Gift Giving [Adventure]

 

[Adventure 187]   

We don't give normal gifts to people. 

But this particular tradition originated with my high school graduation. At my graduation party, I received a mailbox full of random items as a gift from the Renaulds. It had an air freshener, a set of tiny screwdrivers, an egg slicer, and so many other things. If memory serves, there wasn't an item in it that I didn't find useful at one time or another. 

I have given mailboxes as graduation gifts ever since. 

The most recent mailbox was given to my middle child's significant other for her high school graduation. Austen painted the front of it, put stickers on it, and painted a few other parts of it. We filled it with Mike & Ikes, unicorn fruit snacks, a rainbow rubber scraper and rainbow cookie cutter, a mug, pride socks, a cute travel zipper pouch for meds, sour cream and onion Pringles, paint brushes, a giant eraser, and perhaps a few more things ... I don't recall. We had a ton of fun putting it together, and I think Sophia enjoyed receiving it.

My mailbox finally died not too long ago - over twenty-five years after I received it as a gift. It went to college with me, then to my apartment in PA, and everywhere I've lived since. And it inspired the gifting of other mailboxes full of useful things and fun things and just because things. And it also gives the gift of the story behind it, and the stories that will come into being because of it.