Story Weekend: Boxes
Talk about an open-ended topic! I’m not going to start it off with my own story this week because I don’t want to influence you in one direction or another. I look forward to seeing what this theme brings up for you.
If you’re new to Story Weekend, here’s how it works: I pick a theme and you share something from your life that relates to that theme, however you interpret it. Thanks to all of you who’ve been contributing. As always, there are a few “rules”:
▪ The story must be true
▪ Try to keep it under 100 words. Embrace the challenge! That’s about six or seven lines in the comment form. I want others to read your story, and most people tend to skip if it’s too long. I know how tough it is to “write tight” but I hope you’ll accept this as a challenge.
▪ Avoid offensive language.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
Once upon a time, I was a 9 year old girl. All my cousins and neighbors were older than me, and I wanted so badly to be a teenager. I know that 1966 would have been a great time to be a teen. Football games and homecoming, this is what they were all talking about. One day when I was outside playing with my brother, the Florist delivery truck pulled into our driveway. I was beyond excited when the box had my name scribbled on it. I was sure someone had made a mistake. I ran into the house yelling at the top of my lungs. My cousin, Patsy, was there and we opened the box. We lived in Cleburne, TX and we were the Yellow Jackets. Tonight was homecoming. Inside the box was a beautiful Yellow Mum decorated with black and gold ribbons and streamers. There was a miniature football, cheer leading megaphone and Yellow Jacket. On the card was scribbled “From you secret admirer”. My cousin, Leon, was my date. He was 8 years older than me…I had the time of my life. I don’t know how old I was when I found out that Patsy and her best friend had set this up for me. After that magical night, the mum was put into a “Whitman’s Chocolates” box. It has been there all these years. I can still remember the fragrance of that special flower. Who knew that a “BOX” could make a little girl feel so grown up and special.
The year is 1946, I am seven years old. My grandparents celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary in November and that Christmas their children and my grandfather gave Grandma a brand new gold wedding band (she had lost the original). The jeweler’s box was wrapped and adorned, that box placed in a bit larger one, also wrapped and decorated, and on and on until the outside box, large enough to house a dorm-sized refrigerator was brought into the house by her sons-in-law, under pretense of being very heavy. When Grandma finished unwrapping and opening each box, finally reaching the velvet ring box, she had laughed so hard that she was reduced to tears and extreme, but happy fatigue.
I’m going through boxes I’m finding in my mother’s house. The ones I like the best are filled with letters. I found one addressed to her, Miss Fannie Lee Matthews, postmarked Nov. 7, 1934, when she was 16 years old. The letter is from Grace, who is thanking her for saving her brother George. Evidently my mother let George think she loved him, keeping him from ‘laying in his grave’ or being in a den of ‘in nickity’. Grace says George is coming for her and she will love her like a sister. I don’t know anything about Grace or George but can only hope he stayed straight and did well in life.
Alice, what a precious find! Hold onto that for the generations to come.
My Dad’s Dad – Pop, loved to annoy people in every way possible. One year for Christmas our family bought him a new stereo system, which came in a very large box. We drove from Albany, NY, to Long Island for Christmas and we kids just couldn’t wait for Pop to open this hug box because we knew he would like it so much. Only after everyone had opened all the other presents would Pop open his present. We eagerly waited for him to rip that paper off! He pulled out a butter knife and slowly cut every single piece of tape in the most agonizing manner possible! We were about 10, 7, and 4 and it was pure torture!
This isn’t actually a story, it’s a confession. I am a box hoarder. I didn’t actually realize that was what I had become until my son looked into the room that I shall call my office and told me that I was. I had to admit he is right. I cannot bear to throw boxes away! I have all sorts and sizes, boxes with lids are my favorites! When I go to Sams Club, I fear I might get caught! As everyone knows you have to have boxes there to load your groceries into your car. As I load up my shopping cart, I empty out boxes that are still on the shelves by consolidating items! No dirty, broken boxes for me!
There is really nothing better than a cardboard box.
You can sure tell this on any holiday by watching the children. After all that time you spent wrapping the gifts, they are playing with the cardboard boxes!
