Ode to the White Shoe Box

 I walked down the dirt road. The open fields sprawled around me, dotted with live oaks, hay bales, and cattle. The Florida winter was mild.

At the end of the road was a plot littered with tires, chunks of fencing, scrap metal, and broken Christmas lights. Pieces of plastic confettied the grass. A plywood shed leaned like a feeble old woman. Pieces of the treehouse where we once played hung in the oldest live oak. The younger oaks had grown since I was a kid.

In the middle of the junk was a dirt patch that marked where the single wide I grew up in once stood; a white trailer that looked like a shoe box on the edge of the family farm.

Even though we’ve lived in North Carolina for nearly a decade, all of my dreams still take place in that childhood home.

My parents moved into the trailer when they first got married. It was where they brought my sister and I home from the hospital. It was where they’d lived for 17 years. 

It was home. And it was gone.

In its place was this scrapyard. 

So I closed my eyes and imagined it as it once was, as to not let the current scene infringe on my memories. 

The base of the home was covered with grey lattice. We’d sometimes hear the 2 stray cats that took shelter under the trailer sounding like they were trying to kill each other. Evidence of what they were actually doing came a few weeks later when random kittens would crawl out of the lattice to surprise my sister and I.

Holly bushes lined the porch. In December, my sister and I would decorate them with half-hazardly strewn gobs of tinsel and lights. While our friends had houses dotted with evenly aligned lights, blown up snowmen and santas, dazzling stars and classy wreaths, our trailer looked as though we’d sprayed it with a can of silly string. But we thought it was grand.

One thing that our friends also had were Christmas cards that looked like they came from Hallmark; the family in coordinated outfits in front of a picturesque background, dolled up and smiling sweetly like they liked each other. They’d have them developed at Walmart with a cutesy holiday message and font.

My family had never been into that.  “Look at them bein’ cute,'' we'd say as we hung up our friend’s cards. Our holiday reciprocation was usually home squeezed orange juice from our citrus trees. 

But there is a picture of my sister and I that, while it wouldn’t make Hallmark, could have a shot at Awkward Family Photos. We’re standing in front of the messily decorated trailer. We probably could've brushed our blonde heads, but who’s nitpicking here? 

Chloe is in nothing but her underwear, as she usually was around age 5, and she’s wearing a CSX trucker hat that our train-working grandpa got us. Beside her, I’m clad in camouflage sweatpants and a tie-dye shirt, which is something I would have coordinated myself around age 8. I’m proudly holding a styrofoam plate of cookies, and my stately blue Crocs round out the picture. 

One year, after getting all of our friends’ fancy cards, my Mom thought it would be funny to send this picture out as a Christmas greeting. 

I didn’t see the humor at the time. It was just us doing our thing. But it is a classic picture that still hangs on some folk’s refrigerators today, and I will forever love my mom for it.

The inside of the trailer was a hoot. Walls of celery green, Christmas lights strung year-round, tomato-red furniture and beanbag chairs, a neon-green alien statue that my Dad found in the dump, two pugs, board games, books, a karaoke machine, all the evidences of a homeschooling family, a whole lot of character, a whole lot of of love...

Chloe and I shared the room at the end of the place. I got the top bunk. The square room was crowded with legos and stuffed animals, but the yellow walls were happy. I’d open the window and let my pony stick his head in (the pony that our Grandpa brought home when I was 5, without my parent’s permission, but so it goes). 

I still remember the peace of falling asleep to the sound of the freight train chugging and whistling across the field, dreaming about where it was going.

“I’m gonna be an arter,” I’d tell my parents when they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I meant to say “artist,” but they knew what I meant. With this came an endless stream of doodles and paintings of horses, mountains, and mermaids, and Mama hung them all up in the kitchen like they were Picasso’s.

Chloe was all about pirates. Whether it was Captain Hook or the Pirates of the Caribbean, the Barbies that well-intentioned family members mistakenly bought her always ended up walking the plank of her toy pirate ships.

With this, Mom had the bright idea of redecorating the bathroom on our end of the trailer and making it “pirate themed.” Pirate gold and seashells decorated the mirror and the little dimly-lit chandelier, a model of the Black Pearl graced the top of the medicine cabinet, and sea creatures were littered about. It was every little girl’s dream.

If the inside of the shoe box wasn’t cool enough, we had the most wondrous yard.

Of course, there was the entirety of the family farm, with fields to run in, hay bales to jump on, and cows wandering around. There was the nursery my grandparents owned with potted shrubs clustered together that doubled as imaginary jungles, the pile of mulch that we’d climb like it was Everest, the green house where’d we’d go to find snail friends, grapefruit trees perfect for climbing.

But our yard was magic for us and our friends, a place for imagination and dirty bare feet.

My Dad and uncles took plastic pallets and wood scraps and built a 3-story treehouse in the ancient-looking oak in the corner of the yard. It was Swiss-Family-grade; roofless, so the spanish moss could tickle our heads, and at the very top was a zipline that ran across the lawn that was just scary enough to be fun. 

We decorated the place with rocks, shells, broken glass, mason jars, and paint. It’s where I first learned to play fiddle, because the first year of fiddling sounded like a dying cat and I wasn’t allowed to play in the trailer. We’d climb up to look across the sprawling fields and daydream. We were princesses and it was our castle.

There was a tire swing that swung so rapidly it made some people motion-sick, a trampoline where we’d play “dead-man,” where I probably laid down to read books more than I actually jumped. 

There was a large patch of thickets and wildflowers that we referred to as the “butterfly garden,” and a giant metal flower that my uncle welded out of old oil drums.

There were places to shoot our pink BB guns, places for Leela the lab to dig holes, places to hide for the most epic games of hide-and-seek, places to be loud and rambunctious or quiet and thoughtful.

While our yard was as magical as it was, we took advantage of what space that little shoe box had to offer. On Friday nights we’d invite over everyone we knew, young and old, family and friends. We’d play games, eat my Mom’s cooking, and fill the place with laughter. Some nights it was so crowded you could barely walk around. 

Those were my favorite nights. I think they still are.

“Why can’t I have my own room like all my friends do?” I’d asked my parents a few times, a question I now regret because we were (and are) so blessed.

Sure, my Dad worked a good job. We probably could have swung at least a double-wide (that was my dream, a double-wide), or maybe an actual house. 

But why? For more space to put more crap to gather more dust? For a nicer house to take composed family pictures in front of? So we could invite people over without feeling like sardines in the kitchen? So my Mom would have to work full-time instead of homeschool Chloe and I and help us become weird individuals we are, or so we’d have a bigger bill to pay and less funds to spend on trips to Disney, or to see the country, or to help a neighbor? 

There’s nothing wrong with having a nice house.

But one thing I took from my parents is that maybe it’s not the wisest to buy into a lifestyle just because you can technically afford it, or because it’s what the people around you are doing, or because it would look nicer in a Christmas card. 

Maybe there's something better.

And I’ve had my own room for a while now. 

But, oh, how I’ll always love and miss that little white shoe box in the middle of the field.