These past few days, the polar vortex brought the coldest temperatures in a generation to parts of the US and Canada. I’m now having second thoughts about spending a winter in Siberia.
After a snowfall, I usually take along a second car key to warm the car up while I cleared the snow off the outside, not an easy task sometimes, especially when it is frozen solid. Why the second key? Insurance–in case the car door locked shut somehow, I would not be locked out if the main key bunch with the car and house keys stayed secure in my heavy, winter jacket.
Before the day broke the first morning after the polar vortex arrived in the night, there I was, standing in the dark, in ankle-deep snow, with wind-chills at -35oC/-31oF, trying to swipe enough snow off the car, now recognizable only as a huge mound of snow. It took me the better part of half an hour before I could get inside the by now warm car and go on my errand.
As I drove back home fifteen minutes later, I was pretty pleased at having navigated the snow on the road, and I was looking forward to getting back inside my warm home and having a hot cup of coffee. But I was in for a nasty shock. When I got out of the car and felt my thick, down jacket for the main set of keys, I could not find them. Thinking that the cold had disoriented me (it actually had), I searched all the pockets of the jacket to no avail. I then searched the floor of the car, under the seat, in the drink holders. But the keys were nowhere to be found.
In the dark, I looked with misgiving at the mounds of snow surrounding the car. It was clear it would be next to impossible to find the keys there. Nonetheless, I gamely took out the foot-long snow-cleaning device and poked around in the snow, only to be quickly chilled to the bone. I realized that the odds of finding the keys in the snow in the dark were greater than finding a needle in a haystack. The windows of the landlord’s house were still dark. I decided to get back in the car and wait till the landlord’s household awoke before asking them for the duplicate set of house keys.
But, not one to give up easily, every ten minutes or so, once I warmed up a little, I would get out of the car, and poke around in the snow. With each attempt, my heart sank deeper. My prayers seemed pointless. The tantalizing thought of hot coffee and a warm home tormented me.
Suddenly, in the middle of my fourth or fifth attempt, I was startled by a loud beep from the car. I said to myself, “Now you have gone and done it. You have set the alarm off and have locked yourself out of the car, the only warm place in the cold.” Waking up the whole neighborhood with the car alarm and being unable to turn it off, was the last thing I wanted to happen. But when I looked to see how the alarm had been activated, I realized that I was too far away to touch the car. Puzzled, I gingerly tried the handle. The door was open! I had not locked myself out! And there were no beeps, other than the first.
I wondered how the car had beeped on its own. Then it dawned on me. I hastily jumped away from the spot where I was standing and started to feverishly dig the snow. It was just as I had thought. There, under a foot of snow that I had pushed off the top of the car, lay my missing key bunch. It was my weight, as I unknowingly stood over it, that had depressed the car locator function on the key, prompting the beep.
How did the keys get there? I do not know for certain, but my guess is that as I stretched forward to brush the snow off the top of the car, the keys had fallen out of the pocket that my numb fingers had not zipped securely.
The joy that comes with finding lost things is indescribable. Technology – and prayers – had won the day for me. I hurried home with a grateful heart for that hot cup of coffee.