The Day the Boxes Showed Up

This post has been over a month in the making, even though I am only just now starting to type it up. Something remarkable happened last month, but it wasn't anything I'd call a miracle, and it wasn't anything that had to do with the health or overall wellbeing of my family. So I don't know quite how to share this story because I don't know where to put it, and sharing it feels like bragging.

Sorry, I'm being obscure and mysterious and likely ruining the story this way.

A year ago I wrote a post about owning things and losing things, a story about how all of the Christmas presents and other gems from my childhood home got lost in the mail, about how we lost three huge boxes of material treasures and gifts. It took until mid-February before we finally decided to stop waiting for the boxes to come and move on. I liked writing that post, because it gave me a chance to think about my relationship with material objects, whether they be brand-new Christmas presents or old childhood books that, to me, are more artifacts and symbols of my little kid self than pages and binding.

But David and I decided that life isn't composed of gathering a collection of things that make your life meaningful, and that old books and toys don't really document your life the way stories and memories do. I felt like we learned that Christmas to let silly things go, and to not mourn for things that can't breathe and don't mourn you in return.

Well, you guys, last month, somewhere in the middle of January, David and Hollie came home from the store to find three huge boxes on our front porch. The Boxes. All of what was lost, all of what we had let go; all of it showed up on our doorstep exactly one year overdue.

The Boxes. Surprisingly, they looked in better shape than most boxes that show up on our doorstep, the ones that show up on time.

And I haven't known how to write about this incredible, bizarre thing, because both the religious side of me and the English major side of me wants stories like this one to carry meanings and points, and I'm not sure what the point of this story is. The point of losing these presents and treasures was clear, and I felt wiser having learned to let go of silly things like SuperNintendos, rare game cartridges, and Wiis. These were not happiness or blessings. These were just things.

But now we have all of these things back and it feels . . . selfish? Awesome? Relieving? Exciting? All of those things, I guess. We danced around the living room when we opened them up, and shouted in glee about all the stuff we had forgotten we had even packed in the boxes. There was a lot of, "Ha! That's where my shirt ended up!" and, "Oh yeah! I forgot about the Nilsson records!" It was like an extra Christmas, or opening a time capsule. We felt gluttonous, rich, like we'd won some major award in a contest we didn't realize we had entered. We were both embarrassed and giddy.

It was strange to watch Hollie pick up toys and clothes that she never played with or wore. She sort of looked at the old gifts and then back at us, as if to say, "Are these supposed to be for me?"

We don't know what happened to these boxes, or where they travelled, or where they have been hiding. They are like adventurers, things that were lost at sea but then found their way home.

Books, records, baby food processing gear, clothes, kitchen gadgets, Miyazaki films, the SuperNintendo and its accompanying rare game cartridges.

The inscription I put in my Country Bunny picture book that I won when I was six years old. I still remember scrawling these words in the best handwriting I could muster. (It would be another couple of decades before my handwriting actually got any better.)

Baby toys (including a bunny from my dissertation director from when Hollie was a newborn), baby clothes, an expensive shaving kit, sentimental cards Dave and I had written for each other, a teaching bag from my mom, stocking stuffers, Christmas ornaments.

A saw (so Dave can follow his woodworking dreams), a jigsaw puzzle of our hometown here in Texas, a Bumbo that never got sat in.

Our old red Wii that we bought to console ourselves with the Thanksgiving of 2010, when we realized it wouldn't be safe to make the drive to Utah to see my family after all.

Hollie playing with the toys intended for her three-month-old self.

So that is our story—our weird, bizarre story. Our boxes showed up after all. We're currently conniving ways to share all of this unexpected wealth, particularly the pieces that don't quite fit anymore. It's just too much for our little family to take in—we feel so shy to have so much.