Boxes

Yesterday, while delivering the Parish Magazine, an elderly  gentleman handed me a small yellow box with coins in and no label. It was a collecting box for the Children’s Society and I promised to pass it on. This started me thinking about boxes.

‘A box’ most usually suggests cardboard or plastic but not always. Who has not got a special box, an object full of memories or beauty or both - one of marble, jade, stone, shells, ivory or wood inlaid or plain with swirling texture?  Perhaps there is a tin box in the bank or in the garage – a relic of the war or of a first-aid course before ‘health and safety’ deemed it unsuitable. No, not all boxes are cardboard.

Boxes come in all shapes and sizes and custom made boxes are all very well but, when the original function has been fulfilled, it is the subsequent use that can fire the imagination. Also it is now that cardboard becomes a mine of possibilities whereas plastic is banished as boring and unadaptable. To those with young, flexible minds and small agile limbs a large box becomes a castle to defend, a den for secret meetings, a home for tea parties, a ship to sail, a plane to fly or a tunnel to explore. To smaller boxes add glue, paint and cellotape and the world of rockets, monsters, space ships, magical landscapes and the Exterminator will appear.

When the student, the young professional and the family take over the cardboard box it morphs into an amazing variety of ‘storage facilities’ in different guises:

The re-location assistant - ‘That’s the last one, the car is full to its roof,’

The Tardis - ‘Here are a few things I haven’t got room for in my new flat.’

The museum archive - ‘You can’t get rid of that! I remember……’

The ‘Parents’ Revenge’ - ‘I was sorting things out in the loft and thought you’d like to have them.’

The toy chest - ‘Well they’ll be useful when the grandchildren come along.’

The mobile library - ‘I haven’t read them yet but I will.’

 The hold-all - ‘Just put them in and I’ll get round to sorting them out some time!’

The resource centre - ‘You never know those things might be useful one day.’

Then, later in life when it comes to moving, down-sizing or perhaps death, the long forgotten cardboard boxes re-appear.

In a darker place there are those who can’t downsize any further than a doorway and then the box, especially a cardboard one, assumes a different role. One small box might hold all that is left of a previous life while another helps to provide insulation from the physical cold if not from the cold indifference of passers by. A row of wonky cubes is all that defines a private space in a hostile world where those with nothing congregate.

But remember the little yellow box with its slit in the top? That box and the many boxes that call on the compassion of human kind - they will lead to the opening of other boxes providing food, blankets, water pumps, books, nursery equipment, drugs, building materials and much more. They will open up hope, renewal and a better future that will equal any excitement, awe and happiness that accompanies a box at celebration time.

And when all is done there is the re-cycling bin in which the box will be contained!