Pandora had a box, and so do I

Way back in the middle of November, five days before I left America, I packed a whole load of things into a cardboard box.  My desktop computer -- the main machine for work, writing and communication -- was wrapped in extra clothing, along with a monitor and keyboard and all those other things you don't realise you need until you don't have them.  I grabbed so many things that the box weighed almost 80 pounds, so I reinforced it with a second box.

This magnificent brown object was placed in the back of the car and Sarah and I set forth to a Polish parcel service which has an office in Philadelphia.  The online price quote was too good to be true, and the woman in the office quoted me $103 dollars, just as the web site had predicted.

"Where will it go?" I asked; an odd question to ask an employee of a parcel service, and she felt obliged to inform me that Poland is not a third world country.  To rewind a moment, I had investigated shipping freight by air, which is very expensive.  I investigated shipping by sea, where the shipping companies will abandon your belongings at a sea port or an airport -- your choice.  Now I was sending this Cardboard American Life to, well, Poland.  I thought it worth asking where it would end up.

"We will send to the address on the box," she said.  That address was Frank's house, so I gave her $103 dollars and genuinely believed I would never see me bits and bobs again.

Yesterday the doorbell rang and a young thin Eastern European man with a bald head and a white van told me I had a parcel from Poland.  My box.  The box I last saw when Sarah and I drove into Philadelphia and dropped it off.

I don't care about the contents.  Not really.  All I cared about back in November was Tyson and getting him safely to Milan airport, but now I am filled with a sad joy at seeing the cardboard box that I bought at U-Haul out near Charlie and Cecily's house.  I remember dragging this heavy brown object as being one of the last things that Sarah and I did together.  We went to McDonalds on the way back.  We had a day out.  The box has made me sad all over again.  I miss her.  The contents do not make me sad.  The object does.