The Craft Box

The topic of children’s play has taken center stage in conversations with friends and neighbors. While pulling out various and random items for my yard sale, I came upon what I thought had been long gone, The Craft Box.

In stumbling upon what remained of The Craft Box I began to explain to a couple of friends that when the children very young I was in the habit of saving all types of containers, string, small boxes, paper clips, the punched out holes in the hole puncher, toilet paper rolls, Christmas wrapping paper scraps, stickers, empty 35 mm film cases, buttons and lots of the free stuff that showed up in the mail from companies/orgs looking for a subscription or a donation. All of these things plus much more went into what we in our family called The Craft Box.

My children loved to collect things. Bugs, coins, corks, tin foil, rocks you name it they probably at one time or another collected it. They also liked to imagine they were other people, animals, storybook characters, cartoons and super heroes.

The Craft Box was born one day when I heard the dreaded words “I’m bored” ever so squeaky slip out from between the lips of my oldest and then repeated like a parrot by my youngest. It was a rainy day, one of those cold and windy rainy November days. Not like a rainy July day where I could have the children put on their rain gear and we could go out for a walk and play in the rain. No this was definitely a find something to do inside the house type of rainy day.

Ah yes, and so out it came, twice. “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do”.

Now I must tell you that we did not have cable television, video games, or a computer and I am not the entertainment committee. So we went on a scavenger hunt in the house to find items they could use to make something. We deposited our treasure into an empty plastic storage tub which we later named The Craft Box. Make what you ask? Anything, I did not care as long as they were not arguing, fighting, or entertaining dangerous behaviors they could pretty much make whatever their little imaginations could dream up.

And so they did. Fabric remnants, rolls of ribbon, old hats and aprons donated by aunties, brooms, chairs and pillows were transformed into costumes and stage sets. As a matter of fact they played all day with each other off and on and collaborated in making all the fixings for what one would need inside a fort.

That was a great day and just the beginning of a book of great days to come. Because in the days, weeks, months and those few short years that were left while they were growing up and away from all of this, they built dozens of forts, museums, candy stores, igloos, swimming pools, rain forests and jungles in which they played alone, together and with friends and they all began with what was inside The Craft Box.

Their imaginations were never little and their dreams were always quite big.