The Box That Keeps On Giving

I must confess before the world Pandemic of Covid-19 I personally might have shopped Amazon, maybe 3 times in my life. Nothing against them, being in my mid- fifties I wasn’t keen on the idea of converting to computers, internet or high tech things, I was comfortable doing things as I have always done them. Since Covid-19, I with the rest of the world have used them more than before. Especially when going to the store was not an option. Thus being said, my husband and our oldest daughter have always used them. They use them so much that there are days they deliver to our house 3-4 times a day. It would infuriate me when I would get home from work and on the table there are boxes with that ever so trustful label “Amazon”.

My six year old granddaughter has such a love for this company. It does not matter if we are out for a walk, riding bikes or in our car, when she sees that trademark “blue van” go by her heart beats so fast. You can hear it almost pounding right out of her chest. Her voice gets this excitement in it, her eyes get that twinkle, the smile on her face, it’s so precious, and I love it!

It’s not that she wants them to deliver to her, but the simple fact she knows they are delivering to a home, or a business, somewhere, anywhere it doesn’t matter where they are going, just the fact that they passed us is enough for her. What she is excited for, is the boxes, those “Amazon” boxes. As soon as she sees them she always asks, “What do you think they will do, with their boxes?” My reply is always the same, “I don’t know maybe they will recycle them”. Her next famous words always are, “can we go ask them if I can have the empty boxes?” “No”, we are not going up to a complete stranger’s house or into a business and asking them for their empty “Amazon” boxes. That not only makes us look like a stalker but a little crazy. The conversation never ends there. She will continue and continue. And it never fails; there goes another “blue van”. There’s no way I can pass it off and make her think it is just any old van going by, even if she doesn’t see the name on it, she knows that color blue belongs to them. There has not been one day when only one of the vans is in our neighborhood or little lone on our street, it feels like they have sent an entire fleet just to our neighborhood. I feel like I cannot get away from them. I am beginning to think they are stalking us.

The thing is she does not care how big or small the boxes are. She loves them all! She uses any and all boxes that come into our home. Cereal boxes, pasta boxes, cracker boxes, and any other ones she sees. If she hears us ordering pizza, she always asks us to have them to bring her extra boxes. Our answer is always no because she has so many boxes already. Box after box after box, they never seem to end. She is always making something out of them. Or she decorates them, so she can put the presents she makes in them and hand them out to everyone.

There are some days I come home from work and there might be one, two or three suspicious packages wrapped in brown paper sitting around, and there she is at the table decorating and making more. I cannot begin to explain how many other boxes there are wrapped in every color imaginable. If she is not using scotch tape, packing tape, duct tape, blue painters tape or electrical tape on them, she will glue them; tie them with yarn or string, whatever it takes to complete her project. Every word, drawing, sticker or anything else she uses is carefully thought out and placed on each package.

I made the mistake once, of picking up one of those suspicious packages wrapped in brown paper, just to see what it was. I had it in my hand and gave it a small shake to see if I could hear anything moving in it, and feel how heavy it was. As if I was a kid on Christmas morning checking out the presents. No sooner had I picked it up, and poof, it was taken away. My granddaughter politely informed me and everyone else in the house that we are not allowed to touch any of her boxes, especially the ones wrapped in brown paper. Apparently those are top secret until she gives them to whoever the recipient is to be. We all know now, there’s a process to the boxes. Sitting here thinking about it, she decorates boxes with the favorite colors of whoever she is intending the package for. The packages decorated in brown, the suspicious looking packages, those are always “suspicious” or a “surprise” till she is seen walking through the house to give it to the person she has intended it for. I must admit when I see her walking through the house my heart skips a little beat, secretly hoping I am going to get the “suspicious brown package” the one no one knows anything about, the one that when you look at it, you can see all the LOVE that went into it.