Keys

The BFF's younger son has asked me for a copy of my house key. He is entranced by the idea of a key ring with his own keys on it. When I pointed out that there was already a key ring on a shelf in the kitchen, he informed me scornfully that was a key chain and he wanted a key ring. His plan is to collect some keys and then get a lanyard to hold them. This is a boy who loves to make a lanyard. We spend time every summer, shortly after the end of camp, starting them and he usually finishes his. I confess I show my age because I can make the body of the lanyard, but I always need help starting and ending it.

I keep a spare set of my house keys at the BFF's house, the master key to the front and back doors. They're at my house at the moment, which isn't very practical. But I've been meaning to make extra keys from the master set and haven't gotten around to it yet. Both the boys follow where my keys are pretty closely. They like to know that mine are in the box with all the other spare keys (i.e. car keys) that belong with their family.

I have three sets of keys. One has my car key, the keys to my house and an absolutely random key that is probably for an office I worked in and never returned when I moved on. This is my "light" key chain which I keep because I read an article somewhere that said it was good to keep only a few keys along with the key that you use for the ignition. Probably an urban legend, but one so embedded in my brain now I regard it as fact.

The other set of keys has all the additional, crucial keys. The key to the BFF's house, to the shop, to my mother's house, to my bed away from home on the Peninsula, and a spare car key. This key chain has a leather fob where you can store spare change, which is critical for feeding meters in San Francisco and Berkeley. Parking is more difficult than ever in San Francisco, and I'm positive that tickets for expired meters are a huge line item in the City's budget. Those meter people have become much more aggressive in the past decade or so, and I speak from the personal experience of paying many expired meter tickets. But it wasn't until I moved to Berkeley that I was told, "Don't you know there's no free parking in Berkeley?" Yee-ikes, I won't be pressing my luck in either urban jungle any time soon.

I keep change for meters in a separate coin purse, because said younger son of BFF spent much of his toddlerhood taking change out of the leather fob and trying to stick it up his nose or in his mouth. He's still the daredevil, so I'm not taking any chances.

The last set of keys I have are my father's keys, which makes them seventeen years old and most likely useless. I can't tell you where they are precisely, but I know what's on the key chain. The job keys to the 49th Street building he worked in, as well as the master key that unlocked the doors from the fifth through the ninth floor. There was a key to his individual office, which alternated between the sixth and the seventh floor. The house keys to his home mailbox and the key to the outside door of his apartment complex, which was quite valuable just after he died. The management company tracked those keys ferociously and no locksmith would make a copy of it. So his friends who lived in the building each asked me for the key, but I just couldn't give it away. Pragmatically, they asked what I was going to do with it once I'd cleared out the apartment, and I had no good answer other than I couldn't bear to part with it. I knew I'd probably never return to the building, but on the outside chance I did, I'd want to have access to the lobby -- where the mailboxes were, with the blond wood benches where you could wait for the elevators idly to wind their way down, and the distinctive blend of fabric softener, bleach and detergent from the laundry room just off the lobby.

But mainly, I wanted access to the third floor so I could turn right from the elevator and go along the cement walkway to apartment 3 CC. My dad had lived in this duplex for eleven years, with its view of Harlem River Drive and Yankee stadium. He'd thrown numerous parties, and brined and barbecued turkeys at the holidays. He revelled in showing off his barbecue skills, aided by the smoker, the grill, and the barbecue sauce recipe which was handed down solely through the men in the family. I loved the view from that small terrace, marveling at the river and the way you got a weather report right when you stepped outside.

The keys to the intricate lock system were also on the key chain, though one was missing since I'd broken it off in the lock and my dad never got around to fixing it. I remember how I'd struggle to master the order and direction the keys were worked every visit. I'd get so frustrated, coming from my lackadaisical, suburban Southern California upbringing where you had only one house key, that turned only one way, because that was all we needed by way of protection. All my friends were also latchkey kids and I don't know how many keys we lost over the years, causing our parents to make new copies for us. I don't remember anyone ever changing the locks.

The last key went to the Lincoln Continental my father started driving the previous year when he became Vice President of his Local. He'd loved the Audi sedan he'd owned before the labor union election and I knew he didn't really want to give it up. But, he explained, an American car symbolized his solidarity with his brethren and it was especially important for the officers to set that example for the membership.

The car is gone. Someone else lives in that amazing apartment with its teeny terrace patch of AstroTurf and two wrought iron chairs. A tenant, more current than my father, unlocks the mailbox and sorts their mail while waiting for the elevator. (Does it sound like the elevators were slow? They were -- in part, because there were only two of them for a building with approximately twenty floors.) I've heard Local 144 is gone, integrated into Local 1066, a more powerful and flashy union. My father is gone. And as one of my empathetic friends said to me, that's so awful, because along with losing your father, your relationship to that New York is gone.

So, I keep keys to the past. The BFF's younger is eager for his keys in the present. And the niecelet, the local one -- she has her own ambivalent struggle with the key to her father's house. Sometimes she has it with her, more frequently it's in the pocket of the jeans that are at her mother's house or in some other place that is not on her person. We all hound her about whether she has it or not, which makes her very grumpy. I think she's straddling -- caught between not needing to carry her own keys because she has a parent with her who takes care of that, and on the brink of having her own life where she will have to be responsible for her comings and goings.

Keys. They unlock so much.