"What's that box?" I asked my father at about seven years old. We had recently moved into a small home in Greater Boston, overlooking the city and I was exploring the extra room next to my bedroom upstairs. It was a tiny room the size of a closet. Somehow a twin bed, night table and a small dresser were tightly placed in there, but with no room to spare. In reality this meant that when you stepped into the room, you were miraculously half way across it at the same time. For years we called it “the spare room." I always thought that meant the ‘extra’ room. In retrospect, it could have been a joke as there was surely no room to spare. It was just a tiny room with nothing memorable in it, except a box.
This mysterious box was simple and small. It was made of dark wood with a carved heart, swirling leaf-like designs on the lid, and scallop patterns on the foundation edgings. The background had little dots of indents where the artist had carefully tapped the tip of a knife to create pattern and depth. In a plain and utilitarian room, this piece seemed completely out of place or an attempt toward waking things up.
The box was neatly placed, and perfectly centered on the top of the dresser. Perfectly centered, as my father had a tendency toward exact. This one day he was gingerly putting something back into it and closing the lid carefully, when I had asked him my question. "Oh, it’s just something I've had since I was young." He smiled, patted my head and walked out with me. It was a calm, clear answer and kept me quiet for several more years.
"Where did you get this box?" I asked my father again sometime during my early adolescent double digits. I was busy now. Rarely home, and rarely ever in this room. It seemed spare for something or someone that never came. The carved wooden box had held court and stayed in its post, perfectly placed on the dresser for years. Nothing and no one had moved it. On this night, I went in the room to look for the cat, who often could be found curled up and sleeping on the bed. Guarded by the box, peacefully still in solitude and silence. "Oh, it's just something I got in Italy during the war." My hand brushed over the meticulous carvings and took in the detail all around, like Braille. I instinctively began to run my fingers over the design of intricacy, like I was painting. "It's beautiful!" I said softly, but my Dad had already walked away.
It never occurred to me to open it.
Years later, I was in college living in the city, a mere thirty minutes away. I came home for a semester break and saw things as if for the first time. Everything seemed different now. What was old seemed new, what was new seemed wrong and what was silent seemed loud. I would slowly wander the house late at night after my parents went to bed, exploring rooms and things as if I had never been there before, reveling in my connection and letting the rooms of our home hold me once again.
The spare room was exactly the same. Its purposelessness now struck me as comical and the conundrum of the box called me all over again. The carved, wooden box with a heart was still in its place of duty on the dresser, artistically watching time stand still. I went over and gently pulled up the lid. Inside the box were old, foreign coins from Italy, France and England.
The next evening, I took the box out of the room for the first time ever and into the light. It was astonishingly beautiful and unique. While the ceiling light of the upstairs hallway helped bring details into focus our cat wove in and out of my feet, doing methodical crazy eights. He meowed for attention then followed me in a quick pitter- patter down the stairs, almost tripping me in the process of going to find my father.
My father was resting in a recliner in the family room with his eyes closed, listening to music. “Dad. Dad? Are you awake?” His eyes opened quickly but then he slowly rubbed them sideways, like windshield wipers in a gentle rain. He cleared his throat, saw me and then rallied with a sweet smile, as he swooshed his hair back into place with his hands. “No, honey, no, no, no... I wasn’t sleeping!” His favorite Eddy Arnold record was playing in the background. If I could pretend now that I knew which Arnold song echoed in that moment, I would surely think it was Make the World Go Away.
I sat down in the chair beside my dad and gently placed the wooden box on my lap. He knew. I knew. The time was right. “Where did you get this box, Dad? It’s so beautiful. And the coins…” My father began to slowly pull the chair up and center himself, as if to find balance. His voice was sleepy and gravelly, not quite him yet. “World War II. In Italy.” The cat jumped up onto the recliner arm and was now kneading my dad’s lap signaling he wanted to settle in for a stay. I did too.
I opened the box. “A prisoner of war carved it for me.”
“A prisoner of war? What do you mean? Why would he do that? I don’t understand.” The cat began to purr loudly again and his tail was slapping my father’s lap with rhythmic contentment. My father began petting him to sleep. We both sat there, holding tales.
“I was stationed in France, Italy and North Africa. You know, there is nothing more beautiful in the whole world than North Africa. Nothing.” This was the first time my dad had ever spoken to me about WWII and the first I had even heard him say North Africa.
“POW’s got bored…so we let them do all kinds of things to pass the time, even whittling wood. When I was stationed in Italy, I guarded and befriended one.”
One. It seemed like giving this POW a name was to cross some sort of boundary all over again for my father.
“I talked to him every day. There were times he told me about his family and then I would talk to him about mine. And New Hampshire…” My father paused a very long time in silence and this made me feel awkward, so I handed him the box. He began brushing his fingers over the heart and leaf design. “I would sneak him chocolate bars, and sometimes even cigarettes, when I could!”
The cat was now sound asleep. My dad went on about all things politics and war to help provide context, weaving in Hitler, Mussolini, and the hanging in the town square. But all I remember is when he returned to telling me about the One. “Right before I left Italy, he gave me this box as a gift. He wanted to thank me for being so kind to him.”
My father handed me back the box, then slowly closed his eyes putting his head back down on the back of the recliner. He began to hum quietly to Eddy Arnold, who seemed to be soothing us both back from war. “Goodnight, Dad.” He smiled peacefully with his eyes closed. I kissed the cat goodnight.
Somewhere between then and now the metaphor of it all hit me. This box had been isolated in a tiny room for years and then, paradoxically, was placed on the dresser like a guard.
War atrocities, evil and human horror aside, my father’s only story to me about the war was how he befriended the enemy, who carved and gave him a box with a beautiful heart on it. How two men found common ground and humanity as their language.
How we remember and keep some things forever.
To this day the box now reminds me of all things peaceful and possible.
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