Heirlooms

A battered cardboard box arrived on my doorstep the other day. It was from my mother in Idaho. When I opened it, I could not believe it - inside was the manger scene I had grown up with - complete with stable, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, sheep, camels, a donkey, assorted shepherds etc.

FANTASTIC!

My wife and I have been half-heartedly looking for a new manger scene for years. The one we have is good but in a very minimalist way - it consists of a handful of 2-dimensional wooden pieces that are representative of the event.

But THIS! This was the full-meal deal. It even came with bushes! As I stood there in astonishment, carefully unwrapping each piece, I began explaining to my wife how I would spend hours arranging and re-arranging this manger scene as a child because I wanted it to be PERFECT! Naturally, my older brothers would put one of the sheep on the roof when I wasn't looking. Every day was a challenge to figure out what my brothers had changed from the day before . . .

I pulled out one of the shepherds and noticed that the paint-work on the face was less-than-perfect. That's okay - it doesn't diminish the memories. After all this is . . . this is . . . PLASTIC?!

All the pieces are plastic. This manger scene that holds so many memories and so much importance to me is plastic. And the paint-work truly is down-right sloppy in places.

It makes me think, how many of our most important childhood memories are centered around something an outsider would look upon with disdain?

Sure, my family did not own an expensive and fragile manger scene that had to be guarded from the children at all costs. We owned a plastic one. And I got to set it up. And my brothers teased me with it. And now it sits in the built-in cabinet in the hallway just as it did in the home I grew up in.

I suppose there is a lesson in there for parents consumed by trying provide the type of memories for their children that 30 years from now will cause them to stop dead in their tracks, mouth agape as they open a battered cardboard box from their parents.

Sometimes it's the inexpensive stuff that becomes priceless.