I started to fill the box up with little things when my daughter was born. It began with her hospital wrist tag, which showed her surname alongside her date of birth in 1999. Her hospital number and the hour of arrival were also written in pen: like my youth, those letters are fading now.
When I close my eyes, I can still feel the heartbeat rhythm of holding my newborn child next to me. The tag weighed about 2oz. Sixteen years later, it weighs so much more.
The box quickly began to fill up with mementoes from my travels for work. An ornate jewellery tin from China, a necklace from Lebanon and a silver lighthouse pendant from Peggy’s Cove, in Nova Scotia, where a man lost his beautiful daughter in a terrible air crash. Even now his pain leaves a scar on the heart. I’ve no real reason to remember, but her name was Stephanie.
It’s good to remember the little things. We give expression to our lives through little things and the little things in our lives give expression to us. Each thing I collected was part of a story: a totem representing the lives of others and myself. Who I was then and what I wanted to be. And they help, of course, against the vagaries of memory.
Over the years, I spent time in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, and the only tangible things I have from those visits are two bullet casings and some currency. They were given to me by a young boy near the Gaza sea where I sat in the sun talking and eating grilled fish with a man in a small cafe looking out at an incredible stretch of coastline. Other children on the beach played with kites.
I still cannot fully understand this Middle East region, never mind explain it all to my daughter when she asks. But I always remember that lunch as a starting point about how we perceive people and their circumstances: and about how some children start off with kites and end up with bullets.
From somewhere under a South American sky, I have a set of wooden prayer beads and also a little wooden cross from France, where my grandfather has been buried since the second world war. His body has spent more time dead in France than alive in Scotland. I like to think of that young man as my French relation. And I talk to him regularly.
The box is also filled with old currency and worthless coins: from Iraq, America, Australia, the Caribbean, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Indonesia, Liberia and others. I was fortunate to see many places but the real privilege was meeting people.
The memory of a gift of food from a dirt-poor family in Eritrea still makes me shiver. I had one of my best ever haircuts in Cuba, courtesy of a toothless barber; and we shared our love of boxing. I arrived at a Maldives island by seaplane and lost my wedding ring snorkelling. Try explaining that. I played football with child soldiers in Liberia, who had killed men from a distance and up close too. Everything and everywhere, has its own unique story. The coins are a reminder that, like every story, each has its obverse side.
As the box grew, so did my daughter, turning more beautiful every day. On her mother’s side, she has Gypsy blood from her grandfather. On my mother’s side, she has the Hebridean crofts and waters of Barra and Mingulay. My father offers a long line of hardy men, and better singers, from Cork and Tyrone. But it’s not her beauty itself that gives me joy: it’s her laughter. That’s what the little plastic pink piglet is for. Laughing.
I can’t remember when or where I got her the alphabet book. The finger puppet was when she was five or six: around the time she wore her fairy dress every day for weeks, with her striped tights and bobble hat. I always told her that she could be anything – a politician, an artist or an astronaut.
These dreams shouldn’t stop at 16. That’s when they start.
The little metal cast of the White House came from Washington. I want her to pick it up and hold it tight. Sometimes politics is enormous and unreachable. Other times it’s so small it can be contained within our grasp. I want her to respect the viewpoint of others, no matter how unpalatable, and they might respect hers in return.
The small badge is from when I worked on the Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest building in the world. I once stood at the pinnacle of it, all 828m and peered across the Dubai desert in wonder. I met the man who built it a few times. Not many people know that he grew up in a palm-frond shack with his parents and 11 brothers and sisters. His home had no electricity or running water. And look what he achieved.
The snow globe is a reminder that no two snowflakes are ever the same. They are as distinct as people. If the snow globe didn’t say Brussels on it, I would already have forgotten where I got it. Which means it’s started: that thing. Forgetting. Getting older.
There is a photograph of me, a young, fresh-faced father, holding her as a baby. Her name is Mahoney. Oh, how I wish I could go back and play a little longer with my wee girl on the floor. Sing another lullaby a little longer too. “My wee girl is the best wee girl, the best wee girl in Glasgow …” How time flies. How it disappears, like spilled water into the earth.
Each passing birthday is a measure of joy in our lives and a small death of sorts. Another skinned knee and a letting go. Sixteen years I’ve waited for her to open the box and marvel at the contents. Yet, like butterflies pinned to a board, they are just little things. The important stuff now is to fill a box of her own. The world can be tough, especially for a teenager.
My last bits of advice? Don’t pluck your eyebrows. Make snow angels under street lamps. Always brush your teeth. Throw away socks just to show them that you’re the one in control. Don’t be afraid. And, of course, travel. You can’t return home if you never leave. Happy birthday.
