Essay

Packages

A Lifetime of Quality

In the hundred thousand packages these hands have shipped — taped, caressed, stuffed with tissue paper, adorned with art work to bring the recipient a smile or a chuckle, I always imagined them being opened up.

Like it was my gift to them, not something purchased on a corporate site like eBay or amazon or etsy, where it’s only a business transaction and they OWN the customer.

I imagined their faces when they opened the package that held two antique Windsor back chairs, stacked seat to seat with legs projecting like the dendrites of a snowflake. It shipped from New York to Texas, in a box I had to hand construct, and engineer custom packaging to protect those delicate legs from breaking on their journey. And I imagined those faces alight with wonder at what an inventive elf that must have been to design such a wondrous sleeve to house these precious chairs.

I could not help chuckling relentlessly as I packaged automobile engine parts in donated recycled packaging material from the local goddess shop, infused with patchouli and sandalwood and sage, imagining the oil and grease stained hands slicing open the tape and being presented with the most fragrant replacement auto parts ever.

Jewelry and jewel boxes, art work and kitchen ware, shirts, and shoes, ties and trinkets — I shipped everything and anything.

My grandmother’s Red Cross pin, after she died, traveled to Hong Kong, to a collector who had an all-things-Red-Cross collection, and thereby convinced me that I was doing the work of the universe, a real social service — helping misfit toys get off of misfit island and find their rightful home.

Another guy in Texas, wrote to me with tears of joy that slid out gracefully between the lines of the email, upon receiving what looked to me like a dusty-old-thing collection of first generation plastic space model set, “Send a Man to the Moon”. He recalled visiting the general store with his grandma and there first spied the same set they could not afford to buy, sitting on the high shelf over the bins of onions and potatoes for sale. I had found it in a barn in New York, in it’s original undamaged merchandising box, packaged it up, shipped it to Texas.

Not a broken piece.

He set it up.

Photographed it and emailed it to me.

Mission accomplished.

Thank you Grandma.

I thought for the longest time that my mission as the Chief Elf Officer was all those tiny boxes with sleigh bells I shipped for 15 years.

My simple, affordable, quality design.

Copied now and presenting as cheaper, inferior quality.

No one noticed or cared that I worked creating, packing, shipping, on 3 hours sleep a night for 40 days consecutively, hands so dry and raw, knuckles swollen and bleeding from repetitive tape gun injury, feeling like a worker in a turkey processing plant just before Thanksgiving, all so families could have their perfect Christmas with the little faces beaming in the knowledge that they got an authentic elf made box that said “I Believe”, and the best sleigh bell I could manufacture.

Each year I always thought of the T-shirt my Nana bought me once that said, “Everyone has to believe in something….I believe I’ll have another cookie”. I never really wore it.

And then I could have a day of rest on each December 25th, going to a movie and eating Asian food with my son. We’d plan the day for weeks in advance.

I imagined all that joy I sent into the world, experienced by thousands, for just that one day, once a year.

But I think the best package I ever shipped was a light bulb.

It was an antique light bulb, largest bulb I’d ever seen. I knew it was special. It had paper thin glass, with an original unbroken actual filament that was never used, never burned, never electrified, as pure as the day it was made.

It was a wonder to hold. It reminded me of my grandfather. “Poppy” we called him — the electrical engineer turned quality engineer for Western Electric, who, when I asked him what was inside those audio speakers that made them pipe such fine classical music sounds into all the rooms of his house, said to me quietly, “QUALITY”.

He met my grandmother in the plant that made the light bulbs that illuminated the insides of tanks in the war fields of Europe during WWII. The filaments were failing. Together they solved the problem and fell in love.

You can’t have failing light bulb filaments inside tanks when you are doing battle.

Someone in middle America had a need for my fine antique light bulb. They bought it. I shipped it.

The buyer who received it wrote to tell me it was the finest packing job he had ever seen. Glass and filament in tact and in perfect condition.

He said, “FedEx could have dropped that package out of the plane as it flew over my house at 30,000 feet, and it would have survived.”

Mission accomplished.