The wooden chest, no bigger than a shoe box, sat on the island reflecting the round kitchen light off its amber-colored top. Pop Pop flipped up it latch and opened it slowly. A thin blue wire attached the hinged top to the side, so the top would stay propped open without swinging too far backwards.
I sat accoss from him and watched as he sifted through his old things. His eyes lit up when they met something he'd long forgotten about: old hunting permits and older report cards, the way they would when he saw an old, forgotten friend.
"This here," he said, lifting out a small, brown roll of plastic material with a button in its center. "This was the sewing kit the Army gave us."
He handed it to me. It was heavier than I thought. I unclipped the button and unrolled it. On the inside of the roll was a felt cloth riddled with all kinds of needles and pins. The base of the little roll held a thimble and two rolls of thread, one black, the other white. This is what he carried during WWII, I asked myself? Only the essentials, Pop Pop once told me. He continued to sift through the contents of the box.
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