Stories Collected While Living in France
What does it unlock?
How did the key get lost?
Is anyone looking for it?
Maybe the key never opened anything, because it was never locked?
What is worse losing your keys or your marbles?
Let me know what you think in the comment section. Answer any of the questions up above, or make up one of your own. I'll pick a few winners randomly tomorrow and send them a key.
I think losing my keys is worse, because when I lose my keys I lose my marbles!
Have a wonderful day, Corey! 🙂
I find it hard to throw out any key, even though the matching lock may be long gone. It’s wonderful that the owners of beautiful ornate antique keys felt the same way.
It’s a key to a key hole baked in a key lime pie in Florida Keys.
I used to lose my keys all the time. When I was in my 20s and living alone in Florida (not the Keys!) I had a key chain that beeped when I clapped so I could always find them. Darn. Whatever happened to that keychain? Could I attach it to my marbles so I don’t lose them?
Actually, I think everyone needs to lose it occasionally. It’s like a computer rebooting.
I vote for key lime! Creative and witty too.
What does it unlock?
A key is always a good secret keeper.
How did it get lost ?
I suppose it was hidden so well that its owner could not remember where he/she had put it… When, ages later, and by chance, it was recovered, its owner could not remember what it locked ! (This happened to me many MANY times !!!)
Maybe the key never opened anything, because it was never locked?
In that case it’s the key to your story box which has been kept wide open !!!
Is anyone looking for it?
If I stick to my answer to the previous question, NO, you’re not looking for it !!!
What is worse losing your keys or your marbles?
There I am stuck ! Feeling sorry !
“marbles”? Another word for “jewels” or “diamonds”?
To me, marbles are a children’s game …
I need some keys to understand that bit! 😉
It is a key to a box that holds medals earned by a father in the first World War.
Imagine, such a beutiful key matching a lovely wooden hope chest. The chest filled with beautiful embroidered linens. All just waiting for a magical wedding day! Love makes everything pretty.
That certainly is a beautiful key and I can’t imagine that it unlocks anything except a jewelry box.
I don’t lose my keys – and I’m almost afraid to say that — but so far I’ve managed never to lose my keys and am only losing my marbles intermittently at this point.
I misplace my keys ALL OF THE TIME. And I hate it. I have a bright beaded keychain that I bought from some missionaries who worked with the Masai tribe in Kenya years ago. It is easy to see but I am always distracted by the time I walk into the house that I never remember where I put them. I’m not proud of it. And when I lose my keys I feel like I’ve lost my marbles.
it’s a key to open the door of appreciation to growing older. i need that key!
Perhaps it’s the key to someones’ heart……and what better way to lose your “marbles” than when you lose your heart??
It is a little key to a sweet little cash box that a sweet little lady uses to sell her wares at the market!!
It is a key to a secret hiding place that no one can remember now!
Placed on a chain and sold at the brocante and picked up by a creative writer, it inspires an entanglement of short stories that come together eventually!!!
Maybe when it’s all over there will be a box, or two, of all the keys, glasses, lipsticks, socks, toys…..we have lost throughout our lives.
Reunited.
This was the key to a young woman’s heart; lost in the trenches during the war. But when the young soldier returned home, he found his love and discovered that the real key to her
heart was that he was back in her embracing arms!
This is the key to grandmama’s big armoire, which is filled with the most exquisite embroidered linens. The armoire is as ornate as the key, and the one who inherits will have a true treasure. I have a bunch of old keys, but they have lost their locks.
I would much rather loose my keys than my marbles, but unfortunately I think the marbles are rolling away….. And I think I like day dreaming what that key could open much more than I would like knowing.
The French girl found the beautiful and ornate key while planting in the flower garden. The garden she inherited from her French grandmother. Now why would her grandmother bury such a beautiful key, she thought. She walked around the sweet cottage of a home and searched for anything that required a key. Upstairs in the attic she spotted a small chest, the key fit, it was full of her grandmother’s life. Letters, pressed flowers, jewelry, clippings, notes, photos and it took French girl hours to go through it all.
The key to life, the key to happiness, the key to another’s dreams. She had opened up a secret box and it hid a romantic secret. She smiled and went back to the garden to bury the key where she found it.
Your secret is safe with me, grandmother, she said aloud.
Marbles, definitely marbles, because as long as one has them, one still has the mental capacity to obtain a replacement set of keys 🙂
Why marbles?
Intermittently over the past year-and-a-half I’ve been translating a novel by a once-brilliant scholar who was diagnosed several years ago in her mid-50s with early-onset dementia (Alzheimer’s type). I hadn’t met her while she was still well, and at the advanced stage she’s reportedly now in I know I never will, because she could never deal with meeting a new person.
