I’ve got a story to tell you today.

We woke up Friday morning to the surprise that Big Luke was going to be home all day. Summer was quickly coming to an end so we decided to make the most of our day and head out on the boat. We got dressed and loaded the boat, packed lunch and applied sunscreen.

We decided to head to a boat landing that is about 45 minutes from our house. Its beautiful, but its a hike. In case you aren’t familiar with boating in Charleston (or from any saltwater/beach location), let me highlight a few things. Boat days are very fun but they are A LOT of work. In fact, at least half of the time that we the have opportunity to go, we choose something else simply because we don’t feel like putting in the effort. From packing the boat, ensuring you have a TON of food, dealing with cranky toddlers and babies (it’s almost impossible to time things around nap time) to the massive clean up effort at the end of the day, oh and the heat, we (the parents) have to be in the right state of mind in order to tackle the boat adventure. (That being said, they are also unbelievably fun and special, as you will see in a minute)

Two hours later, we pulled into the landing and I swear, it was so beautiful, I exhaled deeply. Because the ramp is a little remote, it’s almost never crowded. Instead of being surrounded by homes and sailboats, the view is of mustardy green marsh grass and trees, blue sky and water. Luke backed the boat into the water and I pulled the car and trailer up to park it. I grabbed the baby and the last few things, locked the car and headed to the boat. After about 5 minutes, I remembered that I hadn’t clipped the keys to the spot where we normally keep them. I looked for them where I sat my phone and sunscreen, they weren’t there. I opened the beach bag and dug through, they weren’t there. Panic started to set in. I began to frantically tear apart the beach bag and the food bag and every square inch of the boat.

Normally, we have a hide a key and this wouldn’t have been so alarming but I had used it two days before when Luke accidentally took my keys to work and hadn’t put it back. Lesson learned.

I assumed that I must have locked them in the car even though I pretty distinctly remembered locking the car with the keys form the outside. I went back and peeked in all the windows. I didn’t see them anywhere. However, I also thought I had put the spare in the center console.

We had two choices. Go ahead and call a locksmith and sit around the boat landing (with 4 hot kids who were ready for a boat day) or go ahead with our day and deal with this later. We chose option number 2. And ya’ll, we had the best day.

The kids spent the entire time being pulled in the tube behind the boat. They had the biggest smiles and loudest giggles for hours. We found a little creek that led to the back of Botany Bay, a protected wildlife management area. It was perfect for swimming because it wasn’t too deep. We could also walk right out onto the beach at the boneyard. (The boneyard is the part of the beach where the forest has started to erode into the beach, the trees fall over, get bleached by the sun and begin to look like bones. Sounds strange but it’s beautiful.)

We walked onto the beach where the kids climbed the trees, found shells and played in tide pools. It was so amazing watching them all having such a great time. I was moved to tears at how precious they all are and how unbelievably fortunate I am. My gratitude was highlighted by how stressful it was to have lost the keys and the upcoming stress we had waiting as we had to deal with the situation in a few hours. But these moments, they were everything.

From the boat we called every locksmith in Charleston. No one was willing to come to our remote spot on a Friday afternoon. So, we decided to try to break in. When we got back to the landing, Luke spent about 30 minutes shoving the boat antenna between the door and the frame of the car. He hit the unlock button several times, but it would not unlock. Confident that there was at least one set of keys in the car, he eventually broke the passenger side window. He crawled in (so as not to set off the car alarm) and began looking for the keys. Just imagine how hot he was. It’s like 100 degrees in the shade right now. It was probably like 150 degrees in the car, not exaggerating.

He couldn’t find them anywhere.

I was waiting on the boat with the baby who had finally fallen asleep. When I saw Luke climb out of the window, I knew it wasn’t good. Why had he not unlocked the car yet?

I started to panic. Ok. What are our options here? Who do we know with a big enough car to come pick all of us up? Plus, it’s Friday afternoon, the guilt associated with asking a friend to drive an hour away to come get us would be heavy. Does Uber have large vehicles that can transport kids? What are we going to do with the boat? Public boat landings do not allow you to leave your boat overnight. Where is that spare key????? Not to mention, the other keys.

Okay reader, does this situation sound as crazy and awful to you as if felt to me? Or maybe it just sounds funny? Five minutes before I realized that we didn’t have any keys, I was thinking about what a good story this was going to be. I was thinking that this was stressful to Luke and I but to our kids, it was just something crazy to tell their grandparents. I thought that breaking the car window was the worse thing that could happen. Now, holy cow, I wasn’t really sure what we were going to do but it was going to get worse before it got better.

Luke delivered the bad news and then turned to walk back to the car. The tide was going out and he happened to glance down at the boat landing. And there, just barely visible with the falling tide, were our keys. They had fallen out of my hand in the exact moment that I stepped from the dock onto the boat. When we first arrived at the dock, they were covered by the tide so even if we had been looking, we wouldn’t have seen them. And if the tide were rising instead of falling, we would never have found them. It was CRAZY Y’ALL!

So, we all eagerly piled into the car. I piled into the back seat, as my normal seat was covered in shattered glass. It took us about 20 minutes to decompress before we started laughing and making jokes about what a wild day it was.

We made a few jokes about mom owing dad for screwing up by losing the keys. We were sure to tell the kids later that no one owes anyone anything when they make mistakes. Mistakes happen. When you love people, it is your honor and privilege to help them. We are all in this together and this is just what we do. I wanted to be sure that they don’t think that they ever owe us or anyone really for accidents. You can be grateful and return the favor, but that is all that you “owe” anyone for making a mistake. I guess that’s the moral of the story? I don’t know. For awhile, I felt like the universe was conspiring against me where as I generally maintain focus that things are conspiring for me.

Now, I think the universe was still on my side.