My memory box

I have a memory box. It wasn't meant to be that but that is what I turned it into years ago when I was a little girl. My Grandma Slater gave it to me to use as a jewelry box. Inside the lid it had a mirror which I quickly broke out. The superstitious child in me cringed at another 7 years bad luck. I had already broken a little hand mirror....the torture of having to live out more years of bad luck than I had been alive! It seemed like FOREVER!
You can tell it belonged to a little girl, it has little lines drawn from a crayon inside of it. It used to bother me but now I just chalk it up to added memories, after all I was always a big Crayola fan. Some of the things I have inside it are displayed in front of it...but most of its contents are secret. I have my Grandpa Kasters original wedding band that he rarely wore and that I snagged up quickly when we went through Grandma's jewelry after her death. There is a buckeye from the tree by the Post Office at home. A tiny compass that someone special gave me once when they felt I was struggling with myself. A tiny, tiny fishing bobber that belonged to someone I loved like a brother. The mini cookie cutters were mine as a child and they make me smile every time I see them. My Christmas Fairy that I can't bare to put in the attic for the rest of the year, she's special and gets me through all the holidays that I can't go home for. There's more, a silver dollar that my Grandpa Slater gave me, an Eisenhower dollar that my Great Grandpa handed out to all of his great grand children at Christmas, a marble that I treasured as a child, an adjustable ring that I got out of a gum ball machine at the grocery store. It was the one and only time that I actually got something that I had wished for out of those machines. A lock of my hair from when it was still red and curly. The walnut half, which might seem like the strangest thing. I found it one evening. I was walking, deep in thought, quite depressed by things that had been going on in my life and I was suddenly compelled to stop, who knows why and that is when I saw it on the sidewalk. The inside part looks like a heart and we know how I like hearts. As I bent down to pick it up the wind kicked up and I could smell lilacs. It was one of those moments that reminded me how special life is and I suddenly didn't feel so unhappy anymore. It's just a silly little treasure that marks a turning point for me.
Its things like that, that fill my memory box. Its contents could only be special to me...nobody else. I keep it locked like a treasure but if someone was to open it, all they would really see is a bunch of junk that has no real value to anyone else in the whole world.....just to me and m little old heart.