Stories
Stories
Unspent Love
In a Modern Love column for the New York Times called “She Put Her Unspent Love in a Cardboard Box,” Genevieve Kingston writes that she shared a birthday with her mother, Kristina Mailliard (MBA 1981), who loved to arrange elaborate parties every February to celebrate: One year she crafted a school of paper origami fish to swim across the ceiling of the family dining room, Kingston writes.
“My mother, who put her business degree to use running a small nutritional beverage company with my father in Santa Rosa, Calif., while raising my older brother and me, was always prepared. By day she made marketing slogans, distribution strategies, five-year plans. By night: bubble baths, pillow forts, bedtime stories,” Kingston writes.
But when Kingston was 3, her mother was diagnosed with an advanced breast cancer and began transferring her energy to planning for the many milestones and birthdays that she would miss. She assembled two gift boxes, one for each of her two children. Inside Mailliard packed gifts and wrote letters for every birthday up to the age of 30, every graduation, driver’s license, college admission, engagements, weddings, and first babies. When the boxes were full, Kingston’s father carried them up to the children’s rooms. Kingston opened the first gift on her 12th birthday, 10 days after her mother’s death at the age of 48.
“When I was a child, opening the next package felt like a treasure hunt. As I grew older, it began to feel like something far more fundamental, like air or community, something like prayer,” Kingston writes. “Her messages met me like guideposts in a dark forest; if her words couldn’t point the way, at least they offered the comfort of knowing someone had been there before.”
Read the essay in its entirety here.
Post a Comment
Related Stories
-
- 01 Mar 2009
- Alumni Stories
My Real Career
Re: Liesl Moldow (MBA 1993); By: Liesl Pike Moldow -
- 02 Aug 2015
- Boston Globe
Father and Daughter Both Drew the World Close
-
- 08 Sep 2016
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
How We Make It Work
Re: Sheryl Sandberg (MBA 1995); Allie Nava (MBA 2002); Peter Escher (MBA 2009); Diane Escher (MBA 2009); Alan Saldich (MBA 1994); Eva Heyman (MBA 2002); Amy Ho (MBA 1999); Craig Leon (MBA 1991); Al Chiaradonna (MBA 1997); Phil Black (MBA 2002); Beth Hardin (MBA 1985); Anne Ristau (MBA 2005); Jennifer O'Brien (MBA 1996); Ginger Thomson (MBA 1985); Sue Glasspiegel (MBA 1981); Grace Ueng (MBA 1991); Shane Fitzpatrick (PMD 68); Alexander Cole (OPM 37); Roger Shamel (MBA 1974); Otso Fristrom (MBA 2008); Kathleen L. McGinn (Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration Co-Unit Head, Negotiation, Organizations & Markets) -
- 10 Nov 2017
- Times of Israel
Girl’s Pendant Found at Nazi Camp Site Reunites a Family
Re: Chaim Motzen (MBA 2005)
