From Ehan’s box today.
I opened it the way one opens a drawer of old letters, not looking for anything in particular, but expecting to feel something.
Inside, a small white card with “Nasna” written in thick, uneven black strokes. A red glitter heart. A larger green one. A tiny brown dinosaur walking toward a purple egg as if it knows something we don’t. Underneath, scraps of paper. “Chocolate” written in bold innocence. A small container of glow gel. Random memos. Torn edges. Nothing arranged. Everything important.
Children don’t curate. They keep.
That box is not storage. It is evidence. Of what caught his attention. Of what he thought was worth saving. Of what love looks like when it has no language yet.
The way he wrote Nasna was not perfectly centered, not carefully measured, but certain. Certain enough to glue a heart next to it. Certain enough to decorate it with a dinosaur, because in his world love and dinosaurs belong on the same line. There is no hierarchy in a child’s mind. A mother. A heart. A prehistoric creature. Chocolate. Glow gel. All equally sacred.
I sometimes think we lose this democracy of importance as we grow up.
We begin to rank things. Salary above sunsets. Inbox above intimacy. Deadlines above drawings. We stop putting glitter hearts next to names. We stop saving scraps. We throw away what cannot be justified.
But in that box, nothing needed justification.
I noticed something else. The box itself. It was once a chocolate box. Something meant to be consumed and discarded. Now it holds permanence. It has been opened and closed many times. This is not a one time archive. It is a living museum. He goes back to it. Re enters old fascinations. Revisits yesterday’s treasures as if they still breathe.
When was the last time I revisited my own treasures like that. Not achievements. Not certificates. But small proofs of affection. Handwritten names. Uneven letters. Silly combinations that made sense only in that moment.
There is a kind of theology inside a child’s box. It says nothing beautiful is too small to keep. Nothing loved is too trivial to preserve.
Maybe that is the real inheritance children give their parents. Not toys scattered across the floor. Not noise in the evenings. But a reminder. A reminder that meaning is handmade. That value is assigned by the heart, not the market. That memory does not ask for perfection. It only asks to be noticed.
Today, I closed the box gently. Not because I was done exploring, but because I understood something.
He is building memory in fragments.
One day the handwriting will straighten. The dinosaurs will disappear. The glitter hearts will look embarrassing. But this box will remain as proof that there was once a boy who believed his mother’s name deserved decoration. That chocolate deserved bold letters. That love could be glued together with craft paper.
And maybe my task is simple.
To make sure he never fully loses that instinct.
To quietly recover some of it for myself.
Because as I closed that old chocolate box today, I realized something.
This is what I have been trying to build here all along.
Not of achievements. Not of polished thoughts. But of fragments. Of feelings caught before they disappear. Of names written in uneven ink. Of moments that would otherwise be thrown away by the adult world.
If his box holds glitter hearts and dinosaurs, this blog holds the grown up equivalents. Questions. Reflections. Confessions. Small awakenings.
He curates with glue and craft paper.
I curate with words.
And maybe this space becomes a museum too. For all of us.
A place where nothing beautiful is too small to keep.
By the way, did you know that I’m actively writing in malayalam also these days. Find them here.