In college I did a research project in which I asked every child in the elementary school what they could imagine doing with a cardboard box. This assessment for creativity was designed by Edward deBono and it was a blast. 

 

"Slide down the hill in it."

 

"Keep your hamster in it."

 

"Decorate it with paint and make a house."

 

"Keep toys inside."

 

"Put my baby brother in it to keep him away from my stuff."

 

"Name it Charlie and tell him your problems."

 

"Mail a present to your best friend."

 

"Smash it when you are mad."

 

I wrote as fast as I could. 

 

Most of us have watched a child be given a wrapped gift on Christmas and seen her or him be more fascinated with the box that held it. It's funny unless you feel slighted about the fifty dollars you spent on a laundry basket shaped like a basketball hoop. 

 

Occasionally people are in the market for boxes. Usually it is indicative of a pending move, and the need to harness their belongings. But maybe they just want someone to talk to. 

 

The boxes that carry us are called bodies, and they vary widely in shape and strength. But in the end they are just the containers for who we are. There is a picture of my mother near the end of her life, and the truth is, I don't like it. It represents her as wan, and wrinkled. Weak, and vulnerable. But none of those qualities clung to her when she stepped across the divide. I imagine her now rolling down verdant green hills in heaven, and beautifying her home with colorful furniture not from a thrift store. 

 

The funny thing is she needed no boxes when she moved there.