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The Father’s Hand
There are objects in a house you chose, and objects that were always there, and then a smaller third kind: the ones that came from someone else and that you kept. The family heirlooms.
The objects that hold the most of a person are usually the ones that person actually used — often, with both hands, without thinking. They wear into the shape of the work they did. This is about one of those.
An heirloom is an object whose worth has been decided by someone else.
The Toolbox
The heirloom here is a red metal toolbox that belonged to my father. He bought it in 1952, when he was renovating the home he and my mother would move into when they married. So it began doing real work on the first home of a marriage that hadn’t started yet.
I can date it because of that. The paint has worn thin at the corners and along the handle, where a hand closed around it a few thousand times. The lid still lifts on its hinge, and the tray inside still holds the tools — most of them my grandfather’s before they were my father’s. Some still work; a few don’t. They’ve left rust marks on the bottom of the box that no one has cleaned away, because cleaning them would feel like erasing something. The box is not a museum piece. It’s a working object that stopped working when its owner did — and that hasn’t stopped it from being wanted.
I don’t use the tools. I have my own versions, lighter and cleaner. I open the box sometimes just to look. There’s no reason to, other than that the box is now mine to do that with.
Why I Keep It
The argument against keeping a toolbox you don’t use is reasonable. It takes up space. It isn’t decorative in the usual way. It doesn’t match anything in the room. You could sell it, photograph it, donate it, pull the tools and frame them in a clever shadow box. People do all of these, and the box loses something each time.
The argument for keeping it is simpler. The box is where my father’s hands stayed. Its function is no longer the point. The point is now to serve as a reminder, a remembrance. The box sits in the corner of a workroom, and that is its only chore.
What Makes Something Worth Keeping
Not every inherited object needs to be kept. Some are obligations more than gifts — passed down because no one threw them away, not because anyone loved them. It’s fine to let those go. Keeping everything isn’t the same as keeping things well.
The items worth keeping are the ones that hold a specific person inside them. A handwriting. A tool worn to the shape of a hand. A book opened in the kitchen so often the spine won’t close. How much of the person an object absorbed before it became yours is the measure of its worth.
The toolbox contributed a lot as well. It helped ready the first rooms my parents lived in. It eased the creaky doors and smoothed the sticky windows.
How I Keep It
The keeping is simple. The box lives where I can see it. I dust it now and then and otherwise leave it alone. I don’t repaint it. I don’t sand off the worn spots or the chips. I don’t replace the parts that have given way. The wear is the record, and the record is the part worth keeping.
My children are grown now. One day the box will be theirs, and they’ll decide whether to keep it. That’s the chain. It has worked because each generation gets to choose, and chooses honestly.
The wear is the record. Smooth it away and you lose the part worth keeping.
The hand that used this box is gone. The shape that hand left behind is what I keep. The box sits in the corner of the room — quiet, finished with its work, holding what it has always held.
Sources
The toolbox in this essay was my father’s, bought in 1952 and not for sale. For one much like it — solid steel, the kind worth handing down — Homak steel hip-roof tool box in red, via Amazon.
