While a little girl, my family would travel to visit my grandparents and always, beside their front door, was one of these "Sorry We Missed You" boxes. 

Sometimes we'd try to surprise my grandparents with these trips, but usually my grandfather sensed in his heart that we were coming. Yet occasionally we'd arrive and discover they were both gone, so we'd leave a message in their small box (always there was a tablet and a tiny pencil inside), then drive around and return later.

My grandparents-- the sweetest people ever loaned to the planet Earth.

I loved that tiny box of theirs and the colorful people painted on it. Sometimes during our visits (being a bothersome imp in my young days) I'd scribble a silly message inside to my grandparents.

These boxes do not pop up everywhere nowadays. They are 'hot items' no more. I've seen perhaps just two in the last thirty years.

Well. On the day we got the keys to this house I noticed it by our backdoor. Our own Sorry We Missed You box! And I gasped. Suddenly I felt my grandparents, gone so many years, were actually here on this farm waiting for me, even watching me at that moment. Or perhaps they had been here and left me this gift--and their blessing, I mused.

It was a special moment.

Those are my grandparents above the bed in our upstairs guest room. I've shared that photo with you before. 



I never tire looking at it. They even appear to be standing in front of a country house, maybe even a farm, complete with a picket fence and a birdhouse.

I gaze at that photo and feel them here at my own farm. Just as when I see that tiny box beside our kitchen door, the one I can't help but feel they left for me to welcome me home.


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