The house was dark except for the lamp by Booth's favorite chair. He sat looking through the box that held all of his father's worldly possessions. Today would've been his father's seventieth birthday. It was sad to think that everything from his father's life could be contained in one small wooden box.
"Daddy?"
"Christine! What are you doing out of bed? It's late…"
"I just woke up. What are you looking at?" She came over and stood by his chair.
"Some old pictures. Do you want to see?" She nodded and crawled onto his lap. "This is a picture of my Daddy and me when I was about your age."
Christine looked at the picture in amazement. She couldn't imagine her Daddy being a little boy. "What were you doing? Is that Pops?"
Booth shook his head and smiled. "No...Pops was my grandfather. This was my Daddy. The river by our house froze solid so we went ice skating." He saw the confused look on her face. "I know it's hard to understand. My Daddy was sick for a long time, so I couldn't live at his house any more. I went to live with Pops instead."
"Like when you left us for a while?"
Booth sighed softly. "Yes, like that.….except I came back to live with you. You'll understand better when you're older. Look, here's my Daddy and me at a baseball game, and here's a medal he got from the Air Force. Here's a card I made him…"
Christine leaned against her Daddy and drifted off to sleep. Booth smiled at his little girl and thought of his father again, wondering if he had cherished memories of small moments like this with his sons. Memories like these were much more valuable than anything that could be stored in a box.