Six Christmases away, and one box every single year
Marites has worked night shifts in a Riyadh ICU since 2020. She has never made it home for December. Her box always has.
Every September, Marites clears one corner of the room she shares with two other nurses. That corner becomes the box corner. For the next three weeks, anything that goes in there is for home.
"It starts with the easy things," she says. "Coffee for Papa. Lotion for Mama. Then the kids send their lists on Messenger and it gets serious."
“I cannot hug them on Christmas morning. But I can make sure there is something from me under the tree when they wake up.”
The list that never ends
Her youngest wants rubber shoes, the specific ones with the lights. Her eldest wants a hoodie "like the ones in Korea". Her mother wants nothing, which means she wants the good chocolate and a new daster.
By the second week of October, the corner is a Jumbo box, taped twice and signed with a marker: PARA SA PAMILYA DELA CRUZ, BATANGAS.
Watching it sail
Marites checks the tracker on her breaks. Her mother checks it every morning with coffee. When the status changed to "Arrived in Manila" last year, her phone lit up with twelve messages from the family group chat in under a minute.
This year the box leaves Riyadh on October 8th. She has already started the corner.
