God Box

I was walking down Hyman Avenue and just absent mindedly window shopping. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just shopping, rather just looking.

My thoughts were actually back home in Texas. I was missing the opportunities that I had to spend the weekends with the kids. Not that I did that a whole lot but more than I get to from here.

Then all of a sudden something caught my eye. I wasn't sure just what it was, I stopped. I turned back and looked once again in the window that I had just passed by. What was it? Nothing stood out as I stood there staring in the window. What had caught my eye?

I turned to walk away, I took a few steps and once again that nagging feeling...that something that says, come back. Once again I stepped back in front of that same window and just stood there looking in.

Evidently the young clerk (and she was a cutie) noticed me. She stepped over to the door and asked me if she could help me in anyway.
"I'm not sure." I replied.
"Why don't you come inside and take a look around?" she ask. I just stood there for a moment are so, thinking. What is it that I'm seeing without being able to see it? This is not right, I'm confused. So after an awkward moment of silence, I looked at the young clerk and said "Okay."

The name of the place was The Talisman. Curious type of place, very much what you'd expect it to be. Lots of native Indian type stuff all over the place. Various goo gaos, different whatyamacallits, a real tourist trap type of a store.
I walked back outside after a few minutes of looking around. I was headed to the J-Bar to get my self some of the best hot wings in town. I made it almost to the corner of the block. Then I found myself back in front of the store once again. This is ridiculous I thought.
"What is it? This is driving me crazy." I said to myself.
Once again I stood looking in at the window. It was there all the time I just could not see it for looking at it.

I walked back inside and stepped over to the window, I closed my eyes and allowed my hand to move forward to the display that was there. It touched a small square box. The designs on it were so perfectly placed, so delicately done, so intriscately worked. The box was a work of art within itself. It seemed almost transluent yet at the same time as solid as a peice of crystal. I only wish that I had the proper words to describe it. They alude me.
I carried the box to the checkout counter and ask the gentleman there where the young lady was that had helped me earlier.
He looked at me strangely and then he asked me, "What young lady?"
"The dark haired young lady, she was maybe twenty-one are a little more. Very pretty. Maybe five foot eight."
"Did you catch her name?" he ask me. He still looked at me as if I weren't for real.

Then he looked down at what I held in my hand and after a few seconds a tear came to his eyes. "The God Box!" was all that he said as he pointed at my hand and then he really broke down.

I stood there in mute silence, I had no idea as to what I should say are ask. If anything.
After a couple of minutes he said, "I'm sorry. First of all there is no young lady that works here. There was a young lady, that started this store back, oh, fifty years ago. She just disappeared one day. Knowbody's seen her are heard from her since that day. That box in your hand has not been touched by anyone except me and then only to clean and dust it. She left a note however and it is over here for anyone to read and I think that you had better read it."

It said;
"I must go now, to a better place and time. There will be a man come by someday and he will pick up the box that I left in the window. He will not be able to walk away from it. He will have been a man who knew how god works. He will have only forgotten. The God Box will guide him to me and I shall respond. Do not sell him the box but rather give him the box. He will know what to do with it."

"That lady was my mother." he said. "She loved you and you never even knew it. Until today, nobody has seen her"
"What was her name?" I ask.
"I don't think that that matter's anymore. You have the box, treasure it with all of your being and always remember that you have been loved. You'll figure out who she was in due time." he turned and walked to the back of the store.

I turned and walked out of that store. A day does not go by but that I think about that young lady. I hold that box in my hands and give thanks unto God.