A Box of Gems

By Colin Seager

Another birthday beckons. This year, the eighty-fifth. In a few days I should have the usual texts. ‘What do you want for your birthday, Grandad?’ I like it that they like giving. My stock answer is don’t waste your money, I’d be delighted with a card but if that’s too difficult nowadays a friendly text would be enough.

Maybe this year I’ll surprise them; do something different. I don’t want to be churlish or dismissive but when you already have everything you need or desire, a dilemma is presented.

I know the answer. This year I’ll reverse the norm. I’ll travel backwards, make some gifts wrapped up in paper made from the leaves of my past. I don’t want to emulate Benjamin Button or become trapped in an age long gone. But if I search the inner recesses of my mind, I may find a few ageless sparkling gems of wisdom I can pass on to the grandchildren.

They can choose whether the gifts are worthwhile keeping, able to be fashioned into a talisman that could help them in their dark days, or be abandoned as relics of an irrelevant past, my past.

Trying to answer ‘what-if’ questions will be a fruitless exercise. Equally as wasteful will be to spend time re-living ‘if-only I’d done this instead of that,’ situations. We are where we are because we did what we did. I could reflect on opportunities missed, and pain that I may have caused someone, but history cannot be rewritten. Would that it could: imagine being able to eliminate war and poverty. Nothing can be changed but perhaps much can be learned.

The farther back I delve, things I then didn’t understand now have clarity. During the Blitz in WW2 my mother’s whispered words, as she scooped me into her arms and raced towards a shelter at the first sound of the Air Raid Warning, reassured me that all would be well. She sucked away any fear that I may have had.

Unbeknown to me then, her love, her optimism, her belief in better times to come stayed with me. Sometimes it can be dangerous to think the glass of life is half-full, particularly if reality is forsaken, but if you can, it is more enjoyable to always look on the bright side. If nothing else, others around you are happier. Maybe here I have excavated a sparkling gem to put in the box of gifts.

When I was about four, I was given a smiley toy clown made of tin, about three inches high… too big to swallow… which had a heavy semi-spherical base. Therein was its strength. No matter how much I tried it couldn’t be pushed over. It had bouncebackability. An attribute which I learned much later can be of huge value and is free. I think that should also go in the gift box.

The grandchildren should travel their lives and pick what suits them best. Overburdening with gifts is never a good thing. But trawling back there is one more gem that I’ll put in the box. I could find examples in every decade and, hopefully any that may come. Every day I polish one. Again, despite its huge value it is free: never lose the curiosity of childhood.