Over these last 18 months, mutual friends who know of my project (and are delighted that these words of hers will someday be published in English, to accompany her native Portuguese edition) have reported to me the trajectory of her decline — to the point that the poor woman no longer has the mental capacity to talk, no longer recognizes people she’s long known (including a friend since childhood from the same village), suffers terrors at things she doesn’t understand, and other indignities far too embarrassing to her for me to enumerate here.
Now, as I translate (and re-translate) the words in her novel, I grieve the loss of her once-brilliant mind — and live in abject terror of such a dreadful fate befalling Farmboy Husband or me.
It is the key that unlocks Mimi and Pierre’s happily ever after!!
Yes I did lose that key – I’ve been looking for it everywhere!
For me it would be worse to lose my marbles, because then I couldn’t find my keys, either.
The key definitely unlocks an old linen closet. There, hidden between the towels, is a bunch of love letters from a secret lover. The lady who stashed them there lost her marbles when she lost the key.
Losing keys is much worse. My marbles are long gone anyway…
It was sewn into the hem of her wedding dress. The key to the carved walnut box that contained the loveletters from her gentleman friends-one who became her husband. The only child, a son, had no heirs. He saw no reason to keep the dress after she passed. He found the locked box and sold it and the dress to a brocante dealer. At the brocante, the key was purchased by a charming lady from Willows. Her friend coincidentally had purchased the dress for her own wedding. The bride found the key while she was mending a tiny tear at the hem of the dress.
Losing marbles is worst. You can always find a locksmith to make a new key.
Losing your marbles is WAY worse. My mother has lost her marbles, and it is devastating for us all.
It’s worse to lose your marbles. We just found out my mom has alzheimers and it was such a shock. I visited her in March and she seemed fine, now she’s not herself at all. She is losing her keys and her marbles. Very sad.
A key is a fastener or an unfastener. That is the mystery, isn’t it? We all fantasize about discovering what was once locked away. Be it a love or a treasure from the Brocante. It holds hope of discovery. Does it sounds as if I have lost my marbles?
Thank you for this moment to reflect on the mystery of that beautiful key. It was probably worn around the neck of a lovely woman and no one ever knew what it went to…
Losing my keys does not present any potential harm to others…
I’m always having to remind the people around me to watch out for all the marbles that have fallen from my head and onto the floor. Luckily I have a wonderful friend who gives me a new bag of marbles as a stocking stuffer each Christmas to replace those I’ve lost.
So because losing my marbles proves not only dangerous to my self but others, losing my marbles is far worse than losing my keys.
I think the key opened a box full of love letters from her husband who was off at war. The letters wrapped in a bundle with a ribbon…something she held near and dear to her heart. What a beautiful key. My little girl, now 6 likes to collect them. When we go to the antique market she is always looking for them. Isn’t it funny how things appeal to us even at a young age.
Losing ones’ marbles is WAY worse than losing ones’s keys. My 92 year old father has dementia and believe me,seeing your DAd act like a toddler is very very sad.
After reading some of these other comments I see that lots of others agree with me.
Love the old key… I use them alot in my journaling…
I’ve lost my keys and I’ve lost my marbles. Losing my keys was much worse. I’ve since found my keys and occasionally find my marbles.
Keys are such treasures!!
I’ve lost my keys and I’ve lost my marbles. Losing my keys was much worse. I’ve since found my keys and occasionally find my marbles.
Keys are such treasures!!
It’s a guest room key from the Hotel de Corey.
i would rather loose a key. i have to agree with Missy. my mother also is loosing her memory and gradually is getting worse. but there is something to still be thankful, she knows everyone and we can have a conversation on the phone,but then we start all over and repeat everything just like we had never spoke of it. Ladies savor and appreciate your moms. after all, a mother is one of your best friends. Bestest,Denise
The key is not lost. It is the key to inspiration. Whoever comes across it weaves her own story of it’s existance and sometimes, opens the door to the imaginations of others!
I think losing your marbles would be worse, as they are more difficult to find and keep rolling away. If you lose the key you can still break down doors or open windows.
I think it better to lose your marbles as you don’t usually know that you have lost them…it is everyone else who notices!!!
Losing the key however would cause a lot of frustration as you would not be able to get out of the cupboard or drawer the precious items you know are in there.
Kathy
I would rather lose my keys than my marbles. Except this key is deliciously lovely. It must have locked the most exquisite hope chest that was filled by the innocent young girl in preparation for future married bliss. I’m glad her mother kept a spare key, or all of her embroidered pillowcases and tea towels would have been imprisoned forever!
The key opens a secret from yesterday…or maybe tomorrow. I can’t tell you, otherwise it wouldn’t be a secret. If I lost my keys I would have to climb in through a window. Would be a tad difficult these days, so my keys are in my pocket – always. And my marbles are in a bag on my desk. So, all is well, as long as I don’t forget where I live.
A key is worse to lose: it unlocks something, explains or solves something, is a tone of voice, is essential to, or the central stone of an arch which holds everything in place.
