In our family, I'm the judgmental one who has lots of opinions and thinks she knows everything, while Matt is too kind and generous for his own good. And he loses things. 

Like his keys. Which is why I recently found him crawling around my floor. I sighed internally, trying not to seem like I was judging him for his carelessness. Instead, I pitched in. We looked everywhere. 

We speculated about whether my daughter might have hidden them. Or could the dog have eaten them? Or did my husband move them?

Yet deep down, I knew that the dog, my daughter and even my husband were unlikely culprits.  Matt had surely put them down somewhere strange and completely forgotten them. He's always done that kind of thing. After all, the obvious solution to the problem – that he fetch his spare keys – was unavailable because he'd already lost them. 

Eventually, Matt gave up and called the auto locksmith, an expensive exercise.

Then, the next day, I found the keys in my bag. I must have put them there, absent-mindedly, thinking they were mine. In the course of the great key hunt, I'd searched everyone's bag, except my own. Because they couldn't be there. I never lose things, remember? 

I rang Matt and he laughed and said: "I'm just so glad it was you that lost them. It's such a relief to know it wasn't my fault."

We had once again played out our preordained roles. I had been judgey and superior, but I'd also been reminded that I am sometimes (rarely) wrong.

Matt sometimes loses things but he's also, without question, generous, kind and forgiving. And that is a much, much dearer, and rarer, quality.

Monica Dux