When the key was found, she was unarmed.....

  Huh?  Yep!  When the key was found, she was unarmed.  Doesn't make much sense, does it?  I did not figure it would to most folks but it made perfect sense to me.  I found the key.  

  Yesterday, we had a thunderstorm that dumped several inches of rain in just a matter of minutes.  As torrential rains have a tendency to do, it washed quite a rut in the ground as the water poured off the rooftop. This occurred on the north side of the house where work had recently been done.  The ground was bare and already soft so when the deluge hit, it merely washed dirt a bit further down the hillside.  It was in this rut that I found the key!  

  The key was once our house key.  Years and years ago, the first Little Bayou House caught fire and burned to the ground.  Nothing was salvageable.  As matter of fact, very little could even be recognized.  We lost everything but, the fact remains, that we still had everything important.  We were safe.  But...that key.  After some thirty-five years, to find the old house key and to actually recognize it is quite amazing.  I stood holding that key when another fragment caught my eye...an arm. Yep, an arm was protruding from the soft sand.  I reached down and gingerly picked up the tiny porcelain piece.  Ahh, I remember that!  Just days before the fire, Mom had given me a box of antique porcelain "pincushion doll torsos".  These tiny figurines were sweet little pieces that were handmade.  Mom told me that they were around a hundred years old at the time she gave them to me. Wow!  She had asked if I could remake the pincushion part for some of them.  I never got the chance.  Today, I found that broken piece and wondered whatever became of the rest of the dolls.  

  I stood holding that tiny arm and an old rusted key and a thousand memories flooded my brain. What if the house had never caught fire? What if I (being very pregnant at the time with my first child) had been in the house when it did ignite?  What if....what if?  Things would have been very different.   

  Son came up behind me as I stood there pondering things.  He noticed the single tear that gently rolled down my cheek and just put his hand on my shoulder.  Nothing was said. Nothing could be said.  I handed him the key...the key to nowhere...and we went to the garden to pick tomatoes.  I am glad things are not different.  I like them just the way they are.