I’ve never been put in a box unless it was one of my own making and, believe me, I’m really good at putting myself in boxes. Recently I had it out with a friend who is determined to put her daughters in boxes. She puts them in a box and then neatly labels them. They are in their late twenties now. One box she has labeled “ditz” and the other box she has labeled “dependent.” I’ve tried to tell her that the more she labels the girls this way the more they will become the boxes. I’ve watched girls over the years become the labels she has put on their boxes. Perhaps the only way they will break free is to realize, for themselves, that the only boxes we live in should the ones we ourselves construct.
Very well said…thank you for reminding me that putting our lives in “Boxes” only boxes us in… so to speak…
It is 1955, Christmas morning. I am 5 years old. I creep down the stairs and gasp…”He’s been.” There in the middle of the living room is a large box. My dream has come true, he’s brought me the puppy I’ve wanted for so long. (how a puppy could survive in a sealed, wrapped box did not occur to a 5 year old!) By then the rest of the family were up and I tried hard not to show my disappointment when the box revealed not the longed for dog but a doll’s house. I had years of fun with my doll’s house and my mother kept it until my daughter was old enough to enjoy it too. I finally got my puppy at the age of 24!
There was a boxing match on TV that night. I was explaining to my new found friend how I hated boxing and how I thought it was not a real sport. She listened quietly and then went on to tell me that her son boxes. She explained to me that during her son’s difficult teen years, boxing had helped him turn his life around. It gave him a positive role model, built character, and also provided him with a physical outlet. Her son was a young adult now with a precious infant son that he loved, beautiful fiancé, and had left all his troubled teen years behind. He was still involved in boxing and planned to mentor teens. Not long after that conversation, my friend received news that her son, along with her seven month old grandson had been shot and killed in a home invasion robbery. Not only had the soulless creatures shot her son, but they had also shot the baby, too. Life for her has never been the same. My heart aches for her. Now when I think of boxing (or boxes), I not only think differently about the sport, but I can’t help but think about her son, and grandson, and what could have been.
Wow, Nancy. My heart breaks for your friend.
There is no sweeter sound to a sixteen year old than that of jewellery seeking to find a way to settle itself inside it’s tiny box. It shakes, it rattles, it moves,it dances, it is alive. The year I graduated from high school money was tight in our home and I so wanted a silver charm bracelet as was the trend in those days but I knew better than to ask. Even at that young age I would never have wanted my parents to feel that they had let me down.We prayed for the gift of health for my dad and that was enough to ask for. I think they cost about 12 dollars back then and our monthly rent was 8. Ah a wish to far. Grad morning somehow they were able to hand me that little box with the intricate overlapping circles of silver inside mimicing the circles of love my parents must have scarificed to buy it for me. Back then in my naivety I never thought any of those enduring circles in my life would be broken but by and by they were. I still have the bracelet. I don’t have my father anymore but I will again someday, by and by. Silver threads…
Boxes, I seem to be always surrounded by boxes! Ever since my husband and I were married just over 8 yrs ago, we always have some unpacked boxes in our house, knowing that at some point we will again be forced to move. We have had to move 5 times in our 8 yr marriage, such is the story when you are renting. The first few moves weren’t so bad, but by our third move, I’d injured my back quite seriously and my husband’s health had deteriorated, so the move became much more of a chore, and more boxes remained unpacked. We eventually had to move away from the city and from my family due to financial constraints – neither I, nor my husband, are able to work, and again those boxes came with us, and remain in the spare room still unpacked. I tell myself that I will unpack a box a day, that there are things in those boxes that I am missing and want to see again, but now that won’t happen…… because we are planning to move again. This time it isn’t a forced move, it is a move for the sake of my husband’s better health. Maybe this move will be the last for a while, and I can finally empty all those boxes and make a home again….. but a rented property can never really be home, because you never know when the decision to move will be taken out of your hands and we will once again be packing up those boxes and moving on….
hmm boxes. I’m surronded by them. I have two boxes of paperwork from the last 5 years. I’m slowly moving them into a filing cabinet but it’s a tedious task when I have to put them in order of date and year. Then there is a box of articles that my mother has saved for me. These articles tell of the life she left behind back in Croatia. Around the time i was born(1991) there was a war going on, my mother for some reason had saved countless articles about everything going on. She moved with her family from Croatia back in the 70’s because there was a threat of war back then but it didn’t happen til 1991. Then my mom for some reason moved all the boxes from her closet into the spare room where i sit on the computer every day and don’t have room to move around. Not only are boxes are in the way but bags of stuff are around as well. then there are boxes in the basement. So we just need the time to sort everything out.