Gooseberry has begun to really truly get into The Cardboard Box Game--she's always been a "yeah let's sit in this box" kind of kid and is familiar with "this box is now a [car, boat, spaceship]" but she's been fully embracing the Fun and Games, creating her own vs mirroring someone else's.
We put out our giant 12 quart pressure canner's box to get it to recycling since it's working well, and she has co-opted it for her own purposes before it could go out the door. It is a pirate ship, a cave, a egg, a Hiding Place, and a source of constant fun. What really strikes me, though, is how completely she fits in the box. It's a big box but not a huge box, and yet she comfortably curls up to close the lid of it and used a stool to get into it the first time 'cuz she wasn't sure she could make it in at first. I recall being older than her and fiting inside laundry baskets[1] not much larger. It goes without saying I cannot fit inside these objects now, even if I can fold myself up surprisingly well for a guy my age and height.
I remember how expansive boxes were, though. Baskets that were little caves, moving boxes that were encapsulating, appliance boxes that were rooms--nay, houses. As a preteen who wanted to be a teen I helped them build mazes of cardboard boxes at our church, scrambling through openings I'd now worry about getting my shoulders through without a thought. Everything has shrunk down as I've gotten bigger; what was the impossible height of a regular ceiling I can often brush my finger against without fully extending my arm.
I see my kid interacting with the world the way I used to be able to and it wows me. I remember how big things were, and how normal that was, and how things were out of reach or required a quick and clever climb and how the taller you got the eaiser and higher that climb would be. I remember feeling unstoppable when I could reach that branch my older siblings could, able to get places unassisted when I used to ask for a boost, and feeling like the world opened up just a bit more, its unimaginable expanses becoming a little bit more real. I remember, and I see just how small that expanse was. I grasp just how short that unreachable height is and how difficult it would be for me to fit in a space once deemed somewhere between cozy and delightfully roomy. I see it with wonder because, even as I see how big the world seemed then and how small it is now, it is still so, so, so Big. Full of no fewer--and honestly far more--wonders and interesting things and places to explore and Be in and see and touch and taste and smell and hear than kid me could begin to imagine.
It delights me to see it from both perspectives, constantly looking slightly down and constantly peering slightly upwards. To see it from two angles at once, and savor the differences in perspective that allows. The world is huge, and to a kid it's incomprehensibly vast. A place of wonder and delight, both small and smaller. And as a giant, it's no less delightful
often tied up and bundled into a blanket; we liked to play Escape Artist as kids, taking turns tying each other up and to objects and inside various containers and timing our escapes. One of many incredible games I cannot fully fathom my mother letting us do and yet we did[2] ↩︎
another was one where we'd pull sleeping bags over our heads and down to our toes, turn off the lights, and shuffle/hop run into each other as chaotically as we could. This inevitably ended in tears all around and yet we continued to do it quite frequently ↩︎