Some things stay with us because they still work. Others because they carry a story. A tool worn smooth in the hand, a recipe written in somebody else's handwriting, a record we've played a hundred times. We don't keep everything. Maybe that's what makes the things we do keep matter.
When my dad died, I ended up with his toolbox.
Nothing particularly special about it. It's one of those old red metal Craftsman boxes with three drawers and a handle on top. The paint is scratched down to bare metal in a few places, one drawer sticks unless you lift up on it a little, and at some point Dad wrote his last name across the inside of the lid with a black marker.
For the first few years, I barely touched it.
I already had tools. Newer ones, actually. Ratcheting wrenches, cordless everything, nice socket sets in molded cases where every piece has its own little spot. Dad's box was mostly a collection of mismatched screwdrivers, old combination wrenches and sockets that looked like they'd been accumulated one at a time over about forty years.
So when we moved a few years ago, I almost gave it away.
I had it sitting on the garage floor in the pile of things that weren't making the move. I remember looking at it and thinking, I don't need another toolbox.
Then I opened it.
There was a short, flat-blade screwdriver in the top drawer with a yellow plastic handle that had a chunk missing from one side. I remembered that screwdriver immediately.
When I was probably twelve or thirteen, Dad and I used it to adjust the carburetor on an old lawn mower that absolutely refused to run right. I couldn't tell you today what we adjusted or whether we even knew what we were doing. What I remember is sitting on the driveway beside him while he kept pulling that starter rope and saying, "Try it now."
There was also a 9/16 wrench with his initials scratched into it.
I don't know why that got me, but it did.
So the toolbox came with us.
Now it sits underneath my workbench. And here's the funny part: I use it.
Not because those tools are better than mine. Most aren't. But every once in a while I'll reach past the newer screwdriver and grab that beat-up yellow one.
My son used it with me last summer when we were fixing a loose hinge on the shed door. I almost told him to grab a better screwdriver. Then I realized what I was about to say.
So we used Dad's.
Someday the toolbox will probably belong to him.
I doubt he'll keep everything in it. I hope he doesn't feel like he has to. Maybe he'll toss half of it and put his own tools in the empty drawers. That's fine.
But I hope he keeps that yellow screwdriver.
Not because it's worth anything.
Because three generations of us will have fixed something with it.
Turns out I didn't need another toolbox.
I needed that one.
