Yesterday, I lost my keys at a track meet. Also, my daughter hurt herself on her first jump of the triple jump.  She ran. She jumped.  She felt an unfamiliar pain.  Barely five minutes into the meet and I was at the snack bar asking for ice. The kind ladies working there said, “Already? They are not even running yet.”

Yes. Already.

You should know this was not just any meet. This was an important one. Do well here and advance to Sections.  And then the Masters Meet.  And then the State meet!  On it goes.

So, after stretching and icing and talking with her coaches, she decided not to compete in her 800m race, set to start an hour or so after the fateful jump.  Which meant that I had a lot of time to walk around the track (might as well get some steps in, right?) and deal with my own gremlins, the ones who love success  and watching her run and who were disappointed and then worried about the races scheduled for Thursday.  What if she’s really hurt? What if she can’t run her favorite race Thursday, the 1600m run? She’s had such a good season so far. Could it all be over after one bad triple jump?

Doom. Gloom.

Somewhere in the waiting, as the running events began and I cheered on her teammates in spite of my sadness, I lost my keys.

Can you say, “This is not turning out to be my favorite day ever?”

Except. As is the case with many seemingly unfortunate events, there was also a cascade of grace heading my way.

Here was the first grace:  I noticed that my keys were missing at all.

You see, my husband met us at the meet. Smart man that he is, he had his keys.  He parked on the other side of the stadium, while we were right by the entrance. So as we all piled into our little car to drive him back to his, it unlocked like normal.   It was only when he got out and went to his car that my car politely informed me that there was no key around.

“Great,” I thought. “My key battery has finally died.”  The car had been warning me for weeks of imminent battery failure. If the key fob battery wears out, then the car won’t start.  My husband gallantly offered to loan me his key, just to get us moving again. I almost took him up on his offer. I’d had the keys in my pocket all afternoon. They must be around, right?

I decided to check, just to be sure.

Nowhere to be found.

We looked under the seats. We looked in the back of the car. We looked places where keys never could be. My husband was even brave and looked through my purse.  We went back to where we were originally parked. Walked around the parking lot.  I went back in to the stadium and retraced my steps. Could they be by the bleachers where I sat and watched for a bit? In the student section where I picked up my daughter’s backpack? At the announcer’s booth?

I ran into one of my friends, the mother of one of my daughter’s friends, just arriving. She was worried about my daughter; she heard she wasn’t running.  “Me too!” I said, “Plus I just lost my keys.” She nodded, understanding. We all have days like these.

That brief encounter was the second grace.

A few minutes later,  I sat in the parking lot of 7-11, waiting for my husband to buy our daughter a consolation Slurpee.  One more time, I futilely ransacked the car and my purse.  No keys. It finally occurred to me that this might be an appropriate time to pray. I hadn’t thought about it until then.  I am slow sometimes.

I confess my prayer was a little grumpy. “Really, Lord,” I said. “Could you just help me find my keys? I am lost here, and my girl may be hurt, and this is just a little too much for me to bear. So, could you?”

I sat back in the drivers seat. My daughter got back in the car with her drink. I checked my phone again.

There on my phone, where it hadn’t been a minute before, was a text from my friend.  My keys were in the announcer’s booth.

There was grace number three, beautiful and sparkling and kind.  Someone, bless them, found my keys, and turned them in. Also, the announcer made an announcement over the loudspeaker that my friend actually heard.   Because, really, most of the talk that comes over the loud speaker is hard to understand. And if you are talking to someone? And they are announcing something that isn’t relevant to your child? You usually tune it out.

The more I think about it,  the more I realize that I was blessed yesterday with more than just a series of graces. I got a miracle.  Because of all the people at that track meet, there were only a handful who had my cell phone number. And only one who had my phone number and also knew I was looking for my keys.

My sweet husband went back to the announcer’s booth and collected them. We all went home and had vegetable soup from the crock pot.

The graces are always all around.  Sometimes it takes a bad day for me to notice them.  Once I remember the graces? The bad day isn’t so bad anymore.

And just a note: my daughter ran on Thursday and qualified for the Sections meet.  Her hip is fine, but now her knee is sore.