It was a key for a lovers paradise! But she came early and found him with another so she ran and throw the key into the near by stream! It has been rolling around and down the stream into other water ways until a brocante lover found and needed answers so the question was asked. The anrgy lover found another and moved on to find happiness and a life full of memories to be treasured. And never thought twice about the key or that horrible day. Psst…the new lover was the owner of the rented paradise and found the young lady crying at the streams edge! He asked her to dinner and dance! The dance nver ended!
A man and a woman…they sit, talking on their front porch…he gives her a box…she opens it and sees the key on a chain…he tells her that it is the key to his heart and now she wears it always.
I’d much rather lose my key. You can always call a locksmith and get another one. Marbles on the other hand, once lost are very hard to replace. I lost mine long ago and I’m still looking for them.
The beauty of that key tells me, (without reading ANY other comments first – oh so hard!), that it truly MUST unlock the heart of an admiree! Can you imagine all the romantic ways a passionate person could present that key to the one whose heart he/she is pursuing???? I only wish it were me!
A tiny magical chest, whoever opens it with this key will find all the answers!
It is the key to Pandora’s Box. Where she kept her marbles. Until she lost the box. Poor Pandora, she had so many troubles.
“She wore the key around her neck, day after day, year after year, tied with a blue ribbon the exact blue of the Cent-Gardes uniform he wore when he went off to fight in the war….
They were young lovers, to be married of course, but the war came first and so the night before he was to depart, he gave her a hand-carved wooden box with a beautiful key. In the box was the finest champagne a young officer of the Cent-Gardes could buy and as he kissed her one last time, he promised her they would drink it on their wedding day.
The letter came months later but she refused to believe he was gone… the box with the champagne still inside was put away, but the key stayed around her neck, the ribbon becoming frayed and worn as the years passed by…”
I wonder Corey, if you will look at wooden boxes differently now when you find them at the Brocante?
It’s the key to the top of a dessert tree — or stand, I don’t remember what they’re called but I’m always happy to see one.
It was for a beautiful leather diary that was given to a lovely woman. But she tossed the key away because this amazing woman shared all her stories of her life and passions with her friends and family. And if she were of this era she wouldn’t need a diary because she would have a blog and we would call her Corey.
It is the key to a magical garden created by an ancient couple. He created the garden for her when they first met to show his deep love for her. In the garden beautiful, exotic flora and fauna exist together in harmony. The couple would go to the garden daily and regardless of the season outside of the garden, it was always sunny and warm within the garden walls. She would stitch beautiful textiles and he would paint gorgeous still lifes. But, as time passed, the couple became more feeble and could not negotiate the long path to the garden and then the key was lost. This did not matter to the couple, as one touch of the other’s hand would transport them both back to years past and the warm sun would shine on them. We do not need the key to visit the garden, as it is in all of our hearts if we allow it to be.
It is the key to my heart.
I have been looking for it
so I can open my heart to
love and life again……
“It may be key to my heart but then again, it may not…..that is the mystery for the Handsome Prince to find out. The glass slipper broke when he picked it up, but the key was lying hidden in the lining of the sole.”
Smiles……Sue
Sent to me by Carolyn De Voe
Mother wore the key, always, on a long black silk ribbon. When I would ask about it, she’d say nothing, but softly smile, and would sometimes look far away, over my shoulder.
Shortly before her death, she placed her key around my neck, and told me to remember forever that she loved me.
Clearing out her desk, I touched a carved emblem on the paper tray, and found a hidden drawer, locked; it was just a tiny pigeon hole. In it lay a beautifully penned letter promising a speedy return, a life of love, laughter and many children in a big farm house with a vineyard, apple trees and starlit nights. Beneath it a telegram, “We regret to inform you…”
The letter was addressed to my mother, to her maiden name, and at an address in a the country a couple hundred miles from our home. In the spring, after enough time has passed and I have adjusted to her loss, I will find those lanes, and seek for remnants of her family, hoping that perhaps one aunt or uncle survived the war, and can tell me of my grandparents, and the beautiful world my mother lived in until that fateful pull of the bell dashed her world to ashes.
How did she learn to sing again, to make a living, to walk through seventy long years as though something wonderful was waiting just around the corner, just beyond the next old gate? How the laugh lines around her eyes, and a jaunty step way into old age? How to say goodbye?
Sent to me by Carolyn De Voe
Corey; I am dismayed – I KNOW I did comment but my comment is no longer on your blog. Did you delete it? I cannot imagine why you’d do that? Or is one of the internet’s follies?
In any case, the REAL story is so touching and wonderful, so sad and romantic, it tears the readers’ heart apart.
Thank You (and pls let me know what happened to my comment)
Bisous, Kiki
Hi Kiki
I did not erase your comment. And it is not in my spam folder. If you send it to me, I will post it.
C
the key to my heart…who has it?…could this be the key…maybe…i’m ready to find out….play well…
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