Dawn's Notes
The Knotty Shop- January 2025
by Dawn Phelps, RN/LMSW
This story began many years ago with a little five-year-old boy in Tennessee. He was the only boy in a family with six girls. He lived at home with his parents and five of his sisters—the oldest sister was away at college after living at home and working hard for a year to save for her tuition.
The little boy’s mother was a homemaker, and his father worked in the woods, cutting down trees. Some of the wood was used for heat, some was sent to a nearby mill, and sometimes he cut down trees to clear land so it could be cultivated.
That summer, the father was clearing trees from a hillside, and he took his five-year-old son to work with him. Looking back, the little boy still remembers that summer and the special hours with his daddy.
At the age of five, the little boy already had his own little axe. His daddy had taught him how to sharpen and use it, and his job was to help trim the small limbs from the trees his daddy cut down. He also helped pile the limbs to be burned and helped load the lighter sticks of wood onto the old truck.
He enjoyed his time “working” with his daddy, and he especially enjoyed the time talking to his daddy—such as after his daddy had cut down a tree and needed to rest a bit or when they sat on a log and talked while they ate their lunches together.
It was in the 1950s before ice chests were plentiful. So, their lunches were foods that did not need refrigeration. If there was a nearby spring in the woods where they were working, they could drink the cool water from the spring. But most of the time they took a jug of water from home.
The father and son talked about a variety of topics during lunch—about the world, nature, the past, and God—conversations and lessons he still remembers as a man. Frequently he said, “My daddy taught me that when I worked with him in the woods.”
Rarely, at the end of a day, the little boy’s father would give him a nickel, or sometimes even a dime for his hard work. But during those years, times were hard, and his father had very few nickels or dimes to give.
I recently talked to that little boy who is now an older man. He told me that all together, his daddy gave him a total of “two, three, or maybe four” coins that summer. And this story is about one of those dimes that he chose to share with someone special to him.
His oldest sister was away in college that summer before there were cell phones. So the only ways to communicate were by a rare phone call or by letters, and her mother wrote letters to her daughter often.
One day when the oldest sister received a letter from her mother, there was a dime enclosed. The mother wrote, “I am sending you a dime from your little brother. After working in the woods all day with your daddy, he came home with this dime and said, ‘I know where this dime is going!’ And he gave it to me to send to you.”
My oldest sister Joy is the one who received the dime; she is now eighty-seven years old and lives in Kentucky. And that little boy is my little brother Gary who is seventy-three years old and lives in western Kansas.
When Joy told me the story of the dime, she said that her heart was touched when she received the letter with the dime. Her story touched my heart too. She asked me, “Do you see why I love him so much?”
She said that when she received the dime, she thought about how hard our little brother had worked for the dime and how much he must have loved her to send it to her.
Unselfishness is about giving your best to someone else—just the way Gary had done. And isn’t that the kind of love that the holiday season is about anyway? A time for gratefulness, remembering, and unselfishly giving to others we care about?
But all gifts don’t have to be tangible like the little boy’s dime. Some of the best gifts may include spending time with those we love or with someone who is alone. Or consider giving hugs or sending cards or sharing kind words or smiles.
The holidays usually include good memories and gratefulness for time spent with those who have gone ahead of us. So may your Christmas season be filled with caring moments, healing, and joy as you make sweet memories similar to my sister’s memory of the little boy and the dime.
Call about the next "Living Life after Loss" Group at:
Meadowlark Hospice
709 Liberty, Clay Center, Kansas
(785) 632-2225
Dawn Phelps, RN/LMSW, Group Facilitator