Earlier this week, I went to Best Buy and stood in line for over an hour in hopes of purchasing the Nintendo NES Classic Edition. You may not know that this was the hard to find gift last Christmas season. It was also the thing my son wanted most in the world.  He started talking about it months before it was released. “It has 30 games!”  he said. “Mario! Pac-Man!”

“Great!” I thought. “That will make Christmas shopping for him easy. And if not Christmas, then surely his birthday, which is soon after.”

The day the game consoles were released, they sold out on Amazon within seconds.  Elsewhere on the internet, they were nowhere to be found, except at prices well above the $69 regular retail price.  Who would pay that?

“Don’t worry, honey,”  I told my shattered son, after it was clear that there was no way we were going to find one in time for Christmas.  “There will be plenty available after the holiday excitement dies down.

On a side note: I also told my son repeatedly last summer when Trump was sweeping the Republican primaries that there was no need to worry because he would never be elected. Never. I mean, a wall with Mexico? Global warming a hoax? It was ludicrous.

This just goes to show how often I am wrong about things that I am absolutely convinced of.  Trump was elected (though I still can’t believe that happened). And earlier this week, Nintendo announced that they were discontinuing production of the NES Classic Edition. As in, no more. EBay prices soared.  The last units were set to ship to stores by the end of the month.  Of course, we still hadn’t found one;  remember, I was waiting for the excitement to die down.  Late Sunday evening, though, I saw a news story which reported that Best Buy would have a limited number of units for sale in store Monday morning.

Which explains why I was driving down the highway, speeding to Best Buy, even though I didn’t know for sure if that news story was even true. Alternative facts and all.  And if it was true, I still didn’t have a lot of hope. I’m not usually lucky when it comes to things like this.  I actually had forgotten about the sale, and had taken the dog for a walk after dropping my daughter off at school.  In case you are wondering,  it is probably not the best idea to go on a leisurely walk the morning of perhaps the final in-store release of the world’s hottest gaming console.

The store opened at 10 a.m. It was 8:20 a.m when I remembered that I had been thinking about going to Best Buy at all.  It was about a 25 minute drive. Was it even worth going? Honestly, this did not sound like fun. It was probably going to be a waste of time. But for some reason, I decided to see.

When I pulled into the parking lot, there were just a handful of people in line. A good sign? Some had lawn chairs and were wrapped up in sleeping bags. One man had a portable heater powered by a propane tank. I counted eight people there. That would make me nine! And if they had 10 game consoles?  Surely they would have at least 10?

Or not. It was possible that they would only have eight units, or five. There were no guarantees.

An hour is a long time to sit in front of a store with just a vague hope of shopping success. I talked with the woman next to me and the fellow by her. We scooted over to make room for him on the curb. He had big dogs in his truck.  We laughed together because one of them looked like he was driving. The lady had jet skis and collected old VHS Disney movies; apparently, someone has the VHS version of the Little Mermaid in an original case on eBay listed at $250,000.  She just found out that she was going to be an aunt.

In the end, though, the friendly Best Buy employees said hello to our line and handed out…

Can you guess?

Ten tickets. There were ten NES Classic Minis in the store. I was just in time.

I felt bad for the people in line just after me. There was a fellow who even offered $80 to anyone who wanted to sell their ticket. “My son would be too sad,” I told him, though his offer was tempting.  The crowd dispersed without incident after that, disappointed but not crushed.

I found a funny kind of community there.  One man who already had one of the consoles (which he got after sleeping in a tent in front of Target on the coldest night of the winter, he told me) told me which accessories I should buy.  We needed a second controller, of course, so that two people could play the games together. Also, one extension cord, because otherwise you have to stand right by the TV to play and who wants to do that? After we got our tickets,  I chatted with the fellows at the front of the line. They had gotten there around 5 am. One thanked the other for buying him a coffee, and they shook hands as the store doors finally opened and we all streamed inside.

God was there in front of that Best Buy store.  A strange collection of souls gathered in hopeful anticipation, people who normally never would have talked with each other. I bet there were even Trump supporters there. No matter. For the time that we waited, we chatted and listened and were kind to each other.  Those of us who got the prize were joyous and grateful, because the treasure was one that we weren’t sure we would ever find.  Especially me, because I got there so late. When I started my trek to Best Buy that morning, I wasn’t hopeful at all. But once again, I was wrong. This time, that was a good thing.

Not such a bad way to spend the morning after all.