The speed of life is truly incredible, truly something to stop and admire.
- Or to fear, depending on who you are, where you are, and what you've become.
When I moved out of my parent's house, I took along a box. It was a box that originally held 500 sheets of white printer paper but was repurposed to hold my sister's books and sheet music from her piano lessons. It was labeled "Kimvy's Piano Box," because my parents loved to label everything. It was a box that traveled from Michigan to California. It was a box that had been with my family for many, many years but no one ever paid attention to it.
I used that box to hold cleaning supplies underneath the kitchen sink in my first-ever apartment. I never noticed it, paid any type of attention towards it, or really cared if it ever got replaced. It had one job, to hold cleaning supplies, just as it had the job of holding piano books before. This box had a purpose and it served it, without anyone noticing it.
On the day that I had to move everything out of that apartment, I noticed the box. I looked at it, knowing that my sister used to shuffle through this box every time she practiced piano and knowing that my dad once touched it to refill his industrial printer.
I cried.
- at that basic box. Because it was more than a box, it was a connection I had to the past of living with my family and of life busily moving around this box. This box sat still as the rest of us grew. And now it was time for me throw this box away, because its life had reached an end.
"Kimvy's Piano Box" reminded me of my life, growing up where I did, with the family that I have, and the memories that I carry.
It sounds crazy but I feel gratitude towards this box for being as sturdy as it is and lasting as long as it did. Reminders of home always bring an odd sense of comfort, as minuscule as the object seems.
Thank you "Kimvy's Piano Box" for giving me a sense of home.
