There comes a time in every child’s life when they are too old for the toys of their youth, but too young to be a true grown-up. Penelope was definitely in that stage, teetering on the brink of adolescence, not quite knowing which way to jump. One afternoon, as she rummaged through the attic in search of a missing sock, she discovered an old wooden box with brass embellishments.
Intrigued, she discovered it was a music box, the kind she had seen in shops or on other children’s dressers, but had never owned herself. Dusting it off, she turned the crank and a hauntingly beautiful melody filled the small space around her. Almost embarrassed to admit it, she realized this was the tune she used to hum during her long car rides home from her grandmother’s, whose frail hands had gifted this box to her when she was only knee-high.
Penelope lay back on a heap of old blankets, her mind drifting while the music played softly:
“Your songs are the wind,
Your words are the stars,
Your eyes like the heavens
Take me to where you are.”
Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. As she lay listening to the melody, memories flooded back: shopping trips with her grandmother, baking cookies together, and snuggling up on rainy days, all while her grandmother whispered stories of her own childhood.
Why had she neglected this box, this link to a time that felt so endangered? She was too old for childish things, yet here was a piece of her childhood, evoking emotions tied to lost moments that could never be recaptured.
Penelope’s hand brushed across the fine surface of the box as she recalled how, after her grandmother’s funeral last summer, she had stopped going to the little antique shop where her grandmother used to take her. The harsh reality of her grandmother’s absence felt insurmountable. This music box represented the last vestiges of her childhood in which those sweet memories resided.
Perhaps her grandmother had simply forgotten to give it to her along with the old rocking chair and the porcelain angels decorating her mantelpiece. Perhaps her mother had put it away for a reason.
The music changed tempo inelegantly as the brass crank jerked, signalling the end of the song much too soon, shattering the childhood ambiance it had created. Wiping her tears away, Penelope decided that if she were too old for the box, it was impossible to analyze the time when the music that had filled her memories would cease its haunting refrain altogether. With great care, she tucked it into her backpack, resolving to discover it again when the world felt less chaotic.
Essentially, she remembered her grandmother’s words: “It’s up to you to keep those memories alive, Pene. Your heart is powerful; it will always lead you home.”
The music box didn’t need the trappings of childhood to thrive; what it needed to flourish was Penelope’s heart attuned to the past.
As the school year ambled forward, she graduated from her childish tendencies yet retained a link to those beautiful interludes of her youth. Whenever she felt unsure of herself, unsure of her place in a world that stung, fattened her heart simultaneously, she would retreat to the safety of her room and crank the music box with fingers gently trembling, afraid the instrument might vanish like delicate gossamer in the dew of morning. And magically, it never did.
As each note hung in the air, so did fragile echoes of life as she had known it. Her heart spoke:
“We share the same threads of time, resonates the same drumming of the heart.”
And so, she felt her grandmother’s hand in those moments, taking her small fingers into a warm, tight embrace.