Boxing Lessons

by Anne White

D. E. Stevenson’s Five Windows is a coming-of-age novel set in a Scottish village. The early chapters tell about a nine-year-old boy, David, and his friendship with Malcolm, a local shepherd. Malcolm is also a woodworker, and one day David goes to his shop and shows him a picture frame he has made at school, as a gift for his mother. “I was rather proud of it,” the older David remembers. Malcolm’s reaction is not what he was expecting. “Did they learn you to make that at school? It’s dreadful! And the wood is good, too. A good piece of wood doesn’t need to be cut about and ornamented with whirly-gigs and scrolls. A piece of wood has its own beauty which just needs to be brought out.” Malcolm realizes quickly that he has hurt David’s feelings, and apologizes for his abruptness; but David notices himself that, even against the plain polished wood of the worktable, his project looks “tawdry.”  And then the amazingly wise Malcolm says, “Well, lad, I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll choose a piece of wood and you’ll make a box for your mother. You’ll do it all yourself—every bit of it—and I’ll show you how.” And he does. It takes them from the Christmas holidays until sometime in March, but finally the box is finished.

It was a solid chest, made of beautifully grained wood, about three feet long and two and a half feet broad, perfectly plain, with no nonsense about it. The lid fitted as snugly as the lid of an air-tight container. It stood upon the bench shining like a chestnut and I it was beautiful. Malcolm ran his hand over it, and said, “You’ve made something worth-while, Davie. That box will still be a good, useful box long after you’ve gone…When you’re dead and gone—and perhaps forgotten—that box will be as good as ever. The work of your hands, Davie!” It was a new idea to me—rather a frightening idea, but interesting too. Somebody would own that box, he would open it and shut it and use it to keep things in…

Worrying a little that his makership might be forgotten, David carves his initials and the date on the bottom of the box.

A year later, Malcolm is killed, fighting in France. In his grief, David begins to write Malcolm’s story, telling what they had done together (including fishing and taking care of the sheep), and what Malcolm had taught him. “Then there would be no danger of forgetting him.” He shows the story to his mother, who loves it, and not just because her boy has written it (as she might have felt about the picture frame), but because it truly is a good story. (Those  who have read Jan Karon’s To Be Where You Are might see a resemblance to the story young Grace writes about her “adopted grandma” Louella.) David’s mother stores up everything that he writes in the wooden box, and, much later in the book, the adult David, now a novelist, comes back and re-examines his early work. Some of it he thinks not bad, some he discards. But the box itself matters just as much as the stories. “It was the same sort of thing,” the adult David writes; “Malcolm had had a hand in making me.”

This story is only a small part of Five Windows, but it can be unpacked in several important ways. First, for those who are concerned with Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education, Malcolm’s gentle lesson in contrasts can be taken as both a general principle and a practical example. Even quality materials, as Malcolm points out, can lose their beauty if we insist on decorating them with “whirly-gigs and scrolls,” or if we praise that which is quickly completed but which holds no lasting value. We are content to have a slow but solid method of teaching.  David’s box took him weeks to make, and Malcolm told him that it would last for a hundred years. What are we giving our children that will be that solid, last that long? When someday they look back on their education, will they remember only the small projects, or will they have any recognition of the box itself?

Second, there is a spiritual sense in which we may spend years making things we consider beautiful and valuable, even quite big and important things in the world’s eyes, things of which we are “rather proud”; but when we lay them on God’s worktable, they are shown in their true light. As Robert Boyd Munger writes in his classic My Heart—Christ’s Home, God has come into our workroom and is not impressed by the few “little toys” we have managed to knock out. He does not scold or reject us for our lack of skill or taste, but He does ask us to let Him teach us his better way of box-making. And box-filling.

Third, we have the opportunity to make beautiful, lasting boxes. But even a clumsy handmade picture frame is, these days, still a step beyond something stamped out of a machine. Though we may have begun polishing our own boxes (in whatever sense), we are reminded to be gentle with those who need encouragement to enter the workshop and view the work of the master. We have all been there once.

And finally, we are reminded of the need to value the past, including its artists and craftspeople, those who had skills and knew things we have forgotten. We also need to appreciate the work of those  who are still with us. A thing that has been carved, or embroidered, or painted, or built with stones, or hammered out of iron, or baked, still carries something of its maker (as well as its Maker).  Our care, our ideas; our initials, our fingerprints.

Ma made the cornmeal and water into two thin loaves, each shaped in a half circle. She laid the loaves with their straight sides together in the bake-oven, and she pressed her hand flat on top of each loaf. Pa always said he did not ask any other sweetening, when Ma put the prints of her hands on the loaves. (Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie)