tender mercy on a toy box lid

I was lucky. I had a good childhood. I mean the early part. Where everything is controlled and you don’t know any better than to go along with it all. Every once-in-a-while I get a small glimpse of what it was like way back then. My memory is triggered by something Simon brings home, or says, or plays with.

That's what happened this morning. Simon brought out a puzzle that had the map of the United States on it. All at once, the aperture of my memory widened and I looked through the dusty lens, and saw my father’s hand holding a black felt-tipped pen. He was pointing at the state of Wisconsin in an outline map of the US. It was printed on the cardboard lid of a toy box he’d brought home and assembled for me. He was showing me where Madison was, and as he pointed it out, he carefully, and deliberately set the felt-tip of the pen down in the lower part of that outline right in the center and drew a bold black dot.

At that moment I became aware of a larger world. A world surrounding that little dot that signified where I stood in it. My awareness telescoped out from that dot onto a greater understanding of the world and my place in it. That dot seemed to exclaim; "Here I am world!"

How I loved that toy box. Not because it was anything special, but because my dad made it seem special by taking the time to show me that aspect of the map. Even though it was just cardboard, probably nothing more than the type of file box you get for a few bucks at Staples — it comes flat and you fold it into a box — but now, for some reason, it was imbued with extra aspect because of the loving gesture my father had made.

I can’t remember the room that box was in. I can’t remember any of the toys I put in that box. Nor can I remember what the sides looked like, but I can remember the lid of that box. It was white with a simple black outline of the US on it. The sides of the cardboard turned down and under helping to stiffen its structure a bit. Within the graphic of the US spanning the cover in thick black outlines, there in Wisconsin, from that day forward was the dot my dad made on the first day he gave it to me. I can still see it as it looked after a while of being used, it had become concave with a striation of wrinkles set across the map, as if the rocky mountains and the appellation mountains each turned 90 degrees and now met and stretched east to west across the center of the country.

To me that dot was a stroke of genius. It elevated that mass-produced, cardboard toy chest to a work of art. The box was no longer contained in three dimensions. It had length, width, depth, and then also some sort of other worldly tangent. This tangent magnified and embellished its otherwise inanimate existence into a documentary of a tender mercy. A mercy that wouldn’t be exactly apparent or understood at the time, but that would play so brilliantly in years long beyond the physical existence of that cardboard toy box lid. A mercy that only seemed special at the time, but grows as I age into a softer and absolute pure gift of love.

That dot is like a button that sets off that memory. A memory I had no words for at that age, just a warm feeling. He gave me a gift of love and knowledge. What better gift can a father give a daughter?

I only hope I can leave little droplets of love and mercy in Simon’s memory as my father did for me. I cherish those tomes of sensation from long, long, ago.