It’s never easy to fill a box. Whether it’s a text box in a blog post or a lunchbox of food your child will actually eat.
I found myself wandering the mall on Sunday trying to fill a box of memories I wanted to gift my godchild for her first birthday. I had this great idea that every year I would add to this memory box, filling it with remnants of her life over each year—photographs, favourite toys, presents from her mom and dad, maybe even digital recordings of the sounds she had made.
But as I walked around, accompanied by two twenty-something free spirits (I’ll call them Tom and Jerry), I realized how strange a baby and parents’ world could seem to those who don’t have children.
As I picked up a porcelain box with a figurine of a little girl on it, I read the label out to them: “Berry tooth and curl box”.
“OK that’s freaky,” Tom said. “People actually keep their children’s teeth?”
My dad still has mine, so I responded with a nasty look.
But it got me thinking. Yes, as parents, we do hold on to the little fragments of our children, be it the curl of their hair, their first tooth, their footprints, or their ugly first piece of artwork. We treasure these, and we buy little boxes to put them in.
But why? Will our children appreciate the gesture of fondness, or will they, too, like Tom, respond with an “Ewwww, Mom. That’s gross!”
I then found myself ‘ooh-ing and aah-ing’ over a Velcro baby’s block in which you could insert a photo on each side of the cube. I thought this was ingenious until Jerry pointed out, “She’s going to put that in her mouth. Why don’t you just get her one without the pictures?”
But that’s not the point. The pictures are memories; when she looks back in her box, they will tell her a story.
Tom and Jerry insisted that every present I had picked out was not something she could enjoy right now as a one-year-old, but would look back at as a teenager and think, “Wow, my godmother’s cool!”
So I stopped for a second and asked myself, “Who is this present for?” I still love my memory box idea, but it made me wonder. Sometimes as parents we try so hard to create things we think our children will love—be it boxes, bedrooms, or future aspirations—but in reality, we’re merely pleasing ourselves.
I can still see the light in my idea. I want my godchild to have something to look in when she’s older, to be able to find a piece of herself when she might most need to be reminded of it. And for now, along with the box, I’ll buy her a teething block she can bite the head off of.
