The Box

During my pregnancy and for the first few years of my daughter's life my mum went through a phase of reading unusual magazines. A stall in a local market sold last month's remaindered magazines for a £1 for three and that was a bargain my mum just couldn't resist. I don't remember her buying Tank Monthly or Golf in Gibraltar but I think she sampled everything else. Mostly, it was glossy middle class aspirational reading material with photographs that could have won prizes. She didn't just buy the magazines, though, she read them. In our family we read everything; we can all tell you the full address of Weetabix, which we learnt over breakfast. I'm sure she tried every interior decorating tip known to man.

In Antique Collector Monthly there was a suggestion that excited my mum, whose first grandchild was going to be the most loved girl on earth. It suggested making a time capsule. The idea was to fill a box with things that could be antiques in the future but that were from the first year of the child's life. This box was to be left untouched and only opened on  their 21st birthday. There was a whiff of a fairy tale and Greek myth about this idea that appealed to me, so for the last 20 years a box has been sitting in our loft waiting for its special moment. 

Finally!

Twenty years is a long time to wait. My daughter has been looking forward to this day for her whole life. Not her 21st birthday but, " the day I get to open my box." 

The champagne is on ice, the birthday cake sits, in anticipation on the kitchen table, the grandparents and favourite Auntie are on their way round, all for a vey dusty box.

 

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I'm not sure how successful we have been at picking antiques of the future. The Jurrasic park toys and Thunderbird glasses are cool, the Take That cushion looks rather odd; none of us thought they'd still be on Top of the Pops doing 'Dad dancing', and the flavoured condoms made us all wonder what we were thinking but they were a really big deal at the time. ("I can't see the point of those, it would be like chewing a sweet with the wrapper on," said a friend's mum at the time). My daughter is really looking forward to studying the newspapers, Radio Times,travel brochures and theatre guides from the day she was born and the lottery ticket (from the first year of the lottery), Eurostar ticket, which started operating when she was ten months old, and the first day cover of stamps are interesting historical documents. Unfortunately, the number one 12 inch single from the date of her birth, DReam things can only get better has warped. The less said about the inflatable Mr Blobby the better.

We put things in the box that we always knew would be worthless because they had been well loved. Tilly, Tom and Tiny, her first baby grow and cardigan, a very scuffed pair of first shoes made us all ahh and coo.

At some point, about 6 years after the box went in the loft I must have had a clear out, adding things from school and nursery that it didn't seem right to throw away. These were,however, the most popular items in there. The folder from Nursery contained some wonderful gems, which along with her big sister T-shirt were a testament to just how much she loved her baby brother, even if he did have "ugly eyes."

When Pandora opened her box she unleashed all the evils of the world. Luckily, this box just contained love and lots of it.