A season of boxes
The holidays are here. Have I ever told you that I love Christmas? I love the mystery of the day, the expectation, the wonder.
I use this month to find miracles.
Little miracles like a smile that crosses a friend’s eye when she sees a sunset. Big miracles like a client getting a new job because, as she says, “I still have another project in me.” Miracles abound.
Miracles don’t need boxes. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about boxes.
Under beautiful Christmas trees, boxes appear. Some boxes are tiny, some are huge and some are uniquely shaped. I’m thinking about what might be in them.
I was one of those terrible kids who would search all over for boxes. Opening closets, looking under beds, I would make our apartment an explorer’s delight. My mother’s best hiding spot was the old coal bin down in the basement. I was the Nancy Drew of Christmas, the box-seeker. Standing on tip-toe, I found the boxes, filled with slippers and pjs and a Tammy doll and a tea set. It was never actually what was in the box that mattered, it was the thrill of opening it that was my rush.
I still look for boxes. I think of all the boxes that I’ve put my life into: the box of career, of family structure, of motherhood, of friendship. I hear often that folks want to move out of their boxes, to escape to something less confining. I agree. I’m now an accomplished re-cycler of boxes.
I want to pull those sides apart and flatten all the edges so that a new box, a new idea, a new miracle can be formed. I think that’s what my new life is all about.
Life’s a Daring Adventure is about opening the boxes. Not in the rip-the-lid-off-and-dump-everything-on-the-floor kind of way. Sometimes there’s just too much inside and life pours out, or maybe it’s just too painful to open the box, or just maybe we’re afraid that all the magic inside the box will escape.
I think that Life’s a Daring Adventure: your midwife for midlife is about peeking into the box. You know what I mean, when you just put your finger along the edge of a box and slowly, very slowly raise just a corner of the box. Finding myself at a time that I can fill boxes again, it’s a good time to clear some of the old ones out. That’s midlife, that’s reinvention. It’s like those hoarder shows on TV. Open the boxes that you’ve gathered for a lifetime and decide what to do with the stuff.
So this holiday season, I don’t need a lot of boxes under my tree. I want only one box to hold all the miracles I find.
It will be a stained glass box, the shards of color bouncing off the lights on the tree. It will be breath- taking. It will hold the miracle of family.
Within that box will be the miracle of seeing the two young men who call me mom. They’ll leave their respective coasts and gather in the Midwest to give me hugs. Within that box will be the love of my life, with impish brown eyes filled with joy just for seeing me. Within that box will be my sisters who know my heart dreams and share the miracles of being incredible women. Within that box will be all those who by birth or love have become my family. Within that box will be all the friends who have enriched my life.
That’s the box of my dreams. It’s the only box that truly matters to me this holiday. No wrapping is necessary.
I wish for you to find a beautiful box as well. Let me know what yours looks like.
Happy Holidays!
Mary Helen
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