The Box

The box was always kept under the dining room table, which was against the wall. My mother would get it out and stand on it when she wanted to dust the top of the curtains. My earliest memory of the box is when I was about four years old. My mother had gone out and I remember pushing the box into the kitchen. I used the box to stand on to reach the shelf where the biscuits were kept. I took some biscuits and then pushed the box back under the table. I don't think my mother ever knew.  

I have an older brother, but he didn't think that I, his younger sister, could be much use at anything. However, a few days before one Christmas, when I must have been about seven years old, he made me help him carry the box upstairs to our parents’ bedroom. We took turns standing on it to see the presents that were hidden on top of the wardrobe. I think my brother had doubts about Father Christmas. He told me that he had seen two Father Christmas's in shops in town, and that Father Christmas couldn't possibly have gone from one shop to the other so quickly. One of the presents was a very pretty, glittery doll, and one was a toy searchlight. We agreed that we would write these on our wish lists to Father Christmas, which each of us pinned to our stockings, as I certainly didn't want my brother to get the doll. Our parents must have guessed that we had found the hiding place. Next day the box came out from under the table for its annual few days of glory, when it was covered with a red blanket and supported the plastic Christmas tree that came out every year.  

When I was about thirteen I suddenly grew taller and none of my clothes seemed big enough anymore. My legs were longer and I discovered, doing my homework at the dining room table one evening, that I could rest my feet on the box. Then I immediately had a strange feeling that I should not do that, that somehow the box didn't like it. Did the box have feelings, I wondered. Perhaps I should respect it more, like the silver crucifix in the hall. I don't think that the crucifix was real silver, but my mother always crossed herself every time she went past it. My father never went to church, and my mother would only go to church for the midnight service on Christmas Eve, or when she was really worried about something. Perhaps the crucifix was in the hall to impress my mother's friends when they visited, although she seemed to treat it more like a lucky charm.  

Well, did the box have feelings ? I pulled it out from under the table and had a good look at it. Apparently it had belonged to my grandfather, so it was quite old. It was made of wood and looked as if it had been a packing crate, but it was all nailed up, and rather heavy. I could read the word "Apricots" on one side, but where they came from was too worn away to read.  

A year or so later I had a crush on Mark. He was in my class at school and I used to write notes to him and drop them on his desk as I passed, but he never seemed to notice me. He was not a particularly popular boy, average at most things and not very good at sports. On the last day before the half term holiday I dropped a note inviting him to come for tea on the Saturday afternoon. To my amazement he came up to me and said he would like to come. I bought lots of cakes to impress him. My mother was out and my father was in the front room watching football on the television. When Mark came he looked round the room and said what a nice house we had. Mark and I chatted and I was pleased that it was all going so well. Then he noticed the box under the table. He asked why we had such a dirty old box in our nice room. I didn't like him saying that. It made me feel really uncomfortable and I couldn't think of anything to say. We sat in silence for a few minutes and then he said he ought to leave. I had hoped he might want to kiss me, but he didn't, and I remember that I didn't care. I was annoyed at what he had said about the box. The box had been my grandfather's and it was like a friend, and Mark had insulted my friend. That was what had upset me. The night before I had lain awake thinking of Mark, marriage, a home, and children calling him Daddy. Now I just wanted to know if there was to be any future with Mark. Then I was surprised to have the feeling that the box was telling me, "no". When school re-started I heard that Mark was going out with another girl. I should have been jealous, but I wasn't. The box had been right, and the box was more of a friend than Mark could ever be.  

A friend is someone you can talk to, and even confide in. I didn't want people to think I was going mad for talking to a box, so I imagined that I had a friend inside the box. This friend should have a name, like Jack, so that he would be Jack in the Box, like the children's toy, but I thought that was rather silly, so I never used any name at all. I just imagined I was talking to the box, and that the box was listening. Perhaps my grandfather, who had been a real person of course, was somehow listening. Whenever I was worrying about something I would imagine telling it to the box. Surprisingly this helped. They say that a problem shared is a problem halved. Even sharing a problem with the box helped, because I had to explain it, and somehow this made the problem seem less worrying. Sometimes in bed at night, I imagined telling the box something special, something for it alone, as I knew I could trust it with all my secrets.  

School was hard, and maths was the hardest. What on earth were simultaneous equations ? The teacher wrote on the board, "x = 2y + ..." and then underneath, "3x = 4y + ..." "These are the two equations," she told us. "So now we write 2x = 4y + ... and simply subtract," and then she wrote "x = 0 + ..." below. Yes, yes, I could follow that, but where on earth did the "2x = 4y + ..." come from ? I didn't have much idea about a career either, but I was pretty certain that whatever it might be, it would never need simultaneous equations. X is for the unknown, and there were plenty of unknowns in my life, and Y was for all the WHY questions I had. Once I had gone with a friend to her church, hoping to find out why a good god would allow so much suffering in the world, but all I found were lots of people yelling and screaming that their god was being so good to themselves.  

