesn't surprise you.
I have a friend who hides a key to her house and tells me where it is so I can get in when I want/need to.
I don't often go into her house as she lives 20 miles away and there is nothing in it I would want to have or use, really. I just sometimes go let her dogs out at her request when she is away for an extended period of time.
But, it got me to thinking about how Anne and I were with our house in Ferndale. We never locked the doors.
If we locked the front door, the back door was unlocked. If it was locked too it was because we knew Dad was home in his attached apartment and we could get in there.
We did this because Anne always said it was just stuff in there anyway and if someone needed it that badly, let them have it.
That was true. We never had anything so valuable that it couldn't be replaced. If someone wanted to risk getting past the dogs to take our cheap computer or 10 year old TV, more power to them.
But really, we stopped locking doors--of our vehicles too--because Anne couldn't keep track of her keys. After having to break into our own home many times and call AAA to get us into our vehicles, it just made sense to leave them unlocked.
At one point we had a kitchen drawer full of keys and we had no idea what they went to. You know the feeling: don't throw that old key away, it might go to something.
Friends would give us their house key or car key (in case they locked themselves out they could call us), and we never knew where the keys were until we got a call from the owner. Then we had to go through a million keys.
I miss how easy going Anne was about "stuff". How easy going she made me about "stuff". The openness she had about her home and stuff was the same openness she had about herself.
I still walk out of the apartment and leave the door unlocked. Sometimes, I do it just for Anne.
--Kathy