There's Something About a Box

There’s something about a box. I think it’s the excitement of wondering what’s within; the anticipation as you lift the lid and peer in. I’ve had a lifelong fascination for small containers, reasoning that they will always ‘come in useful for something.’  And sometimes they do: earrings, pens, paperclips (do people still use them?), drawing pins, old birthday cards, the children’s first teeth etc etc.  

I don’t just ‘buy’ boxes, I also find it impossible to throw away old ones: tiny ones that contained a pair of earrings, medium ones that came with make up or toiletries and those lovely big shoe boxes, full of beautifully moulded suede and leather. In my eyes they’re all useful. 

Just recently my husband thought he would surprise me. Whilst I was away he transferred my bottles of hair colour and related paraphernalia from a perfectly sized shoe box, that fitted snugly under the bathroom sink, to a large basket with a huge immovable, arched handle. It had been delivered full of plants, now long since dead, and abandoned in the garden while I decided what to do with it.  I discovered the basket on the landing, slightly damp, slightly misshapen, and overflowing with coloured bottles.  I didn’t realise this was a ‘lovely surprise’ for me. I thought it was the husband’s way of getting rid of something he thinks is rubbish and I don’t. We spend our lives tussling over items that I decide will ‘come in useful’ and he thinks need to become landfill.  

So he put on a plausible act of appearing shocked and hurt when my first question was, ‘Where’s the shoebox?’  

Rather than answering, he repeated, rather less confidently now, that he’d thought the basket would be a lovely surprise for me.  It appeared the shoe box was in the bin. Crushed beyond recognition. He was obviously taking no chances.  

The following day the basket had disappeared from the landing and apparently been put in the airing cupboard (the only place that could accommodate the huge handle). I had to explain that if the bottles remained in such a hot space all hair colour would dry up and he would be married to a mousy grey haired woman. Was that really what he wanted? Wisely, he didn’t reply. 

The basket, with contents, has been removed from the airing cupboard and now annoyingly takes up space next to the bath.  I haven’t told the husband yet that there’s only one solution.  He’ll know soon enough when those coveted summer sandals are delivered in a smart new box. 

My Dad’s Ashes by Jill Reidy

I thought it would be an urn 

It’s not, things have changed 

It’s a box

Quite heavy

As is fitting

The lid taped

I suppose it has to be

Name and date scribbled 

On a black edged label

So it’s real

I wipe away a tear 

Run my hand across the lid 

And decide not to open it 

Just yet

Thanks for reading..... Jill 

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Quiet time.

The very first piece of origami I can remember doing was a simple box. It was my old headmaster, a man called Peter Higgins that taught an entire year group how to do it and it is something that I have never ever forgotten since. Simple in its premise, the aim is to turn a single sheet of A4 paper into something useful- and useful it was as I have made one for every girlfriend I have ever had at some point, as well as using them myself for simple desk tidies and trinket holders. 

This week I've been thinking of loss. We had some bad news that a dear friend of the family- one of those faces from every special occasion- had passed away. At the funeral I found myself swept up in the emotion, the turn-out and indeed, the humour of the moment as a brass band began to play outside the crematorium mid-service. I should say, there was an element of doubt as to whether it had been pre-arranged by the man himself- such was his reputation for bringing a smile and a bit of mischief and I'm sure he would have appreciated the sentiment of it in against the saddening backdrop of the military standards. I wasn't alone in my smiling and from what people were saying afterwards, it seems everyone had the same flash-thought as the drums and trombones struck up. 

To me, Wilf will always be remembered. I will remember the way he scored his charm across my sheet of paper and once that mark has been made, it can never be undone- even paper has a memory. So I did what I always do- I made a box and took the quiet time to do a bit of considering the many good moments to be cherished. For Wilf then, and for Peter Higgins my old headmaster, here is my origami poem. 

Thanks for reading, S

Quiet time.

Give me one blank sheet and I’ll make you a picture

Measured out with the precision of a cross legged boy.

It will be a paper box, a collection of memories

All thoughtfully gathered with a hard scored crease.

I was ten, in assembly and the headteacher’s gift

Was to give us a way to collect up our thoughts.

I bring the top corner down to the side, trim the excess

Take my new perfect square and fold it in half,

Bring each half of this to the middle again.

Unfold, turn the paper through ninety degrees

And repeat, you should now have a squared gatefold sleeve.

Bend  the top corners inwards but just to the first crease

Then the middle edge back up to rest over these

Again with the bottom, you’re aiming for symmetry

Pull the middle lips out and you should start to see

The shape of the box I remember from childhood

Taught to me in assembly hall years ago

That man may have passed now but back then he marked me

Took my blank sheet of paper and scored on his line

With a mountain fold, peaking to see a potential

That would help me reflect in the fullness of time. 

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An Unfound Box

In my dream, I found myself returning to a small North London hospital. I hadn’t been back in ten years, and now in the real world – due to underfunding and cutbacks – it had been forced to close.  But in my dream I went back. I went back to collect a box that had been given to a man that was like a father figure to us. His firm but fair ways helping us to find new paths, new choices and new beginnings; he was everything that made the place right and good; he was the reason that so many of us survived and were given a second chance to grow up. 

The box was delivered anonymously. There was a small white envelope taped to the top – the doctor’s name spelt out in blue block capitals – and a brief letter explaining that the box was meant for me. And there I was, older and more alive than I had been when I left, standing inside this ‘home’ of my past, in front of the man who’d made it all possible.

When I opened the box, there were about ten items all wrapped in pink tissue paper - and as I started to open them, I realised that they were things that I had once owned. There was an old notebook from 2001, a small black button from a cardigan I no longer owned, a book I thought I’d lost and the childish comfort blanket I’d thrown away. I don’t know what the other six items were, I woke up... I searched for the box – thinking  for a moment that it was real, that I’d brought it home – before realising it had all been a dream. But, for weeks afterwards, the box dream kept resurfacing in my consciousness; there were questions about who the mysterious sender was, what each item meant and what the dream was trying to tell me. I wanted to go back there, back into that very dream, and finish unwrapping the past – but I never returned.

On the evening prior to this dream, I had read Christopher Reid’s poem ‘The Box’. It had done that very thing that some of my favourite poems do: it had made me stop, think, consider. It expressed something that I understood; it articulated emotion in a comprehensible manner; it asked to be reread and remembered – it was one of those poems that I wished I had written.

For me, poetry is a little like dreaming. It encompasses a first layer, made up of the physical things that you can see and touch, the concrete things, the individual lexemes with their fixed denotations / dictionary definitions – but beneath, if you search, everything is working on another, more personal, level. A poem is multifaceted, it asks to be engaged with, it asks something of its reader – and it gives back with a meaning that is more than the sum of its surface components. These are the types of poems that I love; the ones with the undercurrents of meaning, where the connotation of each word (or word cluster) is working just as hard (if not harder than) the first layer. That when you revisit, years later, a poem that you thought you knew, has changed – because you have changed, because you have grown, because you see the world differently, because experience, life, mood and maturity all feed into the reading process...  Because nothing stands still... Because sometimes we’re not ready to unwrap each layer of meaning, because the poem chooses to hold some of its secrets back – like small parcels wrapped in pink tissue paper, a great poem will leave us to wonder, and we’ll keep returning, going back and hoping that next time we’ll be able to unwrap another pink tissue papered item.

Thank you for reading,

Lara

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