Topic: The box

[piersdad]

 Asher’s box.

It was my birthday and what any eight-year-old wants is a nice box to keep my treasures in.
Granddad was coming to the party and we were having a lovely time.
When granddad handed me a big parcel I thought that’s an unusual size for a toy.
Slowly I opened the parcel and in it was the most beautiful wooden box.
It had lovely brass hinges and hand made clasp and really look like a box that you only put your best things in.

Time passed and over the next few years I kept things in the box that I treasured.
Christmas was here and the box was forgotten just put away under the sideboard furniture.
 Christmas Eve and I went to sleep dreaming of the next day and all the exciting things that might happen.
Suddenly there was shouting and screaming and I woke from a deep sleep wondering what was happening.
Crash and a splintering of glass as something broke the bedroom window and there was a man shouting to me to wake up and get out the window.
It was then I realized the house was on fire and I soon found myself in the arms of a sobbing mother.

The fire engine arrived and sadly it was too late as by the time the fire was out there was nothing left just a gutted ruin.
The next few days we were helped by friends and soon it sunk in that nothing, my toys my, books my huge collection of war toys even my lovely possum skin rug that was so lovely to walk on in the cold mornings was gone forever.

Days later we returned to look sadly at what was once our lovely home that mother had so lovingly restored.   With tears in my eyes I searched the ruins and there sitting on a platform of singed floorboard was a blackened square box.
It stood like it was on an altar perched on the only bit of un-burnt flooring slowly I realized it was the box that granddad had made.
Now the brass was black the hard wood edges were all burnt of the cedar sides were just a fragile mosaic of black charcoal.

I had forgotten what I had in it, and as the lock was still holding it shut, it seemed to say to us, take me home please so we carefully slid the box into a plastic bag and took it home.

Some time later mum and I took the blackened box to granddads so that he could open it for us.
Carefully so as to not damage the now fragile charcoal of the box, it was the only thing that survived the fire, it seemed to say look after me, I braved the fire for you.

Slowly the lid was opened and we peered in to see what else was burned to a cinder and, there, in the box was a pile of hard cover books. “Our photos our photos” I shouted! “Mum I put all the family photos in the box! And there in their glory were all the family photos not a singe or a mark on them.
As we looked again through my entire  family and growing up pictures mum said the box must have known the only thing that cant be replaced after a fire was the family photos.

Granddads box, perhaps it knew that it held such a precious cargo that it had to give its all to save it.
Granddad said “let me have the box and I will rebuild for you again, so that one day, you can look at the scorch marks on the bits that survived and say.
That’s granddads box”

[Cran]

That was no ordinary box, my friend ...

that was a treasure chest!

[piersdad]

a real treasure there  the cedar of the sides acted the same as the ablating material on a space craft returning to earth  it was highly insulating wood and had i made it from a heaver wood it would have spontaiosly burst into flame.

[dbackfan]

Lovely story.  I especially like the description, "a fragile mosaic of black charcoal. . . .`