Safely at Home and Abroad

We had to pry our safe open with a butter knife.

To make sure the cat doesn’t somehow manage to push the lid shut, I put the weighted arm band from our fall prevention class over the clasp. This is what passes for security for all our important documents.

My husband asked (foolishly), “Isn’t there a key somewhere?” And I thought yes, probably, on some plane of being, there is a key. There is a place on the safe for a key to be inserted, likely the folks who sold it figured we’d keep the key in a safe place (the safe?). But I knew better. I knew if I ever locked the safe, I would lose the key.

Are you lost yet? Have you entered the world of not caring what happens next? I understand.

What’s in this safe, you ask.

History and worry, debts paid off, expired passports, birth certificates, revised birth certificates, citizenship papers, vehicle titles, divorce papers, power of attorney documents. Reasons why babies came here to live, descriptions of their circumstances, their baby passports from when they were citizens of another country, their scared little faces staring at the camera.

In the movies, the safe is always behind a painting in the mansion’s library. There is a combination lock, three numbers 22-18-97. Right, left, right. There is no key. Keys are too risky because if you lock a safe, you will lose the key. Sometimes you will lose the key without locking the safe as my experience demonstrates.

The safe’s usefulness as a metaphor for life notwithstanding, I am going to buy a safe with a combination lock which if a robber knew it, he could steal my bike and the contents of the safe at the same time.