The Christmas Box

When I was a little girl, I remember precariously bending over the canal that ran under the driveway outside our gate. In those days, it was a muddy mossy sometimes garbage-clogged culvert that flooded over at each heavy rainfall. But it was also a wonderful magical waterway filled with mysterious aquatic plantlife and otherworldly organisms. Best of all, it was one of the prime tadpole-fishing grounds in the neighborhood.

When the current ran swift and the wind was right, the canal would be surrounded by a perimeter of kids, shouting encouragement at a variety of roughly-hewn makeshift paper and styrofoam boats racing along its murky waters. And I would be in the thick of it all.

“Get out of there! You'll fall in!” My mother would yell.

“Look, you've got lots of toys here inside,” she would cajole.

“You naughty impossible girl! You'll get elephantiasis!” Even then, “sugar 'n' spice 'n' everything nice” was never my thing.

Sometimes, these episodes from my past come come back and nudge me whenever I am faced with puzzling behavior from my own two boys. Like last Christmas, for instance, that marvelous time of the year every child looks forward to.

“Woog needs some school socks,” I hinted loudly to no one in particular a week before the big day, “you know, the white ones.”

“And Eli could use some new p'jamies,” I confided even louder, “everything he has is knee-length on him.”

The replies I got ranged from a scathing “That's your job.” to a scandalized “But its Christmas!”

So Woog and Eli, the lucky little rascals, were recipients of a mountain of toys from their benevelent grandparents, uncle and aunts. We got home from the noche buena feast laden with a huge box of toys for the boys. Frankly, I was a bit jealous. All Atch and I got were bath towels, a couple of shirts, a dirty-white tote in fake crocodile skin, and a new set of throw pillow covers.

The next morning, the boys literally tore their way downstairs to get to the goodies. One by one they reverently/roughly took each item out, and tested them briefly, only to catch interest in another...and another...and another...until they reached the bottom of the...

Hello-o Box!

It was a simple cardboard thing my brother picked up at a local supermarket to lug all the gifts he had brought home, but to my kids, it was a cube of infinite possibilities....it was a car....a plane...a spaceship....it was the whole goshdarn Hongkong Disneyland!

They knocked elbows, knees and heads in their rush to be the first to get in.

There are times it seems I am too far gone from my own childhood to realize what my kids are on about, and why they do what they do. Until I am reminded of that little girl who was a few murky drops away from catching elephantiasis. And so I hold my waspish adult tongue and allow them to disregard, like so much used-up confetti, the Hot Wheels, and the Legos, and the off-roader jeeps, and the Pokemon action figures, and the pirate ship replicas, and a huge fluffy Eli-sized Elmo doll that I wish someone had given me as a child...

All for this box which they spent not only the whole Christmas morning in, but the whole week after that, until it disintegrated from all their loving attention. Atch took pity on them and tied a cord to it, and we took turns pulling our “boys in the box” across the living room floor. Much shrieking and laughing. Something I wouldn't trade all the toys, or white school socks, or longer p'jamies in the world for.