Odds and Ends

I gently lifted the carved wooden box off the top shelf of Grandpa’s closet. It had been there as long as I could remember. Whenever I asked him what was in it, he would simply say, “Oh, just odds and ends.” He never let any of us see inside and he always kept it locked.

It was a little bigger than a cigar box, and Grandma told me he had made it himself before I was born. It was covered with hand-carved leaves and scrolls and the occasional acorn. Every now and then Grandpa would take that box out and polish it with an old red cotton rag he kept just for that purpose. I always thought it was about the nicest box I’d ever seen.

I used to ask Grandma what he kept in it, but she always claimed she didn’t know and she never would know unless he felt a need to tell her. She let me know it was his wish to keep that box’s contents a secret and we ought to respect him enough to let it be.

I tried hard to let it be, but whenever I saw him wipe away a tear after looking through that box, my curiosity was almost more than my own strength could handle. I think he knew it, too, because he’d catch me staring and he’d look at me so hard, like he was struggling just as hard as I was to keep from talking about it.

I told him many times how much I admired that box. One time I asked him if he’d teach me how to make one, maybe even help me with it, but whenever I talked about it, he would get a faraway look in his eyes and get real quiet and kind of disappear for a while. I finally quit talking about it when I saw how it hurt him. But I never stopped wondering.

Grandpa got real sick a few years ago. It was some kind of infection around his heart. He got well again, but he never was quite the same. He seemed to get weaker and weaker until he finally had trouble breathing just to walk across the yard. Well, his heart finally gave out altogether. I fancy he’s now with my own dad and they’re huggin' and cryin' and dancin' in heaven.

I reckon he thought I was finally old enough, though I’m not quite growed up yet, because he left me an envelope with a small key inside it and a note saying I should open up that box exactly two months after his funeral.

So here I was, finally opening up that box that played such a big part of my whole life up ‘til now. A box of I-had-no-idea-what. A box that had filled many an evening with speculation.

I sat that box down on Grandpa’s bed and I looked at it. I looked at it until I memorized every leaf, every scroll, and counted every acorn. Then I took that red cotton rag and I polished that box until my fingers were sore. Only then did I get that little key out and open that box.

The first thing I saw was another envelope just like the one that had the key. He had written my name on it with his own shaky hand. His hand didn’t shake until a couple months before he died, so I knew it was recent.

I laid the envelope aside and looked through grandpa’s odds and ends that filled that little box. There was a gray lighter that didn’t work no more. There was an old baseball in there. There was a little white handkerchief with tiny blue flowers embroidered on it. There was a whiskey label in there that was browned and dog-eared with age. There was a large, silver ring with an amber stone in it.

There was a little plastic bag full of pennies in there, but I didn’t see nothing special about ‘em. Then there was a broken watch, a poker chip, and a little toy zebra.

I looked through that pile I had removed from that box again and again, but I couldn’t come up with any explanation as to why he’d want to keep a bunch of worthless junk a secret. Finally, I picked up that envelope and I looked at my name on it, knowing it was going to go back in that box with all that other stuff and I was going to keep it all forever just like he had.

Then I opened that envelope and I took out a letter addressed to me from the man who honored me enough to write it to me because I honored him enough to let it be.

Son,

When you look through this junk you ain’t gonna see nothin but junk. But let me tell ya’ what I see when I look through it. I see a baseball I hit through Old Man Willard’s window and never owned up to. Hell, he never could afford to fix that window and I often wondered if that ain’t why he died that winter.

I see a lighter that I used to light up thousands of cigarettes, knowin’ they was gonna kill me sooner or later. I see a great big ring I wore on purpose to hit Bobby Milner in the face with so’s I’d break his nose. I see a watch showin’ me all the time I never spent with your pa afore he died. I see a handkerchief belongin’ to a lady I never shoulda known (it’d kill yer Grandma so don’t tell her none about it).

I see a label from a bottle that led me astray too many times to count. I see a bag of pennies representin’ all the misdealin’s I done in my life.

Son, what you got to understand is all these was choices I made and all these never caused me no prison time, but every single one of ‘em caused me the disease of regret. It ate me from the inside out and never stopped eatin’ me.

Oh, they was easy enough to explain or reason at the time. They always are. Life is full of just such times and just such reasonin's and then you make a choice. Your Grandma and me, we raised you knowin’ right from wrong. You can’t let all that other nonsense get in the way of your seein’ clear. That’s what that zebra’s in there for. When you clear out all the smoke and you look straight at the root of the situation, you’ll see it’s black and white, right and wrong.

Make good choices, son, so’s you don’t have to live with the disease of regret. It’s easier to die than to live that way. I hope you never add any of your own odds and ends to this here box.

Love,

Grandpa

James 4:17

Psalm 34:14

2 Corinthians 7:10

Romans 2:9