If Only...

This past weekend, my Sidekick and I went on our first romantic getaway in over 4 years. We left the boys with friends (thanks!), and headed for the hills (literally- we went to a nice, quiet resort town in the mountains). It was beautiful, our suite was beautiful and it was fanastic eating whatever we wanted, sleeping however long we wanted, and going where ever we wanted. It was the perfect weekend, right up until we loaded up the trunk and walked around to unlock the doors. That was the moment that we realized we had just locked BOTH sets of keys in the trunk. The trunk of the convertible mustang (which has no trunk release anywhere in the car- you either needed the keyfob or the key- ALL of which were IN THE TRUNK).

We were over 100 miles from home, out in the middle of no where, with no way in the trunk. We had My Sidekick's wallet, our phones and a bottle of water (and a pack of Mamba candy- thank heavens!) It was pretty stressful, but we took a deep breath and jumped into gear, looking up numbers on our phones with the help of google and making calls. After an hour and half a dozen phone calls, we found a locksmith that could drive out and make us a new key for $150. A little over an hour later, we were on our way, with a new key and the info we needed to get reinbursed from our insurance.

As we were driving home after our mini crisis, we passed a road sign that said, "50 Days Since the Last Serious Accident. Please Drive Safely." The number on the sign was electronic and it obviously updated daily and had the ability to be reset. 50 Days ago, some one was in a serious accident on that same road. The sign was most likely there because there had been many serious accidents on that road. Possibly even fatalities. It made me start thinking, what if our mini crisis had saved our lives? What if this irritating and uncomfortable experience had put us on the road 2ish hours later to avoid a serious accident or some other tragedy?

I've seen lives forever changed in an instant and quite often when there is a tragedy, we say, "If only...". "If only they had taken another route home." "If only her mom had found her sooner." "If only the driver had had one less beer." "If only..." Have you ever stopped to wonder how many times "If only" did happen. Once we were staying in our familys' cabin. I put Rascal, who was not yet 1, down for a nap while the adults did work updating the cabin. Halfway into his nap, an annoying alarm kept going off through the monitor that I had luckily ("if only") brought. It turned out that it was the carbon monoxide detector that my aunt and uncle had luckily ("if only") brought to the cabin. It had been set off by the generator that was running right next to Rascal's room. He would have died that day, but instead, by divine intervention, "if only" happened. I will be eternally grateful to the baby monitor and the aunt and uncle that saved my baby's life.

I'm sure this is not the only time "if only" has happened in my life. It's just one of the only times that I was aware of it. So, instead of being all upset that our weekend getaway and subsequent evening was ruined and altered (we had a babysitter that we had to cancel, we missed a meeting we had wanted to attend, and we had to impose on our friends to keep our kids longer than originally planned), I am grateful that sometimes "if only" happens, even if it is irritating at the time. Chances are, we would have driven home just fine, without incident, but you never know... I imagine all of the near misses are recorded on the other side, and I bet we'll all be really surprised when we get there and see just how many times there actually were in our lives.