Ellen and The Box

Ellen’s very first memory is vividly marked by the presence of a box, one wrapped simply in brown paper. She was a baby and sitting squarely in front of her carrier is that box. She remembers smiling and giggling at the sight of it. She remembers feeling a presence. Ellen wondered for the longest time why her brain has clung to that memory, formed so early that most would say it is unlikely to even have occurred. Most people don’t remember events from that early on in their lives and if they do, it is something of great significance, usually a trauma, but Ellen distinctly remembers the box, the giggles, and the feeling that it was looking right at her.

Another early memory was formed not long after that and has stayed readily accessible to her ever since. Ellen was just learning to walk and was as curious as one could expect her to be. She can recall the feeling of toddling around on the hardwood floor in the living room and beginning to fall. Instead of next remembering a thud of pain, she remembers being caught, right under her outstretched little arms, by a surface much softer than the floors – it felt like paper, and it was very clearly a mellow brown.

Ellen remembers feeling like she saw an old friend while sitting at the bus stop at age four. She remembers smiling and waving to another on the bench, but instead of seeing the face of a loved one in her mind’s eye, she recalls a brown paper-wrapped package sitting alone on the bench.

As Ellen got older and began to store more memories, she began realizing that she has seemingly been followed (and possibly monitored?) by the same suspicious package wrapped in brown paper ever since she was a little baby girl. Immediately when she came to this revelation, she was overcome by anxiety and fear. She walked around expecting to see that mysterious brown box everywhere she went – and she often did. This heightened her feelings of uneasiness and she longed to share her sense of impending doom with her parents, but she knew in her soul that she could not discuss it. The box was only there for her. A box was just a box to everyone else, but this box was the box to her. Others would argue coincidence, but she knew that to be wrong. Because it was the only way, Ellen carried the box alone.

After years of paranoia and worry, Ellen came to another revelation: She had come this far with the box right by her side. She thought back to her earliest memories with the box and understood deep inside that they were dripping with joy. Considering her more recent interactions with the box, she realized that they were marked by fear that she herself created. The box had, so far, caused her no harm. She came to the conclusion that the box was definitely watching her, but it was not out to get her.

Instead of fear, Ellen chose acceptance and bravery. She boldly carried on, knowing that she would always have someone there for her; she would never be alone. When she thinks back to her elementary school graduation, she looks out into the audience and sees her parents and grandparents, she sees her teachers and her friends’ families, and she sees a brown paper box sitting by itself. When she remembers the day she got her first car, she remembers walking out to the driveway with her mom, leaning over to the passenger seat to hug her dad, and glancing into the backseat to see the box seated right in the center. The box made appearances on all of her big days, the good and the bad. She remembers crying after her first breakup and looking up to see the box sitting in the corner of her room. Although she has never once placed the box where it turns up, she always knows where she can find it. She remembers seeing that box, right where she expected it, at her high school graduation.

When Ellen moved off to college, she wondered briefly if the distance would have any effect on the visits from the box. As she pulled out of her driveway, she looked back through the rearview mirror to see her parents and home again, but when she waved, she was really waving to the suspicious box wrapped in brown paper sitting in the driveway, slightly behind her parents. Someone passing by at the time might have thought it to simply be a package that she forgot to put in the car, but she knows it’s the one package she never has to pack. Once she got to college, the box showed up less frequently, but it was always there when it should be. Ellen will always remember her college graduation, not because of the diploma or her walk across the stage, but because of that same old box she saw out in the crowd. To everyone else there, it was just part of the scene, perhaps a package someone set down and forgot about, perhaps a gift for one of the graduates, or perhaps an unnoticed detail. However, Ellen saw the package as the presence that it is, and she saw the small drop of liquid (possibly a tear?) rolling slowly down the front side of the wrapped box when she was handed her diploma.

After that particularly emotional time shared with the box, Ellen didn’t get even a quick sighting of that brown paper for quite some time. She thought of it often – how could she not? Of course, she occasionally saw other paper-wrapped packages in her daily life, but she knew they were indeed just that – packages. They were to be received, to be opened, which got her thinking that in all these years, she never once wondered what was inside that package. It was never an item to be torn open. It was not something for her to look inside; it was something that looked inside her.

Ellen’s next glimpse of that mysterious package finally came while she was unpacking boxes in her very own house. Seeing that box brought a beaming smile to her face. What once caused her tremendous worry and fear, now brought her relief and pure joy.

Now, as Ellen sits thinking about all of her interactions with the brown paper-wrapped box, she thinks of the future and hopes to one day see the mysterious package when her time is almost up. She wants it to always be there for the important moments of her life. Its everlasting presence has come to bring her an odd sense of comfort.