The thing has got to be worth some money. After all, it was in a museum. So someone will buy it.  Right?

These are tough times. I should sell the thing. It’s spring. Time to clean house. Time to survive.

And should our home become, like it is for so many, a grocery cart in the windy cold streets, there is no way we can carry the Old Tin Lantern along.

Years ago in better times, when the museum curator came to our house to look at the Old Tin Lantern, his eyes got big. Not a trace of artistic pretention. What he said was:

“Wow! I’ve never seen anything like that. I don’t think there is anything like that. If you ever want to sell this, let me know.”

But my thought then was, “That’s ridiculous. How could I sell something I’d always had?’ And I mean always.

My earliest memories place it on the dresser in my childhood bedroom.

It’s a punched tin lantern with a candle inside. Depending on where you start reading, poked into the intricate design as you turn the lantern around, are the words:

“HARRY MAYNE IS COILING A ROPE OF SAND ON THE BAR IPSWICH”

What does that mean? Beats me. I know parts of the answer. But not all of it.

The mystery might be one reason it would be so hard to part with the Old Tin Lantern. To sell it. Or just get rid of it. Not this spring. Not any spring.

I’m not sure how The Lantern ended up in my childhood bedroom. Probably had something to do with me being the oldest. I likely found it in a dusty corner of the attic where my Mother had stored the legacy of our great-Uncle Arthur Wesley Dow.

He was the artist who made the Old Tin Lantern.

Dow died in 1922. An artist and art educator who worked in oil, wood block, photography, pen and ink, water color, and photography. I’m likely leaving one or two out. But as far as I know, he only made one tin lantern. It’s the one that is watching over me this very second.

Dows book, “Composition,” from 1901, is still in print. But back when I dusted off the Old Tin Lantern for the first time, sometime in the 1970’s, his work was scattered throughout the world. One painting hung in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Dow and his wife had no children. So when they died, a great deal of his work was handed down through his brother Dana, my mother’s great uncle. Beginning with a show at the Smithsonian, my Mother then preceded, across the coming decades, to bring Dow back into the national cultural limelight.

The Dow exhibitions, like the one featuring my Old Tin Lantern, at Chicago’s Terra Museum of American Art, became common across the country. And as Dow’s prized student, Georgia O’Keeffe, spoke out on the influence Dow had on her work, that attracted more than a little bit of attention.

But I never really thought about the Old Tin Lantern as being art. I guess I knew intellectually that it was. But what was more important was the fact that if you un- hatched the little door and lit the candle, then closed the door; the light from the candle would illuminate even the most terrifying cold, dark room. Shooting out gentle beams of light through the little tin holes.

Beams of soft tin light. As if there could still be hope illuminating the room. Light beams dancing on dark walls.

Once, when I was very young, I gave the lantern away. To the Mother of a childhood friend. She liked antiques. Somehow I knew, even with my little boy brain, that she needed it more than me.

And when she died, her son gave the Old Tin Lantern back to me. The candle inside having burned down not much at all during the time that she kept the Lantern.

For years I paid attention to the candle. Opening the door every now and then. Just to make sure it hadn’t burned down any further. Even though I’d only light it for seconds at a time.

Because what would happen when the candle burned down to nothing?

Then what?

I have known that Old Tin Lantern as long as I’ve known myself. That candle is still straight. But there is an awful lot of wax dripping down its sides.

What’s new now though is that survival is the goal. Thriving is a memory.

Survival is the goal. Just getting by. Just like a lot of people.

If the rains or the winds came to flatten Chicago in the dust, would hanging on to that lantern keep us safe and dry? If we needed that lantern for food, how would it taste? If we got sick, would it offer us a cure?

How would my teeth feel if I chomped down and tried to chew a piece of 19^th century tin?

And that final terror. What’s gonna happen when that candle burns down to nothing?

Can I really sell the old tin lantern?  Should I sell it? Would selling it be the right thing to do? I still didn’t know.

So late last night I opened that little tin door Hoping once more to find an answer. Just as I have always hoped. And that’s when I saw it. The candle. That ever-dripping candle. It was gone! It hadn’t just burned down. It was gone!

In the little holder where the candle used to be, my wife had put a tiny little flashlight. I flicked it on. Like a shimmering fuse of strength. The battery was strong. I shut the little door and turned out the lights in the room.

And those same delicate beams of light that had always been there shot out in the artist’s patterns of sparkling truth on the darkened walls of my weary soul.

Like a promise of tomorrow.

So I switched off the little flashlight. Shut the tin door. And put the Old Tin Lantern back on the shelf to watch over me. And I kept writing.

Safe for now.