Coop's Box

Yesterday was a big day in the Anderson household for two reasons. The first being our double stroller came and Sarah is in love with it. More importantly than the stroller was the box that the bohemith kiddy caddy came in. Cooper had his first experience with a box fort.

Now when it comes to building forts I am kind of like Mike Holmes meets a burrowing woodland creature. Need a fort, lets dig a hole, no room to dig? Let's find some scrap wood. No scrap wood? How about those old palm leaves. It is raining outside? Pillows, blankets, and a few staples will suffice. Whatever the material may have been, a fort could be made from them and essentially if I was in a Fort building contest with MacGyver, a gopher, and Wilhuff Tarkin I would win because I don't have a mullet, I am not a rodent, and I wouldn't leave a 2 meter wide exhaust port open for any rebel fighter to come and and blow up my entire Deathstar. In short, forts are my thing.

When I was growing up I remember a time when we were 7 or 8 and for some reason we had 4 or 5 massive boxes just sitting by our garbage can outside. We quickly turned them into our headquarters, command center, barracks, and mess hall all in one. We painted the outside of them, we painted the inside of them, we made tunnels from one box to another box by crawling through a box. I am pretty sure that these structures could have withstood a nuclear holocaust if it came down to that, or at least a strong gust of wind. Eventually the sprinklers came on a our impenetrable fortress collapsed faster than the 2010 Dodgers.

But never mind how awesome we were/are/is the thing that blows me away about Coop's box is that there are no buttons, there is no speaker, no lights, no talking tools, or creepy clowns. The box was simply that, a box. But to Coop it was a new world not yet explored, a fortress of solitude, a darkened lair, a place for his imagination to run as far as it could possibly run.

I wish that as adults we could recapture that sense of awe. The amazingness of a box to a 17 month old is paralleled to how awe-inspired I am when I see snow sitting quietly on top of Half Dome, or how excited I am to see the bright green outfield at AT&T park. The times I am blown away by what God has done in my life and for my life is what my oldest son finds in a simple box, and thats awesome.

What about you? What things make you stop and remember the amazing intricacies around you? What about when you were a kid, what things made you stop and stare in wonderment?