My landlord is lovely. The night before I left to go back to Vancouver, she came over in her rob and slippers to say goodbye and gave me a hug. She greeted the others as they were her own. 

The one thing I did forget to give her are the keys to the Wenman home. I don’t know if I should hand them back, like a good tenant would, or keep them for myself, as a special reminder as what was my first home-away-from-home, to be put into a shadowbox or memory case, as it very well was. 

There were three keys, one for the front door; one for the back door; and one for the bike shed. I only used one, ever. I never used the backdoor, but would use the glass sliding door instead, and I didn’t own a bike in VIctoria. The front door is all that I really needed. Just one. 

I keep using that key to enter into the home I use now, and I forget time and again that it was not that home I was entering, but the other. Both are kept on a golden key ring of mine, and I don’t think I ever will. It seems just fitting. One key for the place I live in now, the one that I did live in, and the car key that gets me to go from one to the other. 

Sorry Mary, I guess I’ll be keeping the thing that links me to my past, and will be following me everywhere I go.