I am very good at compartmentalizing.  I put things in boxes and baskets all over my house, corralling, herding, filing until there is enough order for me to move on.  Those containers are real but there are virtual ones, too.  My mother’s death is in a box, as is her life.  My father’s ongoing health dramas are packed into a larger box these days.  Looking for a ‘forever house’ is in a box marked “I’ve really got to get on that.”  London is in a crate marked “Home.”  My sons each have a box labeled “College” and my daughter has one currently called “Who the hell is this kid?”  Finally, my writing has its own box and I take it out each day.  I try to determine what story I will tell and how I’ll tell it.  Sometimes I try to remember what I thought I was doing when I started writing at all.

Thinking about my slightly OCD tendency to create order made me wonder whether I should try thinking outside the box.  I mean, that’s what we’re encouraged to do as we wrestle the angels and demons in our lives.  We are told to try a new approach, to look at things from a different perspective, blue sky and all that.  Well, I find that I think far better inside the box.  And not just any box, the Anything Box.  Some people might call it a Mystery Box, the last Fed Ex parcel Tom Hanks never opened on his desert island, the unread letter from an old boyfriend, the Christmas present hidden at the very back of the tree, the never-scratched scratch card.  To me, ‘what just might be’ is the reason I write.  For me, the mystery inside the box is far more compelling than the anything that I see scattered on the floor around it.

Of course, this little plan only works with fiction, because, let’s face it, real life is just that, real.  When I climb inside the Dad box I find my sister making phone calls, scoping out nursing care, throwing away 1977 New Yorkers. When I run an exacto blade across the tape on the boys’ boxes I find dirty socks, open text books and beer.  Down deep, in a corner of the Emma box there is a little girl in her brother’s snow boots and nothing else.  In the box marked David I can re-read his letters all the way back to 1978.  These boxes hold all the things I know, all my facts, the saved locations on my internal GPS.  But, as I navigate the make believe map, the inside of my mystery box, I am thrilled to find myself in unknown territory.  This is unexpected for me.  I am the woman who woke her home-from-college son at the crack of noon to drive with me to Wellesley because I was terrified of getting lost somewhere in the suburbs.  I listen so hard to the SatNav lady it’s a wonder she doesn’t report me for stalking.  So, wandering around in the (admittedly) murky depths of my imagination, hands out, fingers spread feeling for something to guide me, is foreign indeed.  Still, I am finding my way and I am surprised every time I turn a new corner and see a landmark, a word or character that makes me want to keep exploring.  I am amazed that I have stories to tell, and that there are a few people out there who want to hear them.

Spending time inside my mystery box feels like the moment before a first kiss, the whisper of breath against my ear when a secret is shared.  It is the possibility of love, the adventure at the start of a road, the first notes of a song that will end up at the top of your play list.  The ‘maybe’ of a connection pulls me in and while I can control how that ‘maybe’ plays out because I’m the writer, there is always the pleasure when the kiss finds me, the butterflies when I reach the top of the furthest hill, the music of words.  I am literally turning the next page.

About a hundred years ago I read a short story by Zenna Henderson.  It was called The Anything Box and it was about a little girl who sits at her desk staring into her hands.  The joy that lights her face makes the other children tease her about her make-believe world.  Even the teacher tries to convince the girl to close her Anything Box and come back to the classroom.  Finally, that teacher looks over the little girl’s shoulder and into the box. What she sees transforms her.  We never know quite what it is, only that she, too, is alight with joy.  I guess that’s me, the girl with the Anything Box, gazing into my cupped hands, seeing my stories, being transformed.  Yup, I am just much better inside the box.