Are you keeping a box?

It's amazing to me. We spend our whole collecting "stuff", stuff that we need, stuff we think we need, stuff we can't seem to live without, but mostly - it's just stuff, stuff that we can't take with us when we go.

what happens to the stuff? it gets given away. it gets put out by the trash. it goes into a garage sale and those memories - sold for a dollar, never to be seen again.

Our life ends up being left behind - in a box. Photos of us throughout our life from birth to old age, birth certificates, death records, letters home to mom and dad, letters from sisters & brothers in the military or college, the feet print of a brand new baby and the handprints of a child in elementary school, a grandmothers bible filled with well worn pages, a grandfathers old used pocketknife.

The most wonderful thing to me is the fact that my family keeps "a box" - that is the best passed down treasure I could ever receive. I am a little emotional as I write this, this morning because I know that someday in the future, I will receive some of the "what's in the box" that my mother has been collecting for years. It's a wonderful beat up brown box full of history, my greatgrandparents, my parents, my brother and sister, nieces and nephews, my children, and of course me.

As we grow older and begin to grow our own families, we start our own box too. In that box we place treasures from our past and collect new ones from our future to one day pass on to our children so they too - can begin "a box". It's amazing to me, how our life ends up - in a wonderful, beat up, treasure-filled, brown box.

Are you keeping a box?

Dedicated to my mother, Lea - for keeping all of these treasures so we can keep our boxes going :) I love you, mom.