She built a world from tissue boxes.

My daughter always has been a bit of a collector, so exploring the recesses of storage bins, closets, and drawers usually comes with an element of surprise. You never know if you will turn up a tin full of tiny brown acorns, a zippered pouch full of colorful plastic butterflies, long forgotten, or a handful of long dried-out markers tumbled in with an assortment of empty mechanical pencils.

Tidying was usually an entertaining enterprise, should you be in the right mindset.

I was cleaning the play room earlier this week, and tucked into the space between my daughter’s craft desk and the wall was a pile of square tissue boxes, each lying on its side. I carefully picked up a box, and a few scraps of paper tumbled out.

As it turns out, my daughter used the boxes to build tiny rooms for some equally tiny toy Littlest Pet Shop pets. Small bits of paper, carefully shaped into tables and chairs, signs, flowers, and other bits and bobs that the tiny critters required. She’d crafted quite a little world out of objects found in the craft drawers at her desk.

There were fiddly little parts where the paper had been meticulously folded and taped just so inside the box. Such care was taken to build each little room, and the attention to detail was surprising.

She is a girl who sees the potential in unwanted or discarded or overlooked objects, building beauty out of what seems like nothing – at least to us.

What a gift to see the inherent potential in things and to build upon it.

I hope she holds on to that sense of wonder and imagination forever.

Peace does not come from destroying evil, but from building goodness.

– Melita Tessy, Battle of Spheres: Crust, Mantle and Core