the old planters peanuts can sits on top of our dresser. it is a decor mismatch, so it is not there for its color or what it offers as an artistic statement. it is there because it was my sweet poppo’s. he kept it in the third drawer down of his dresser. in it he would place cash, his money clip, odds and ends from his pockets. “look in the peanut can,” he’d say, if you needed a couple dollars. it was one of the treasures i kept from their house, the peanut can that had made its way from long island to various houses in florida. it brings my dad close and every time i look at it sitting atop our dresser, i feel like we had a little conversation, my daddy and i.
you already know we have a penchant for boxes. not the cardboard kind, but most definitely the wooden kind and the metal kind. old wooden boxes, seemingly value-less, of greater value to me than anyone, things my dad used in the garage, things in which my sweet momma kept her paper clips. each a bitty visit from them. we have old apple crates, old brewery lidded boxes, boxes with slide lids, boxes with hinged covers and hooks to secure them, tiny boxes and big boxes. and old vintage suitcases. all special boxes – places to keep the most precious and the most visually-mundane-but-emotion-permeated items. a place for rocks or stones we couldn’t place-label anymore, a place for my mom’s wooden clothespins, a place for ticket stubs or notes or feathers or cards, a place for colored pencils, ink pens and nibs, rubber bands, a place for our nespresso pods. it’s not likely we need any more boxes, wooden or metal.
but there it was. the somewhat battered green metal carpenter’s chest. its personality taunted us from the floor of the antique shoppe we were trolling with jen and brad. i went back twice to look at it, to touch it. we noted that jen and i touch things when we see them; brad and david stand back and admire them. different processes. venus. mars. “don’t you have to touchhhh it,” we ask? but i digress. anyway, we, david and i, are not big helpers-of-the-retail-world, rarely shopping for new ‘stuff’. but this chest? it was different. it was old. and it was green.
we walked away without purchasing it.
but i still think about it.
read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY
