Mi hijo de ocho años se saltó el almuerzo durante seis semanas para comprar un vestido rojo para la niña al otro lado de la calle. A la mañana siguiente, nuestro césped estaba cubierto con cincuenta loncheras, y pegado al más grande, una cosa de metal golpeado sentado solo en medio de la hierba, era una nota que decía ABIERTO ESTE PRIMERO.

At 6:30 the next morning my son came through my bedroom door at a dead run.

“MOM. You have to see this.”

Our front lawn was covered in lunchboxes.

Fifty of them, easily. Dinosaurs, footballs, superheroes, a pink unicorn, two identical Star-patterned ones, a tin one shaped like a school bus. They went from the porch steps almost to the sidewalk in loose rows, and there was dew on all of them, which meant they had been out there for hours.

Milo stood in the doorway in his pajamas with his mouth open.

“Are they all for me?”

I genuinely did not know.

Then he saw the one in the middle.

It was sitting alone with a gap around it, like the others had been placed to leave it room. A big old metal lunchbox, the workman’s kind, dented all down one side, the paint mostly gone to bare steel.