The Potential Importance Of Shoe Boxes (And Other Lessons)
I returned home, yesterday, after visiting my childhood home to help my family clean out the house.
As I left my hometown at the beginning of this year with just two suitcases, much of my 34 years of life remained behind in my childhood home. Going through what amounted to a decent hillock of possessions both known and unknown to me was, as anyone might guess, halting, emotional, and tough. It took far more time than I thought it would and I returned home without it being done.
The first day I was there, I found the task rather easy. I could happily let go of many things and my boxes were few and slow to fill. I found that the things I had purchased, believing they had some monetary value no longer really mattered. Even their market value seemed to be irrelevant. The art nouveau iris motif vase from the late 1800s? Meh. It's beautiful, but I don't really have to have it. The 1960s atomic-style dish set? Someone else can have them. The vintage tea set with hand-painted desert scene? Someone else will enjoy that more than me. I just didn't find those things worth saving for myself.
I saved pieces from my sea monster collection. The mug my brother bought at a thrift store with a whale tail handle that he gave to me when his love for whales faded and my love for the ocean grew. It was still holding my pens and pencils from student teaching. I stopped a moment to admire it and remember it holding pencils in my brother's bedroom when he was twelve.
That first day was the easiest.
Day by day, the difficulty compounded as I found myself weeding my way through older and older possessions, memories, and memories of possessions that were not mine. I found myself snatching the figures of tear-drop-eyed basset hounds and sunning seals my mother had once displayed in our living room off of the "to sell" table, wrapping them in paper, and stashing them safely in a box of my things. I recoiled when my father said he thought to simply sell all of the Christmas decorations. What? Even the little bears on trikes and wagons my mother would place in a vaguely snow-like pile of fiberglass angel hair that would make my fingers itch? Even the sugar canister that still holds once-cinnamon-scented potpourri now practically powdered? Even the ceramic snowman painted by the uncle I never met during his stint in prison? No, no.
And, so, those possessions became my possessions and my collection of boxes grew.
Then, wandering about the garage, I saw an old shoe box filled with plastic doll stands. I picked it up and recognized the box. It was a diorama I had made with my mother when I was a child. I gently removed all of the doll stands inside and moved them to another box. I thought the elements (construction paper and magazine photo cut-outs folded to stand up) would be crushed. Instead, it was much worse: someone had torn out the little paper pictures that made up the bulk of the diorama. The lid of the box, which had holes cut into it to let the light in, had been used as a base partially to cover and re-enforce one of the short sides of the box that had a hole one could peer through. My diorama, which I had kept for 25 years or more, had been destroyed. All that remained was the background glued to the back of the box, a hand-drawn river, and a crudely drawn bridge, which had managed to survive.
I was heartbroken to say the least. I sobbed. I threw the ruins in the garbage and then fished them out again. I asked my father what had happened. He told me that he knew the diorama and that he hadn't decided to use it as a box, and that it must have been a mistake by one of the two people he had hired to help him. I was acquainted with both of them (one since childhood) and I asked for their numbers so that I could tell them that they made this mistake and ask them to be careful. He refused. This led to an argument I won't get into, but I found that this shoe box diorama that I'd peer through as a child, igniting my imagination, held more value to me than 90% of the things I had sifted through in the days before. It was truly irreplaceable and what it had been was forever gone. Even I was surprised how hurt I was. I knew it was important to me, but I was learning just how important it was.
"I know you didn't mean to, but you made a mistake that really hurt me. Next time, please be more careful." I'm still disappointed I was unable to say that to the person who ruined my diorama. I think it's important to let people know when they make a mistake or accidentally hurt you. I teach that lesson in my classrooms and I think it's not carried over to the adult world enough. It helps bring closure to the person hurt and it helps the person who made the mistake empathize, learn, and grow. Even adults.
And even adults are allowed to have things that matter, even if, to the rest of the world, they don't. I kept the shoe box diorama, even in its ruined state. A dear friend of mine suggested I keep it and rebuild it someday. I grimaced at the suggestion through my tears, but now I think I just might do that. When I am dead, it will most likely truly be garbage. Until then, it is probably the most important piece of cardboard in the world to me. So much more than a box.
Next time you come across something like that. A crayon drawing, a holiday ornament made out of dry pasta, an old shoe box, take time to consider the potential importance. Maybe you'll find it's important to you.
