Memorial Day Weekend, that was our self-designated “D-Day”. Princess Jasmine and the Cherokee Kid would be out of school, GWH had a nice long weekend and had spent the last few weeks demolishing the porch and bathroom while at the same time preparing Mamaw, his mom, for the looming changes. Jane had been essentially a storage building since 1975. What would you keep if you knew you could store it in a 900 sq. ft. storage unit? Exactly! Everything. Which brings me to this post’s main topic: Boxes, Pro and Con.
Where to start?
Mamaw had spent the last few weeks preparing for the big move. Her task was to organize everything in the house into three groups: those things she wanted to throw away, things she wanted to give away or donate, and those things she wanted to keep. We drove to Arkansas armed with paper bags, boxes and delusions. When we walked in, we dropped everything, bags, boxes and delusions, and stared at the mess. Then we attacked. Box by box.
I started in the kitchen, sorting, grouping, boxing, taping, labeling. I found some boxes taped shut and covered with dust. I began to open them, one by one, thinking I’d give Mamaw a chance to assess the contents. Fabric scraps, sewing patterns, mis-matched stainless, knick-knacks all opened up and set out for inspection. I came to a box weighing about ten pounds and not at all large, maybe a foot by fifteen inches. First brushing away a thick layer of dust, I cut the tape with my knife and opened the box. Inside were over a dozen tall chubby candles in various fading shades of 1972: harvest gold, avocado, cranberry. Some sooth and some ribbed, all slumped together in the box like sad conjoined siblings, forlorn and slightly melted together. I pried one out of the box and inspected it. It was used. I held it up and hollered into the next room, “Mamaw, can I trash these?”
More boxes!
“Oh, no,” she replied. “I want to keep those. I used to do a craft that used candle wax. That’s why I saved them.”
I waited for more explanation but none was forthcoming. She turned and walked back to the front room. I thought for a moment. Her son and I had been married for 26 years and until this very day I was unaware of this “waxy craft” she alluded to. And I wondered, since we had just celebrated her 78th birthday, when she intended to get back into it. I retaped the box a put it in the “storage unit” pile.
We had three piles: “storage unit”, “donate or give away”, and “trash”. Most of the “trash” pile we hoped to dispatch in the burn barrel right outside the back door. Time was wasting. I set a utility ladder at the base of a chippy kitchen cabinet and climbed to the top step as wasps glided through the room and occasionally bumped into the ten-foot ceiling precariously close to my head. I opened a grimy yellow door that almost reached to the top of the ceiling. It was filled with boxes. I pulled one from the top shelf. Empty. I pulled another, the same. I swept the whole shelf full of boxes to the floor. “Mamaw, we can burn these empty boxes, can’t we?”
The cabinet was almost as tall as the ceiling.
She returned to the room and surveyed the floor covered. “Oh, no.” she said. “Those go to my Christmas dishes and the person who gets them might want the original boxes.”
She returned to the front room. I scooped up the empties and and looked for one of the U-Haul boxes we purchased for this chore. I began to fill the big empty box with little empty boxes, the irony ringing in my brain like an irony bell. I sighed.
As I finished taping the box I thought to myself, At least it won’t be as heavy as a box of burned pillar candles. I walked into the front room, looking for a new challenge. In the far corner I saw a rat’s nest of corrugated brown boxes spilling out of an ancient cabinet.
Still more boxes...
I examined them closely. All empty, they each had a mailing label affixed with cancelled postage. None was large enough to hold more than a coffee mug or a shirt. It slowly dawned on me that this pile represented every Valentine, Mothers Day, Easter and birthday gift we had ever sent from Oklahoma to the farm. Twenty six year’s worth present and accounted for. Many of the gifts were long gone; worn out, misplaced, thrown away, re-gifted. I hadn’t seen the gifts themselves in years and couldn’t tell you what they were if you asked me, but here was hard evidence that they were shipped and received.
Lunch by the burn barrel.
The GWH and I were enjoying a sandwich at the picnic table under the pine trees. The burn barrel was aflame, licking merrily at the lower limbs of the walnut a few dozen feet away. We were dog-tired and filthy after only a half-day’s work of sorting and packing. Mamaw came out to join us with a can of diet Dr. Pepper in her hand.
“I’m looking for a big pile of boxes,” she said. “Have you seen them?”
I continued to chew my turkey and Swiss on wheat and gave her a quizzical look.
She continued,”They are small boxes, a whole bunch of them. I’ve been saving them. They were a good size.”
I took another bite as I considered this. A good size. We were attempting to cull through a 900 foot house that had been used as storage for nearly four decades. It needed to be empty by the end of Memorial Day weekend, three and a half days and counting. And our common understanding was everything either was going to be given away, trashed or what was kept needed to fit into a ten by fifteen storage unit. I hadn’t even seen the unit yet but I could tell by the storage pile we were running out of room. The pile nearly filled a sixteen by sixteen room and already contained a heavy box of large burned candles and a very large box of empty boxes.
I swallowed a gelatinous glob of wheat bread, turkey and cheese, then took a big swig of Sprite. I wiped my mouth with a paper towel and said, “If I see them, I’ll let you know.”
As she walked back to the house I glanced over my shoulder at the burn barrel, it’s flames subsiding and a fine white ash dancing on the breeze. I got up to poke the remains smoldering in the barrel. I thought to myself, smiling, Yes indeed. If they turn up I’ll definitely let you know.
natural state of insanity 