The Box of Delights

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

For Xmas, the Princess sent me this box of chocolates. And at the time Caro took this picture of it which I shall re-use. Darn the rules of blip.

I have now eaten all the chocolate houses, but it is such a pretty little box and the lights that twinkle in the sky when you open it are so magical that I couldn't just biff it once I'd stuffed my face.

So I removed the chocolate tray part and that left me with an empty box. 

I then wrote a story for Hani and Zay all about Ellie the Floaty Witch who (it turns out) comes from "Snowland". And when she starts to yearn for home, her magical box of Snowland memories that she keeps hidden comes to life. 

She can hear bagpipe music coming from it when it springs to life, and this means when she takes it out and opens the box...

WHOOOOOOOOOOSH! 

She is transported all the way to Snowland where it is snowy and dark all the time. And she stays there until her "yearn" has been satisfied when she is...

WHOOOOOOOOOOSH!

...transported back again. 

It was a cute story, if I do say so myself. Ellie takes Lemon the lemonbear with her. Lemon is always grumpy about everything, so spends all her time complaining it is too cold. But then she meets the Snowland people* who feed her warm soup and toast and get her up to dance. By the end, Lemon doesn't want to go back. 

So I asked Caro to do her creative magic on the empty box. She filled it with sparkly cotton-wool balls and other cute little bits. I gave it to Fazzy, along with the story and made the story as interactive as possible. There are hyperlinks to bagpipe music for when the box comes alive and fiddle music for when everyone is dancing. 

Aaaaaand... at the point in the story when Ellie is trying to decide if she opens the box or not, I asked Fazzy to hand OUR box to her children so they could decide whether to open THEIR box too.

(Like the outcome was ever in doubt).

Here's what Fazzy said about the moment:

There was a moment of stunned silence, little faces lit up and then sheer excitement! The rest of my reading was interrupted by "can I see again?" "I didn't get another turn" "can I just look at the box again quickly pleeeeeeaaassseee?"

This makes me so very happy. It makes me feel all glowy, like the tiny stars. And it turns out that Zay LOVED the bagpipes! He wanted to hear that music over and over! 

Poor Fazzy. The whole thing is written in phonetic Scottish accents too. She just sighed when I tried to coach her into saying words like "isnae" and "cannae". 

As for me, the story was "therapy" as Fazzy so perceptively noticed. I have my own yearn to satisfy you see. My own metaphorical box to open that transports me back home every now and again. 

And honestly, writing the story was one way of doing just that.

My yearn is now satisifed, lemonbear. Back to Aotearoa we go. 

S.

* Poopong Jock McPlop and Saranna McPlop and their family.