The Tomorrow Trunk

On the day I was born, my momma gave me a trunk.

She called it the tomorrow trunk.  

She gave my two sisters the tomorrow trunk when they were born,

but their trunks are not like mine.

No one has a tomorrow trunk like me.

The tomorrow trunk is always different.

I take the tomorrow trunk with me wherever I go.

I never leave it behind or forget about it.

The tomorrow trunk is never full.

There is always room for something new.

The tomorrow trunk doesn’t have any toys in it,

but it does have surprise birthday parties

and midnight visits from Santa Claus.

There is no money in the trunk,

but there are trips to the ice cream shop,

(thanks to the Tooth Fairy)

and a summer’s worth of dreams

at a lemonade stand.

It doesn’t have a bike in it, but it has a bunch of bumps and bruises,

two skinned knees, and one bad wreck (that was my sister’s fault).

It doesn’t have a baseball or a bat, but it has that one bad call,

and my first over-the-fence homerun,

and my sister’s purple shiner (that was my fault).

The tomorrow trunk doesn’t have any books either, but it has lots of stories.

Scary tales and fairytales, bedtime stories and secrets.

It has stories stacked up high like the tower of dirty dishes

after Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s house –

that magically disappear before breakfast the next morning.

The tomorrow trunk is never full, but it is stuffed

with March winds for flying kites,

the smell of skunk spray so bad that it burns your eyes,

the buzz of a chimney full of bees,

the light of a hundred fireflies in a jar,

and the best scream ever!

(Thanks to one big bullfrog in my sister’s bed.)

The tomorrow trunk never loses anything.

It remembers the names of eighteen dogs, ten cats,

and two turtles that will always be my best friends.

It holds the best days spent in a seven story tree house,

a sunflower house in Grandma's garden,

and a real house that disappeared in a day.

My momma says that the tomorrow trunk is what we make it.

She says that what we do – not what we have – is what we carry with us.

We just take today, tuck the best of it away, and keep it for tomorrow.

Then, when we have to say good night to today,

the tomorrow trunk is always there…

and best of all, it’s always mine.

Copyright 1999/Revised 2010, Dianne B. McLaurin.