Rough Cut

It was a suspicious package wrapped in brown paper screaming to be opened, until I saw the address. Simply put, it was the final chapter that I knew would arrive one day and this was apparently that one day. I had been waiting for years to read it. But now that it was here, did I really want to open it? That question would become a see-saw of emotions. While it had been placed into the mailbox just in time for a break, I would be leaving a necessary task for the dreaded task of opening that box. I know that prying into the box would conclude the story written long before I was born.

If the truth were to be known, I did not want the mystery or the story to end. Once opened, I could no longer imagine the flow of life or change it when I didn’t like the resulting follow-through that was imagined. I had taken a break long enough to dry my hands and walk out to the mailbox. Once I had seen the box, I couldn’t unsee it. Normally, I would have simply jumped at the chance to be distracted from this mundane task, but not this, not this box. I continued to wash the dishes as slowly as possible looking for any excuse to not touch the box again. In a mere twenty-five minutes, everything was accomplished.

What could one really do in twenty-five minutes? I cleaned up the kitchen in that time, but I could also slowly walk a couple of miles, make pancakes or weed a few flower gardens. I could teach an online English class which could be better termed as a coaching session with angels. Children are very forgiving and fun-loving. They are easy to coach and bring great joy. So, every morning I would begin my day laughing with families that I would most likely never see in person. Their children were my highlights that shone throughout the day. They always made me smile, even the difficult ones.

It seemed so odd that strangers then could be ecstatically happy to see you, while your own family could equally despise the very air that was breathed out of your mouth; and only because it was your exhalation alone. Yet, was that really true, or was that a warped perception of misunderstood emotional verbiage? It certainly felt true in the midst of an argument that continued to ring out and became magnified over the passing pages of time. Still, feelings are always a bad thermometer of the heat and we all know that heat will certainly burn or warm depending on our location to it.

After nothing else came into the hand to do, I knew it was time to take the rather light box out to the light for better viewing. With great and careful precision of a well-trained physician, I sat down and began slicing the edged of the package. I didn’t open it immediately though, but rather reflected upon the pathway it must have taken to rest on my lap. There was a story in the family that had been passed down from generation to generation.

I was the generation that had been elected 300 years prior, to hold what was in the box, whatever it was. This box would only come to me after my parents had passed naturally into death. Truly, I didn’t want to say goodbye to my parents, but I was the one who must see what they never could with their earthly eyes. And here was the epitaph passed on through my second great grandfather: Never underestimate the plain and never throw a stone you are not willing to cut first, for no one is worthy to hold it until the age arrives and only if they can remember who sent it first.

With a final sigh and a muttered, “I don’t know what I had been expecting to find all of these years later, but how good or bad could it be?” On one hand, I was sure it would be a litany of errors that my preceding ancestors had made eliminating them from this mystery box. After all, who was I? The only stone-throwing I knew was that old verse, ‘he who is without sin, can cast the first stone… ‘.

On the other hand, I had that guilt of wanting something easy and good. Life had always been hard in many ways. If this age-long mystery was good, why would I be the chosen one? Who was I? With one last realization of why not, I pulled out the smaller box from the larger one and opened it ready to run. In a moment of one movement, I found the dawn of a new season brought in by a rough-edged stone. It was the size of an avocado, but almost looked like a strange form of glass with a hard-to-read note peeking out from below.

It said, “Dearest Grandchild this is your gift to help the family of my line reach back into my vision of greatness for my children and for my children’s children’s children to survive for another 300 years successfully. Therefore, I give you this out of love for what I have become, you. You are now my moving flesh who has inherited a new beginning. I give you the diamond of my heart and with proper care, it will twinkle brighter than the apple of God’s own eye."

Yet, the family treasure inside was something dull, unrefined and would have been easily discarded. Could it really be this extraordinarily large diamond? How could it be so big? How much could it be worth? Why did it show up in a simple brown box unguarded and delivered by the equally plain post office? The hard-core irony reached me only after I took it to the local jewelry store: It was the biggest diamond, in fact, ever recorded to date at a full 2021 carats, not quite a pound of weight, but weighty enough to matter. Can one imagine what one would do with the millions of dollars it must be worth, a simple rock handed down generationally for 300 years?

What a wonderful thing to contemplate, but it was then that I woke up fully from a most bizarre dream knowing that as much fun as it would have been fun to spend the millions of dollars it might sell for at auction, my parents were still here and my roller coaster of emotions had long gotten off at the station so many decades previous. In the literal blink of an eye, I had learned that sometimes that rock we throw is actually our hard-headed selves which we must first be willing to trim and cut in order to shine.

Only have much cutting, grinding, and polishing with sandpaper, will the polished facets let out the love that was handed down to us, even that wasn’t always handed down generation after generation. We might not be able to hold a million dollars or more all at once in our hands in this lifetime, but we can reach a million souls or more with our generosity, kindness, and smiles. We all have time. And that alone can help a family line survive for another 300 years. Now, what can I do with my newly polished me that will make a difference long after that? It’s my story to write, but only time and observers can tell that tale for me long after the last chapter is put into its own box.