There’s a moment that I’ve dreamed of for a long time, ever since I decided that I wanted to be a “writer.” It goes something like this: The mail arrives, and in it a box. In the box is a copy of a book that I wrote and someone else published. In the dream, the box might look something like this.

In a really good dream, a “wildest fantasies” sort of dream, the label on the box might bear the name of Chronicle Books, the world’s finest publisher of beautiful printed matter.

Seeing that label on the box, my wife and collaborative partner Robbi (because this is a dream, I get to imagine a really hot wife and collaborative partner) pauses wistfully, beholding the box with a pleasant mixture of gratification and wonder.

As if to say, there is something amazing in this box. This box contains a dream.

I, of course, can empathize. In this dream, I am humbled and amazed. Holding the box, it’s all I can do to keep from crying like a kid. The box is so light in spite of all that it contains, years of work and hope, late nights and mountains of doubt.

The box is a problem. It is a box, but also it’s a symbol, an emblem of something that Robbi and I have held in our minds as the highest mountain. We’ve been dreaming of opening this box for so long. The dream of this box has been pushing us forward.

Once we open the box, we can never open it again.

And so it sits on the work table, unopened and unspoiled. Three days and counting.

We will open the box, and probably someday soon. After all, it’s just a box, and what’s inside is just a book.

But for now, we like how it looks on the table.