Years ago I exchanged letters with a boy who had played baseball with my brother (a favorite pastime of my youth was falling in love with my brother’s teammates). This boy had moved to Tennessee with his family and we began exchanging long notes. Long meandering descriptions of our days, sealed into envelopes and sent across one state border to the other’s mailbox.
One particular description he shared with me has stuck with me since I was 15 years old.
It was about a man, carrying a box. The box was heavy, so he shifted the box, a slightly unwieldy box, from hip to hip, arms, shoulders. Every way a box could be carried, this man carried the box. In that way, he carried the box a long way.
This box metaphor has stayed in the recesses of my brain since I read it, representing for me all manner of unwieldy things. All manner of heavy burdens, difficult to carry. We shift its weight in our hands. Our hip aches so we move the box to our shoulders. For a while, we carry the box on our heads.
Pandemic, an unwieldy box, a heavy burden. Illness. Parenthood. Heavy relationships. Grief. Heavy boxes, unwieldy burdens. Shift, carry, ache.
In this way we might carry a burden a long way.