I’m going to tell you the story of how I caught lightning in a wooden box my grandfather made
It is a simple wooden box,
Carefully stained in pretty cherry and on the front cover,
He carved his initials.
My grandfather is a meticulous man and each day he would spend hours completing his first incision until little by little, the box was made. Some day’s he would only carve at it once and leave it on his workbench to sit idle underneath the hot Mexican sun. Sometimes it would sit there idle and untouched for days while he worked, drank, and lived his life away. There are a lot of untold stories sewn into the streets of that little Mexican Village.
My grandfather spent years working on that box,
Slicing at it piece by piece until slowly it took the shape that I now hold in my hands.
You see, this box is magical.
But its not due to some ancient Aztec spell infused into its wooden fibers,
We aren’t Aztec. Nor is it magical because it can hold lightning.
It’s magical because mixed into the lacquer and the glue is mix are our history and traditions. It’s magical because within these tiny wooden walls house more love than I could put into words. It is magical because he gave it to me to hold.
He probably doesn’t think it’s magical. He probably doesn’t even remember giving me the box. To him it was a gift for me when we had nothing. To me, it was everything thing.
To me, it is everything.
It is just a wooden box with small fading initials in the front. Along it, the scars of a life well lived.
Oh right. I was telling you the story of how I caught lighting in the wooden box my grandfather made.
The other day, emboldened by its magic,
I climbed to the peak of Mount Olympus. With the box in hand, I looked up at Zeus and with my clearest voice I yelled
I am here too. I dare you to forget me.
Zeus looked down from his thrown and with a look that I thought was anger he thrown down one of his bolts of lightning.
In self-defense I raised the wooden box in self defense and waited under its cover. It landed with a loud explosion that shook the world and crumbled the mountain into nothing.
When the smoke cleared and the dust settled,
I stood there with a wooden box full of lightning and a cool story to tell.