T H E B O A T
By Mary van Balen Holt

Our neighbor Paul was dying of cancer. Not sick enough to stay in bed, he spent much time resting or sitting at the kitchen table. We missed seeing him working in his garage where it seemed like he was always building or fixing something for someone. After the children boarded the morning school bus, I went over and shared tea and conversation with him.

I don't remember what we began talking about on that particular morning, but somehow we ended up swapping stories of little gifts we had given or received over our lifetime. A smile spread across his face. He looked at me with eyes that had just been back to his mother's kitchen as he remembered it, fifty years ago.

"Once I carved my mother a little boat out of a stick of cedar," he began. "I was always whittling. Can't remember if I gave it to her for her birthday or Christmas. But she loved it."

He paused, remembering its shape and line. Looking at his hands, I could imagine them young, holding a knife and fashioning a boat. Since I had known him, he'd made a beautiful set of cherry cabinets and a small hutch for their kitchen. It had glass doors and displayed his wife's good dishes. Paul was always making something.

"It was a nice little boat," he continued. "Mom kept it for years. She showed it to people when they came to visit. She had it until one of the grandchildren took it to school for show-and-tell and lost it."

He shook his head.
"She hated that."
Sitting in silence, we sipped our tea. I looked at him. Once round and rosy, his face was thin. His skin was yellow. Liver cancer. When he looked up, he smiled. For a moment his eyes sparkled like they had before the cancer began taking its toll. "It was just like a boat, but she kept it for all those years."

Small gifts, small acts of kindness send ripples out that touch our hearts and change lives more than we can imagine. I have no idea what the small boat meant to Paul's mother. What thoughts it brought to her mind. What smiles to her face. That his mother had treasured his boat, proudly displaying it for so many years and grieving at its loss, touched her son's heart deeply. She could not have known that such simple appreciation would bring comfort and joy to him fifty years later as he sat at a kitchen table, battling cancer and sharing tea with a neighbor.

Lord, thank you for small gifts and great love with which they are given and received.