My mother dropped a stack in the hall outside my room. It landed with an unremarkable thump. She carried in two boxes and assembled them on the floor in front of me. A papery dust wafted out as she folded the flaps, and tipped the hollow side up. She pressed open the top flaps along the crease, and uncapped a marker with her teeth. On one box, she wrote, “Lindsey’s Room” and on the other, “Lindsey’s for Storage”. She resealed the marker, and left a black garbage bag, explaining with sympathetic eyes, “This is for anything not worth keeping”. That was a precarious idea. Might there really be something not worth keeping? Every old stuffed animal, scrap of paper, or shard of broken toy was a part of my childish world, real or make-belief. When it retired from the realm of useful things, it found a new purpose in the hands of my imagination.
I pruned my belongings of anything I could part with: things that were replaceable, objects more valuable in memory than in substance, and things I was embarrassed of. Now I had to sort through the ‘keepers’. We were moving over seas for two years, and bringing only what we needed. We would leave the rest in storage until we returned. I began with the bookshelf. I needed my favorite nighttime stories: Grandma and the Pirates, The Snow Queen, and my collection of Roald Dhal and Robert Munsch. These would come with me. I wanted my sticker collection and book of Cat’s Cradle. These would be stored with my schoolbooks, neither wanted nor needed, but obligated to keep. I continued in this manner, weighing needs against wants, sifting through dolls, marionettes, pencils, puzzles, and other oddities. Each thing was carefully considered for how lonely it might be, abandoned in a warehouse, or for how lonely I might be without it. The boxes eagerly welcomed the objects, filling up far too fast. My Mother tackled the wardrobe, filtering out clothes that were too small, too big, or too itchy to wear.
The room was emptying as I rearranged the contents of the box, trying to squeeze out any extra space. Inside, everything looked shabby against the fresh cardboard. My things were foreign, just objects, stacked with the efficiency of a seven-year-old. My hands felt dirty, covered in a thin film shed from the box. Only a bed, bookshelves, and a little desk remained. They would all disappear when the moving truck arrived in the morning. Mom sealed the boxes with packing tape, and took the garbage bag down to the curb. I sat on the floor, my world shrunken from around me.
It would be several weeks before we saw the boxes again. They took the slow voyage by ship while we packed our suitcases and flew. For weeks we camped out in a furnished apartment, on loan. When we heard the ship was fast approaching, we moved. I slept in an empty room, in an empty house, on an overgrown lot. I got to know every ripple in the ceiling and every snag on the carpet. The whole house was ripe with potential, awaiting the sound of moving vans turning up the drive.
It was clear the boxes had taken the brunt. They were no longer new, but marked up, dented, and wilted from sea air. The movers carried them in, one after the next, stacking them in the living room. Excitement erupted in all of us as our handpicked world unfolded in an alien place. I found my box amongst the heap. Like all the others, it was branded with the mover’s stamp, and in finer print, the words, “Lindsey’s Room” were scrawled in the corner. I heaved open the flaps and let out a musty scent of home. My things lay there, untouched, against the weary cardboard. They looked brand new.
After the boxes had been lovingly unpacked and dismantled, we began to build. We built fortresses with watchtowers, hideouts quilted with pillaged blankets, and rocket ships embellished with triggers and controls. Those spared of our playful destruction, were stowed away for the trip back. Then I would be faced again with the tiresome task of re-evaluating my material world.
With every move my collection got smaller, my boxes more expertly packed. I tested ways of classifying possessions: by room, by association, purpose, material, or fragility. The cardboard box became a ritual in my life, a de-tox of sorts. Its rigid dimensions are a constantly nagging discipline. Every possession has been scrutinized for its ability to be packed into an 18” by 18” by 22” cube. Anything larger must be exceptionally sturdy, or easily dispensable.
Those boxes that are still intact, that have not been dismembered of flaps and sides, are folded flat. They’re stacked under the bed, collecting dust, awaiting another move. The cardboard box continues to keep my world small, and renders it mobile.
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