It felt like someone cracked a window in a room I’d kept sealed for a decade.
All those years I’d measured my motherhood in receipts—tallying what I couldn’t provide, zooming in on other people’s perfect holiday photos, counting how far behind we were.
Meanwhile, my son had been keeping score in square footage of cardboard and hours spent on the floor.
A sob tore out of me. Leo pushed the box aside and wrapped me in an awkward teenager hug.
“I’m sorry,” I choked. “I’m sorry I ever made you feel like you didn’t have enough.”
He pulled back. “You didn’t,” he said firmly. “The world did. Ads did. Those videos with kids unboxing, like, thirty things did. You just tried to survive it.” He squeezed my shoulder. “And you built a pretty epic spacecraft while you were at it.”
I laughed through my tears.
—
Later, after he went back to studying, I opened the Nebula-9.
The pieces clattered into my lap—wings, tiny plastic astronauts, a soft-edged instruction booklet. It all felt flimsier than I’d imagined. Smaller. The promise had always been bigger than the toy.
I didn’t bother assembling it.
Instead, I slid the pieces back into the box, carried it to the fridge, and set it beside a faded photo of Leo inside the refrigerator box, duct-tape seams glowing under a cheap flashlight.
Two spaceships. One mass-produced, one made from garbage and worry.
Same destination.
—
If you’re reading this, panicking about the holidays and the math you can’t make work, I wish I could hand you that box. Not the Nebula-9—the other one. The one that smells like cardboard and bad coffee and your own exhausted breath.
I wish you could hear your kid say, with far more wisdom than any algorithm, “It’s missing a co-pilot.”
Here’s what I know now, what my father tried to teach me with a crooked dollhouse and what my son taught me with a crayon coupon to Mars:
We don’t buy magic in this family. We build it.
The timelines will keep showing you overflowing trees and mountains of wrapping paper. The world will keep insisting that love looks like overnight shipping and zero-interest financing.
But somewhere in your home is a floor you can sit on, a blanket you can turn into a cape, a cardboard box waiting to become a starship.
Your child is not asking you to purchase the perfect present.
They’re asking you to climb inside the box, bump your knees against theirs, spill a little mac & cheese, and fly.
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This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment and inspirational purposes. While it may draw on real-world themes, all characters, names, and events are imagined. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidenta
