I have a box that carries more than things
Every family has one.
Not the expensive heirloom or the beautifully crafted chest. Just an ordinary cardboard box. Scuffed. Re-taped. Covered in fading marker. A box that, somehow, refuses to be thrown away.
Mine has been with me for twenty-five years.
The story begins in 2001 when I was teaching in Orange County. Someone at school gave me a sturdy moving box that had once held Chanukah supplies. They simply crossed out the words with a black Sharpie and passed it on to me as I packed our home for a move from Mission Viejo to Irvine.
When we packed, the box earned a new identity. My husband carefully wrote “Kitchen” on the side in his unmistakable handwriting. Years later, during another move to Laguna Niguel, it carried teddy bears and doll clothes. Each move added another layer to its story, and another label to its well-worn sides.
I honestly can’t remember everything it held after that. Somewhere between Orange County and San Diego, it continued making the journey with us. Apparently, whatever it carried always seemed important enough that no one questioned whether to keep the box itself.
Then came 2020.
Like so many people, the pandemic changed everything. After many decades of teaching, I left full-time classroom teaching far more suddenly than I had ever imagined. With only hours to pack a lifetime, lesson plans, books, puppets, games, and teaching treasures disappeared into storage boxes that were stacked floor to ceiling in a storage unit.
As I have entered my sixties, my body has reminded me of every adventure I’ve ever had. Thankfully, modern medicine has also given me the opportunity to tackle that storage unit at last. For the past month, I have been unpacking decades of memories, donating the teaching materials I lovingly collected, designed, and crafted to schools in San Diego where they can begin new lives in new classrooms.
And there, tucked away at the very back of the storage unit, was that same faithful box. This time it held my late mother-in-law’s linens. As I carefully removed them, I knew they weren’t simply old fabric. They were memories stitched together by a life well lived. Soon they will become something new. A dear friend is transforming them into a quilt, ensuring that the warmth of one generation will continue to comfort another.
The empty box is ready again. Soon it will travel to my children as they move house. Once again, it will carry the ordinary things that somehow become extraordinary because of the lives wrapped around them.
Judaism has always understood that holiness is often found in ordinary objects.
The Torah teaches,
“Teach them diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:7).
We usually think of those words as referring to lessons and values. But perhaps they also remind us that what we pass from one generation to the next isn’t only knowledge. We pass along memories, traditions, stories, and even the simplest objects that quietly witness our lives.
King Solomon wrote,
“One generation praises Your works to another” (Psalm 145:4).
Every generation receives something, adds something of its own, and hands it forward. That is the essence of l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation. Sometimes it looks like a Torah scroll. Sometimes it looks like a family recipe. And sometimes it looks like an old cardboard box covered in crossed-out labels and fading handwriting. The box was never valuable because of what it was made of. It was valuable because it kept saying “yes” to one more journey.
Perhaps that’s true of us as well.