This week I gave a creative writing assignment for a verbal show and tell, no pictures, no objects only words. This is what my daughter turned in - sorry if I am biased, but she is quite a gifted writer at the age of 13. (she gave permission for me to share this)
A Box
There
are things in life that no one has the words to describe. No matter what one
tries, there will never be the exact recipe of happiness, sorrow, excitement,
and nerves that can be mixed together, cooked, and neatly packaged so that it
can be used at a moment’s notice to describe the feelings. That would be beyond
words’ capabilities. That is why I have a box. This box holds all the things I
cannot really use tangible words to explain.
The
box is the color of my life. It is streaked with decapitated Barbie Dolls and
dress up boxes. The surface is dotted with faces and places. The outside is
factual. It is the skeletal system of who I am. You can easily see Hong Kong,
the Lotus Hotel in Chiangmai, Katy, Agnes, Molli, NN,
CZ, Emily, and Joanna. These things are what make up the boxes structure.
Without what is inside the box, however, the skeleton is a worthless piece of
matter. It can accomplish nothing and will never go anywhere.
When
the box is opened, the nose is confronted with the smell of memories, the
glimpses of the past, and the sound of feelings. Granted, none of the smells or
glimpses are that old, but they have been carefully preserved in the box. If
you are careful, you will see some intricate things. If you are hasty,
you will see nothing but memories covered in mothballs. You won’t hear the
faint singing of Taylor Swift’s Speak Now album that I listened to over and
over for months. You won’t smell the cold November of 2010 in which I wrote my
first novel. You won’t see the fogging of my glasses as I leave a frigid hotel
room and enter a sweltering, volunteer-team summer. You’ll miss how white our
carpet was without furniture or knickknacks lying around in our house in
America the day we left. You’ll never know about my locker where the first ‘n’
in my name fell off, or the Imagination Game, or waiting for a
pineapple-scented taxi cab on the way to school every morning and afternoon.
You’ll never know about my April addictions to television or my fetish with the
Hunger Games and Jennifer Lawrence. You won’t know about the Christmas tree box
that was covered in scribbles from every year in America. You will never see the
copy of a Tree Grows in Brooklyn that has been read five times or the set of
Anne of Green Gables books that were consumed in my first lonely summer in
China. You will miss the million miniscule things that make up this box… and
me.
After
the ten-second memories have been sifted through and sorted out, you will see
the thoughts. There are a lot of them, because I think a lot. The thoughts are
meticulously categorized and catalogued. The reoccurring dream of Sully and Boo
walking Jimmy Neuron’s robot dog through the foliage is in there. The memorized
smell of Christmas, because it does indeed have a smell, and the prayers that
the sky would pour down rain on my twelfth birthday are all carefully saved
inside the box. The tears I didn’t cry
when I left America are stored in a bottle, and every idea for a novel I’ve
ever had is in there as well. Those split-seconds in which I saw my very
existence from a different angle and boggled my own mind are recorded with an
eerie precision that humans could not ever achieve. The moments that I felt
like I had a definite purpose and was excited to a point that I felt could soar
but had no idea why I felt that way are happily painted onto the inside of the
box. There in the box are also the times where I was on the brink of a nervous
breakdown and found out, after going through my list of things to do, I had
absolutely no reason to worry. The phrase, “God, please don’t let me die,” is
comically scrawled next to a picture of the Titan, and the night I did not
sleep at all because of the impending first day of seventh grade is documented
with an analog clock and an image of a stomach full of butterflies. These things
are the lifeblood of the box, and they are what give it the ability to think,
grow, and understand. Some might call it pointless junk that I feel I have to
carry everywhere I go. They would say that it will merely make the trip longer,
but it won’t. If I didn’t have the box what would I be?
What
is that you say? There is nothing in the box? It is just an empty, battered,
cardboard box full of nothing but musty air you say. I believe you did not look
very hard. You might even want to take another look. You have a box too. That
box may be nothing like mine, but you most certainly do have one. Look for it.
It is probably up in your boyfriend’s attic somewhere or hidden behind the
azaleas in your mother’s backyard. If you find it, I would like to see it.
