Lyrics Page
The Box
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Sep 23, 2026 updated
This Is Me album
Verified editorial review
Song Meaning
Randy Travis builds "The Box" around a single physical object rather than a general tribute to his father — "on the top shelf in the closet, in the workshop where he spent his extra time, was a dust wooden box that I had never noticed till that time." The discovery itself becomes the song's structure.
"A letter from mamma... a flower from Hawaii... the pocket knife I gave to him on Father's Day" catalogs small, specific keepsakes rather than describing his father's love in the abstract, and "we all thought his heart was made from solid rock, but that was long before we found the box" names the assumption the discovery overturns.
"The faded leather Bible, he got when he was baptised... I guess no one understood him like the Lord" sits among the other keepsakes without being singled out for extra emphasis, treated as one more piece of the quiet inner life his family never fully saw until this box revealed it.
Lyrics Verified by Editorial Team
On the top shelf in the closet,
In the workshop where he spent his extra time
Was a dust wooden box that I had never noticed till that time
And we set on the table and carefully, we opened up the top
And stared into the memory
Daddy kept inside the box
There was a letter from mamma, when she went out to Reno
To help her sister out in 62
And a flower from Hawaii, when they went on vacation
It was the first time that my Daddy ever flew
And the pocket knife I gave to him on Fathers day
Years ago, I thought it had been lost
We all thought his heart was made from solid rock
But that was long before we found the box
I guess we always knew it but "I love you" was hard for him to say
Some men show it easy and some just never seem to find the way
But that night I began to see the softer side of some I had lost
I saw the love he kept inside the first time we opened up the box
There was a picture that was taken, when he and Mom were dating
Standing by his 1944, and the faded leather Bible, he got when he was baptised
I guess no one understood him like the Lord
And the poem that he had written, about his wife and children
The tender words he spoke were quite a shock
We all thought his heart was made of solid rock
But that was long before we found the box
Yes that was long before we found the box