Last year (2012) I decided to make little wooden boxes for my kids, and grand kids. The idea came to me as I listened to “The Littlest Angel,” by Bing Crosby about 2 weeks before Christmas. That Christmas carol has always been one of my favorites…if not my favorite.
So, out into my shop I went. I selected a specific wood for each kid; a specific wood I related to each kid. Then I began cutting, fitting, assembling, sanding and finishing. And after 4 or 5 days, I was finished.
Ever so clever, perhaps cleverer than most, I decided to include a line from the carol that would only make sense when the boxes were lined up in the ‘proper’ order.’
“…But the Lord chose the gift of the little box that a child had blessed with love…” Words that have brought tears to my eyes so many, many years. Tears I’ve shed alone, in silence…
On the table you can also see a few things that were once my treasures. A flying glove, my USAF Senior Pilot wings, an Air Force Commendation Medal, and the broken wings I was awarded at UPT graduation. (Legend held if we broke our wings on the ground, we would never break them in the air.) As with the wood, I chose something special “of myself” to include with each box – things that I have held on to for years. Each kid got something ‘of me’ that I thought ‘appropriate’ for them.
And I managed to get everything together in time for Christmas! Keith and his family was easy – they live here in NW Ohio. Dana and her family live in Colorado – but they received their little boxes before Christmas.
I can’t remember the sequence of events but Dana told me she figured out the line from the carol – she figured out the sequence of the boxes. She went on to tell me that she thought I was ‘dying’ because I had given her my college class ring – that it had brought tears to her eyes.
I then asked what the girls thought of the boxes, and she told me she was holding off giving the boxes to the girls. She had a ‘reason,’ but I shut down ‘my listening ears’ as it didn’t mean anything after that – and I pretended that it didn’t matter.
I was out in Colorado this past summer and I happened to ask if the girls ever got their boxes. I think they did, but it all missed the point. How wonderful would it have been had the girls sat down and asked of the significance of the treasures included with their boxes? How cool would it have been to have shared the secrets of my treasures with them? And to see what they have in their little boxes – boxes that a “child blessed with love…” A 66-year old child who is still a little boy at times… Today I wonder, ‘what’s the point?’