What I pulled out of that washed-open hollow was a rusted tin box, and when I pried the lid and saw what was inside, I dropped my shovel in the mud and just stood there, because I was looking into the whole heart of a child who lived in this house a hundred years ago.
It was a treasure box. A little boy treasure box. A handful of glass marbles, a baseball card gone soft with age, a tin soldier, a jackknife, a smooth stone, a bird feather. And folded on top, in the big careful letters of a kid just learning to write, a note.
To me when I am growed up. These are my best things. If you are me, you did it, you got old. Do you still have the dog. I hope you were happy. From Tommy, age 8, 1924.
A boy named Tommy, eight years old, in the year 1924, had sealed his most precious things into the wall of this house and written a note to the grown man he was sure he would someday become, asking him if he was happy, asking if he still had the dog.
I stood in the mud and the ruin of my flooded basement and cried over a little boy hundred-year-old best things. Everything I had lost in that flood, and the water had handed me this.
I could not just keep it. It felt like it belonged to Tommy, wherever he was, and I set out to find him. It took some digging through old county records, but I found the family, and I found out what became of the boy. Tommy grew up. He lived a long, good life, right here in this county, married and raised children and yes, always, always had a dog. He passed in the nineties, an old man, having never once remembered the treasure box he sealed in a wall as a child.
But his grandchildren were still here. And I got to do the thing that makes the whole flood, the whole ruined basement, worth it. I put Tommy treasure box in the hands of his granddaughter, and I read her the note her grandfather wrote at eight years old, asking his future self if he was happy. And she got to answer him. Yes, Tommy. You did it. You got old. You were happy. And there was always a dog.
The flood took a lot from me. My basement is still a mess and my heart is still tired from shoveling out a lifetime of ruined things. But the water reached into a wall and handed a family back a piece of their grandfather they never knew existed, a note from an eight-year-old boy who wanted, more than anything, to grow up happy. He did. And now they know it, and so do I, and that is a strange kind of gift to find in the mud.