The value of a good toy box ~ my column from Sunday's paper

Under the ancient glider on our screen porch is a plastic tub of toys. We never had children, but we’ve served as babysitters for working family members through the years. Any experienced babysitter knows the value of a good toy box. I measure the quality of a toy box by the hours of peace I get when the kids are at play with the things inside it.

Our toy box doesn’t have any electronic gadgets or expensive pieces. The things in the box are sale items we’ve picked up at Fred’s, Dollar General, or other discount stores. Jilda found a set of wooden blocks. These aren’t the familiar ABC blocks,

but simple colored cubes, rectangles, triangles, and cylinders. There are also tiny action figures, small metal cars, trucks, tractors, and trains. Rounding off the bunch are cans of Play-Doh, bottles of bubbles, crayons, and watercolors.

We celebrated the Fourth of July on Sunday. A few of our friends and some of Jilda’s family came. We did this to avoid conflicting with other celebrations later in the week.

We had eleven adults and six kids. Most of the kids brought their electronic toys, and they sat in the living room playing until the batteries died. After that, they started getting fidgety.

Our house would be considered a “tiny house” by today’s standards. When filled with family, friends, and pets, it gets cozy. Especially with restless young’uns.

Jilda has babysitting radar, so once she realized a potential kid meltdown, she herded them to the screen porch, pulled out the toy box and let imagination do the rest.

Now and then an adult would step out of the conversation long enough to check on the kids. When it was my turn, I moved to the entryway, leaned on the door jamb, and watched the action from a distance. Even though the kids ranged in age from five to 15, they were immersed in playing with the old toys.

The day was warm and humid, but the ceiling fan whispered overhead making the porch a pleasant place to play for the kids.

As dusk drew near, the company said their goodbyes and headed off in different directions. Jilda and I tag-teamed to do the after-party cleanup. We knocked out the kitchen and set the dishwasher to humming before tackling the screen porch.

Once on the porch, there was an impossibly tall tower of wooden blocks. Each block was stacked precariously on the one below. How it was still standing, I do not know, but when I tried to disassemble the stack, it fell. I could hear wooden blocks rattling to all corners of the porch. I’m not sure if this was planned by the kids or not, but locating the blocks was like an Easter Egg hunt. I looked under ferns, statues, and behind wooden screens.

It also took a while to scrape the Play-Doh from between the cracks of our tiled table.   Once the porch was back in order and the toys placed inside the box, I sat on the glider and looked at the toys for a while. The kid in me said, “I think I could build a fort with these pieces.”