How many boats has your bathing suit been on?

So you finally save up for a cruise. You pack your favorite summer outfits, your go-to swimsuit and a couple new resort and swimwear purchases. You can’t wait to get on the ship, imagining sun, sand, exotic scenery and cuisine. By the time you get to your cabin, your work-a-day life becomes the furthest thing from your mind. Yet there is one thought that probably never occurred to you. This is definitely not the first voyage for the contents of your suitcase. Your stuff has been on a number of boats before you ever brought them on this one.

Overseas manufacturing is no secret and has been around for some time. “Made in Japan” was an idiom in 1950s-1970s of poor or low quality, especially if cheaply manufactured in East Asia, even making it into popular music that spanned a range of artists from Buck Owns and Deep Purple. Fast forward to the 21st century and proliferate manufacture of American goods in East Asia is a forgone conclusion. Amazon, Walmart, Target, anywhere we shop, anywhere we look, most of the things we buy everyday come in a box that got here on a boat.

China — by far the biggest source of textiles in America — accounted for 37 cents of every dollar’s worth of clothes imported to the United States. In the year ending February 2013, Bangladesh accounted for 5.8 percent of all U.S. clothing imports. In the following year (ending February 2014, 10 months after the factory collapse), Bangladeshi products ticked up to 6.2 percent of clothing imports.

Since the advent of the global economy, the U.S. has championed the anthem “Made in America”, this time spanning music artists from Jay-Z and Kanye to Toby Keith. We mourn the loss of U.S. manufacturing and rail against trade tariffs. The reality is, neither issue has much to do with outsourcing manufacturing to East Asia. The real culprit is corporate and consumer greed.

In 1960, an average American household spent over 10 percent of its income on clothing and shoes - equivalent to roughly $4,000 today. The average person bought fewer than 25 garments each year. And about 95 percent of those clothes were made in the United States.

Today, the average American household spends less than 3.5 percent of its budget on clothing and shoes - under $1,800. Yet, we buy more clothing than ever before: nearly 20 billion garments a year, close to 70 pieces of clothing per person, or more than one clothing purchase per week.

Cheaper goods mean we can have more and in America, more is never enough. Walmart may be the biggest box we shop for what we need, but Target is the box that tells you what you need. Target shoppers spend much more time looking over the merchandise, have much more of a craving for trend and a look of status than glut. Walmart may be vilified as the destination of the marginalized, but avaricious Target customers give store checkers one-time customer purchase stories that take on the stature of Ripley; $1500 house ware buys, $700 clothing purchases, ten 60’ flat screen TVs.

The earth has become a world of cardboard boxes and plastic wrapped pallets in transit. On boats, on planes, on trucks, it’s an unbridled lack of restraint and often of discrimination in desire. We walk the aisles and search the Internet but we never see the hundreds of thousands of boxes that are shipped and opened every day, 24-7.

Maybe it’s my penchant for Stephen King and Dean Koontz stories, or movies by Tim Burton and Wes Anderson, I can’t stop my mind from imagining who made what’s in the box and how many hands and circumstances contributed to its journey to final opening. Was it created in the country or the city? Who packed it, transported it and loaded it on a ship? How many people sorted the boxes and decided exactly which truck would bring it exactly to this store?

Last year late in October, I was helping stock an aisle in the holiday décor section of the store, opening boxes of ornaments. Every shape, size, color and workmanship were hung on hundred of pegs for purchase. Country, classic and collectable stylings were stocked by category. Super heroes, comic and movie characters, angels, bells and stars and anything worthy of decking a hall were represented.

At Target, they use four-foot square stainless wire “cages” on casters to collect all the cardboard from broken down boxes that have been opened and emptied. By 8:00 a.m. store opening, the cage in the holiday section was nearly full and early shoppers, seeing the first stock of holiday fare trickled in and started circling the offering of wares, like sharks drawn to a drop of blood.

I begin work at 6:00 a.m. and by store opening, my eyes were long since glazed by the glitz and I was covered in enough glitter to cause people to think I’d just come in from a night at the club. That’s when I opened a box marked "Made in China".

Following the routine two stroke box cut, I opened the cardboard flap to find four objects taped and tightly rolled in bubble wrap like a California sushi roll. I took them aside to the seat of an empty shopping cart and cautiously removed the wrap with the same reverence I imagined it was protected. I found four hand-blown glass ornaments in the shape of a four-inch narwhal, two blue and two silver, both with delicate pencil thin glass horns. At the top of the head was a tiny blown eyelet completely a part of the entire piece, threaded with a thin plastic loop for hanging.

I reeled as I stopped in my work to marvel at the artistry and craftsmanship, all six of the narwhals identically finished and perfectly executed. I was impressed with the idea that the creator’s hands were the last that wrapped their work before it was held by me.

In a perfect world, I would hope the artist would be valued for more than the $3.95 price tag on the ornament. I would hope that somewhere in the cosmos they could feel my reverence for the skill and effort it took to create this perfect and oddly collected piece. Finally, I hope whomever buys it somehow finds a place in their heart to appreciate the intention that caused its making and the journey it took to be in their hands.