The Special Box....

The other day, I was rooting around in the kitchen. I wanted to surprise my wife by having dinner fixed by the time she got home that evening. While looking though some of the kitchen drawers I came across a little metal box that had been painted red. The box had been manufactured with the intent of it's use to be that of a file for index cards.

Something right out of the 1960's.

As I held the box in my hand, a flood of memories entered my mind. Both from the 60's and from just a few years ago. I was suddenly inundated with recollections from two different era's simultaneously.

How strange is that? And all from the same seemingly insignificant little box.

My first encounter with the box which was painted an ugly green color originally, occurred while I was in the Cub Scouts in Nebraska, over 40 years ago. Each scout had been ask to bring a small metal file box with them to the next meeting, our Scout Master had a new project in mind for us.

I remember asking my folks to purchase the 'box' for me. In response though, my father rummaged through his belongings and found the very old and well worn box that he no longer utilized. I seem to recall that he had purchased it in Alaska when we lived there a few years earlier.

After taking the box with me to my next Cub Scout meeting, the Scout Master informed us that we would be taking those ordinary little metal boxes and dressing them up. We were then each to start using the boxes to store keepsakes and photographs in. They were to serve as memory boxes.

I remember that night well. I painted my little ugly green box a deep fire engine red, which was quite appropriate since my father was a firefighter at the time. I then took black felt, cut it down to size, and pasted it onto the bottom of the box. After the paint dried, I took the sharp point of a knife and etched my name and a simple little design onto the top of the box. The design was simply two lines above my name and two lines below it.

I was very proud of my little memory box and I cherished it for years and years after I created it. I dutifully filled it with various memorable trinkets and some of my favorite photographs. For some reason though, once I reached my late teen years, that box just didn't have the same appeal to me any longer. I remember coming across a large empty cigar box one day, and being impressed with its size and design, decided that it would be a much more suitable container for my memories.

How quickly we change allegiances isn't it?

After emptying the little red box I had intened on throwing it away. But my mother quickly relieved me of the box though. She needed something to file away recipes in and the box seemed perfect for that.

Now, anyone who knew my mother would tell you that she did not like to cook. It's just a plain and simple fact. The fact is, my father cooked a lot of our meals when he wasn't working late, serving in Southeast Asia, or on a TDY somewhere. My mother did love us very much though and she knew how much my father and us kids loved deserts.

Deserts were a big thing in our house.

So, my mother really began focusing on desert recipes. Over the next 30 years, my mother filled that little box chock full of scrumptious recipes. Some of the recipes she wrote out in in long hand on little index cards. Others were either torn out of magazines or typed up and then taped or pasted to a index card.

And so, the other day, four years after having lost my mother to breast cancer, I stood there in the kitchen combing through that little box. There was something significant at seeing my mothers handwriting on those little cards and reading the little side notes that she had written alongside some of those recipes. With each and every recipe, I felt the love that my mother had for her family. In many ways, when she was alive, she had been unable to truly share verbally and from her heart exactly how she felt for us. But now, years after her death, I connected with my mother in a brand new way.

I miss you Mom.