The Great Wall of Boxes

5/27/18

 

Forged from the sticky rice and mud of our lives, it took shape through

The blood and sweat, love and passion of our and our village’s endeavors.

The Great Wall of Boxes came to life as the monumental effort to fulfill a dream,

To move our family from the only home our children knew to Beijing,

To break past the cultural barriers and build a new life, came to fruition last year.

 

The Great Wall of Boxes left our home, box by box, over weeks and weeks

From Central Virginia to the garage and home of a generous uncle and aunt,

Stacked higher and higher, packed firmly and weighed to precision,

Positioned at the ready for the moment to be loaded into loved ones minivans,

Hauled to IAD, labeled, checked, paid for, and loaded onto the plane.

 

From day to night to day again, the Wall flew, half-way across the world

From the land of Americana, raging tensions, and English on every corner

Over the swirling gyres of plastic from every corner of the earth,

A true melting pot of human collaboration, through auspicious clouds,

To the land of the Middle Kingdom, a Starbucks on many a corner.

 

The haze of the sky high Beijing AQI mixed with that of our early daze,

Days turned to weeks, travel-worn boys traded summer comfort for uniforms

And crossed the threshold from homeschooling to Chinese private school

Leaving behind a world familiar and time-tested for one unknown

And test-oriented, running like clockwork, with little room to tailor.

 

The Great Wall of Boxes nestled pregnant in a corner of a kind cousin’s apartment

Brimming with possibilities of what may become our life in a new land,

Expectant for the day when an apartment would be found to call home,

Holding the memories and meaning that material things hint at and hope for,

Waiting to again be loved, used, and serviced in the familiar hands of its family.

 

Thirty apartment viewings later, after sighting molds green, orange, and black,

The Great Wall of Boxes were loaded and rolled in metal carts, “little cars,”

From one building to another across the dusty street lined with rental bicycles.

Up eleven flights of elevator ease into the pad that welcomed us as its first inhabitants

And stacked neat and high bolstering the side of the storage room wall to wait.

 

A clothes washer and dryer delivered, refrigerator arrived, curtains ordered,

A half-dozen trips to IKEA squeezed in to transform the boxes of rooms

Into sanctuaries to sleep, eat, and laugh in. Lighting ordered and installed,

And once bleary eyes could see again, The Great Wall of Boxes was dismantled.

Each brick of the wall told its weathered story, contents of some slashed and destroyed.

 

Yet, Wild Wall of opened boxes told more stories to our excited weary souls of

The promise of what had been and could be a stable life again, familiar and yet new.

Out poured LEGOs reunited with delighted hands, pictures of loved ones lost,

Pillows that smelled like home, stuffed animals that begged to be cuddled,

And the awareness that this could really become home, must become home.

 

The Great Wall of Boxes changed shape, from a 3D world of intense, essential service

To a 2D world of potential future mission, a suggestion that times would change,

A lease might end over a landlord demanding double what was reasonable one year, or

At least an eventual return to “home,” as our life in China was inevitably temporary.

The flattened boxes tightly tucked in a corner, mourning irrecoverable Box 8, yet at the ready.

 

The weeks multiplied into months, the day of discovering that mountains lay to our north

Visible from our apartment on heavenly clear air days multiplied like beacons of hope

On an unknown coastline. The Great Wall beckoned and we answered its ancient call.

Our feet tread the hardened paths of many before and many to come as we contemplated

The transcendent themes of our times and existence, basking in awe and gratitude.

 

The contents of our Great Wall of Boxes, escaped from their claustrophobic months,

Freely lived, flowing in and our of our hands and hearts, as our lives took shape in Beijing.

Transformed over time, no longer was there a wall, a barrier between us and them,

Boys jokes mingled Chinese with English, stomachs craved red bean donuts – a quintessential East meets West treat –

And hearts grieved not only for the past, but for the future goodbyes.

 

As the school year slowly rounded to a close and the next life turn came into sight,

The call to move our home back again was too clear to ignore and answer it we did.

One by one, the Great Wall of Boxes were woken and breathed with new life,

Fresh shimmering tape hugging its flaps and seams, new (old) addresses enclosed,

Rebuilt from the sticky rice and mud of our lives in China, familiar and yet new.

 

Stacked high again, the Great Wall of China is a bookend to our year in Beijing, spent

Navigating roads without names, learning our Chinese names and nicknames,

Finding paths of sanity and connection, ways to turn hardship and grief into happiness and bliss,

Seeking the beauty hidden in the hearts and havens of heavenly landscapes and silken roads

A year that forever changed the garden of our hearts, with its tear-watered furrows dug deep.

 

And now we stand ready, alongside our Great Wall of China, holding on to time

Pushing back the winds of change for just a moment longer as we thank God for this gift,

A gem in our lives that we will not forget, that will eternally knit our hearts closer

To our brothers and sisters we met this year, from China and all corners of the earth,

Our hearts swirling with the love of one family, united as an auspicious cloud embracing earth.