Today, I am going to a "Boxes" gathering.  It is an organization that tries to make newcomers (those who are unpacking boxes) to the town of Edmond feel welcome and familiar with the town.  It is the second of eleven sessions, and they have asked all of us to sign up for a session, and to tell something about ourselves--in three minutes.  I signed up for today to get it over with.  How in the world do I pick three minutes out of seventy plus years?  How does a person "connect" in three minutes?

I am supposed to take a "prop" that describes something from my life.  I have wandered through the house and looked at all the things that bring back memories and all it has done is confuse me.  There is no way I can figure out how to do this, and I have had a week to prepare.  Do I take a Calculus book that I taught from?  Or my marimba mallets.  Or sheet music from my senior recital.  Or maybe one of the jewelry boxes on my chest of drawers that holds nineteen-thirtys and forties jewelry that I have collected, some of which belonged to my mom.  I am embarrassed to admit that there are forty six glass and gold filagree boxes--sometimes stacked three deep--that I have bought at junk, antique and garage sales throughout the years.  All filled with old, old, costume jewelry--not the new stuff.

Do I take something that I bought in Paris, or Florence, or Rome, or Prague? (I told you Becky took me with her for  a number of years while she was working for Conoco, so she could take one of her boys with her while she worked.)  We, my grandsons and I, got to play.  Hopping trains, wandering through cathedrals, puttering through little isolated towns.  As a result of all that fun, both of her boys, even though they are in their late twenties, think I am cool.  They call me just to talk.  We bonded back then and it has blessed my life.

The most important prop that I could take is my Bible.  I got it in the early sixties and it is so threadbare it is pitiful.  The pages are brown from spilled tea (Janie's cup of tea) and many of them are torn.  But it is filled with almost fifty years of notes in the margins.  It is the one thing I would save first in a fire.  Pictures would have to come in second.

I'll figure it out.  Any of those objects would do, It's just hard to pick one.