Golden Hearts in Tin Chests
Lessons from the Study Floor
On parade or in battle, row by row they advance or retreat. Tin leaders give orders with leaden weight. Bands play to inspire, to instruct, or to give fear. Tactics are learned, and lessons drawn.
Row upon row they move across the carpeted fields of nursery and study floors – traversing the rivers of hard-wood hallways: These are the childhood battles where valor and courage reign – where the unflinching look at fear and foe is expected, sacrifice nurtured, and love ranked beside God and Country.
Arrayed in bright colors depicting history’s lineage – representing causes past yet not forgotten. Their owners would one day exchange the parades of childhood for cold-soaked fields – or steaming sands or canopied forests with names both foreign and familiar: “The Field of Lost Shoes”. “The Bloody Mile.” “Hell’s Kitchen”. “Antwerp”. “Culloden”.
And what of the battles that admit no name – those later, silent struggles of memory within the wounded memory of gasping chests? Beneath the colored tunics these are the questions later asked, the demons later fought, whose marshaling tunes are borne with lament. For others, too, these weights are carried. Mustering within the soul the defense of beauty, of life and love, of a hope that should not pass away.
As a child, surrounded by their legions assembled on the floor, who could imagine they perhaps had hearts made more than tin or lead?
Their metal – forged by life to become more precious than sterling or gold. The greatest gift they each had to offer: A heart given.
Perhaps beating not in toys so much after all…
Finis
D. S. Lamoureux, 2020
Household Calvary flanking a postillion (L); Scots Guards on Parade (R)
WM Britains Miniatures
(c 1982 – 2007)
Jefferson between works of Parkman and Bancroft (CL)
“A Study Bookshelf” (CR)