In my house there are four boxes.
Four special boxes.
First, there is the God Box, a small cardboard box covered with embossed white paper. It contains the prayers my step-mother wrote to her deity during the last years of her life. It’s a difficult box to visit.
Then there is the Poem Box. It’s flat, the size of a billfold, and it contains the poems my father wrote after my stepmother died. It, too, is a difficult box, filled with despair and dark thoughts written in days’ early hours as he precessed from a broken future toward his own demise.
Recently, I received an incongruous box. A wooden half-moon with a clasp, japanned and decorated with 19th century-style chrysanthemums, it fits easily in two hands. It is from the estate of my recently deceased brother, and while it is totally not like him in style, its contents—pipes, Malian artifacts, a bracelet of broken silver—most definitely are. But, like the other boxes, visiting this one is also a sad journey.
The fourth box, though, is different.
This one is largish, about the size of a shoebox. It is made of tin, with rounded corners and a lid that comes off with a ringing clang! no matter how quietly you try to open it.
This box is my box, and in it are memories.
Memories inscribed in cork.
I’ve been known to open a bottle of wine or two, and during special occasions or events of note, we often mark them with something special to match. We’ve never been rich, so I’m not talking Dom Perignon, here, but we have progressed, over the decades, from Korbel to Moët to the (very) occasional bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
Many events have been celebrated or marked in this way. Debts paid off. Book contracts signed. House offers accepted. Birthday milestones. Funereal farewells. Anniversaries.
I have corks going back to the ’90s, but this year, 2020, was a year without a cork, at least for the first ten months. That changed in the past two weeks, when we had, in quick succession, two reasons to celebrate: my sisters’ wedding, and (thankfully) an election victory.
I was taken to task last week for my harsh view of how the votes shook out in this presidential race, and while I still hold to that, I have absolutely no issue with celebrating the landmark win for the Biden/Harris ticket. While I have no illusions about the coming years—they’re going to be difficult, between bringing the pandemic under control and rebuilding our middle class, our infrastructure, and our standing in the world—at least now I know we have folks in office who want to do these things.
And so, exhausted but guardedly sanguine, I am happy to add one to the box.
And dare to hope again.
Stay safe.
k
I can’t tell you how much I love this post, Kurt. You drew me in with the boxes and I’m intrigued still. And then you gave us something to chew on, as you always do. Thanks for the inspiration today!
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Thanks, Kay. I guess I’m channeling my inner Alice Hoffman, where everything has a story to tell.
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Well, you did it masterfully!
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Congrats on making it through the year 2020!!! For some more discouraging reading, Obama is coming out with a new memoir called A Promised Land. He says that it is his fault that Trump got into office????
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He says that the fact that there was a Black man in the Oval Office is why Trump got elected. Sent a ton of people into a panic. So, it’s his fault, because he’s Black, which is a much nicer way of putting it than I would have.
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