The box was the only thing that made any sort of sense. It was reliable, it was always in the same place, it didn't change, and all this made me feel more relaxed when I imagined talking to it. I wondered if the box could ever help me, but how could it ? It was only a few pieces of wood nailed together. Although, perhaps it could. I remember having a dream. I was at the seaside, on the beach, and I saw a huge wave coming towards me. I ran up the beach to escape it, and then the box appeared, as if waiting for me. I jumped on it just as the big wave reached me, and the box suddenly grew larger so that the wave went around it, and I was safe. The dream was about the box, and immediately I had imagined myself telling my dream to the box. Perhaps dreams are in the sub-conscious mind, and that when we wake up, our conscious mind stops them, and that is why they fade so quickly. However, since I had imagined describing the dream to the box, it had been in my conscious mind, and maybe that was why I could always remember it.  

Both my parents had left school as soon as they could, and they could not see the point in me borrowing a lot of money just to go to university, mainly because they still believed in the old idea that "a woman's place is in the home." Several of my friends decided to go to university to study law, and they wanted me to join them. I wondered if the box could help me. I imagined asking the box if I should study law, and I felt that the box was telling me not to. So, I asked the box a second question, what should I study, but there was no response. Why not ? What was the difference between the two questions ? Then I realised that the answer to the first question was simply a "yes" or a "no", but the answer to the second question would be one of hundreds of possibilities, and although the answer might be there, it might be much more difficult to find. Would I always get an answer to simple yes or no questions ? I asked, or rather I imagined I was asking, does the course I should study begin with the letter L, for law, and I felt that the answer was no. Then I remembered that a solicitor had given my mother so much trouble after her mother died, and I didn't want to end up making money out of people's misery. So, perhaps my sub-conscious mind was telling me not to study law, and it was nothing to do with the box after all. On the other hand, I could ask for each letter of the alphabet, and then each course starting with that letter. Well, that might take a while, but if it gave me the answer, it would be worth it. However, I had learned that if you ask someone for their advice, you really have to do what they suggest, or next time you ask, they will be less helpful. I tried the next letter, M, but felt that this was wrong. I decided to go through the whole alphabet, starting with A, and I immediately felt that this letter was the correct one. To make sure, I tried B and C also, and the answers to these both seemed to be "no." So I thought of all the courses starting with the letter A and asked, advertising, but the answer seemed to be no, agriculture - no, archaeology - no, architecture - no, accountancy - yes. Wow. Should I really go to university and study accountancy ? The box, or something, again seemed to be telling me "yes" to accountancy. As far as I could remember, I had never had any idea about accountancy, so this idea could not have come from my sub-conscious mind.  

Then I worried, how do I explain my decision to my parents, friends and school etc ? I can hardly say that I want to study accountancy because an old wooden box told me to. People are sure to make me have doubts, and then I will want to ask the box again. I imagined I was asking the box if it minded me repeatedly asking, and it seemed to say, "no," meaning that it didn't mind. Another way to check was to imagine asking, "Am I doing the right thing ?" or "Is this what you want me to do ?", and I felt I was getting reassuring answers to both of these questions. Later when I asked someone about accountancy they told me that there will always be people interested in money, and that there was not much maths involved, so this gave me reasons that I could give to anyone who questioned my choice.  

So, I could get answers whether I just wanted to know, or whether I already had an idea of what I wanted. If I just wanted to know, I had to ask the box a question which would have a simple answer, like "yes" or "no", or possibly "now" or "later". However, the idea might already be in my sub-conscious mind, perhaps from some long-forgotten experience, and I would think that it was the box telling me. So, to be sure, with the idea in my conscious mind, I must imagine asking, "Is this what you want me to do ?" Then when I start doing it I can get a confirmation by asking, "Am I doing the right thing ?" Afterwards, I must remember to say thank-you. Also I need to say thank-you after I have asked for help in finding something I have lost.  

And so, I eventually went to university, confident about studying accountancy, and with the feeling that the box, or possibly my grandfather, was watching over me.   

After my brother was married and had left home, his room had been used for storing things we didn't use very often, including my grandfather's box. Studying accountancy was going well and I had come home from university during the holidays, and I decided to look at the box. One of the side pieces of wood had split, and there were only two nails holding the narrower piece. I borrowed my dad's pliers to pull out one of the nails, so that I could swing that piece of wood out of the way and look inside. I got my torch. Inside I could see a rusty metal clamp holding a pile of magazines, "Yachting Monthly" and all dated 1955. Did my grandfather ever have a yacht ?  

Strangely, I didn't feel disappointed. I knew that it was just an old box, and the magazines explained why it had been rather heavy. However, to me it was more than just a box, or rather, I had made it into more than just a box. Now that I had finally been able to see what was inside, I felt that I had so much to thank it for. I imagined I was talking to the box again, and thanking it for giving me answers to help me know, and understand - myself.