Thinking Inside the Box

Thinking Inside the Box

                        The other day I found an old box full of stuff we’d packed away before our last move, two-and-a-half years ago. It had been stacked beside my desk all that time and I picked it up and started to throw it way, unopened. I thought to myself, “If you haven’t needed anything in there for this long, it’s probably not worth saving.” But curiosity got the best of me and I sat down with the box and opened it. There, just as I had haphazardly put them in as moving day approached, were all the items I’d almost pitched. There were some pens and pencils…no great find. There were a few faded receipts which I have no idea why I saved. Then a few other odds and ends with a total value of maybe ten cents.

            But then as I got past the top layer or worthlessness I uncovered a pocket knife. I haven’t owned a pocket knife since I was a young lad. This wasn’t my pocket knife; it had belonged to my father when he was a boy. I found it in his desk after he passed away. I took the knife from the box and gently stroked it as though it somehow connected me to my dad. He had touched that very knife, whittled twigs and sticks with it in the hills of Harlan County, Kentucky. I could almost see him in front of me, a toe-headed youngster in plain bib-overalls, making a little wooden toy for his younger brothers.

            A tear formed in the corner of my moist eye. The tear was not because I missed my dad, although not a day goes by when he doesn’t enter my thoughts. No, the tear was because I came so dangerously close to throwing away the connection, the umbilical cord with my past, my heritage, my flesh and blood. In a rush to make room for something new, to eliminate what looked like a box of nothingness, I had almost burned one of the bridges to my past. A bridge which could never have been replaced, re-purchased or recovered.

            I do wonder sometimes if we are not too quick to let go of the past, the memories, the connections to those whose shoulders we stand upon. I know; time marches on…the future is now…the glory days are gone. All true. But the boxes…the boxes are not gone, not yet, not all of them. There are still precious memories, packed inside, waiting to be well…rediscovered. If the box has trash in it…throw it away, but dig carefully, look for pocket knives. And when you find them, hold them, smell them, close your eyes and let them take you to a place inside the box, where we are still connected to our past.