On the top shelf of my closet, where no one should reach, sits a box. Sure, maybe to other people its just a box with unnecessary papers in it. Maybe she meant to throw them away, but never got the chance? It’s woven and is lined with a canvas fabric. It holds my most precious memories. I will never throw any of it away. It’s a record of my life.
I call it my Memory Box. The name is basically self-explanatory, but it has so much more meaning. If you ever reach your hand up there, and just pull out a random object, it could be anything from a pair of sweatpants that I bought from D.C. that are too small, to a memorial program I just recently received. The things inside of my Memory Box have so much more meaning than anyone could ever understand. You can attempt to figure out the story, but you will never figure out the feelings I have every time I am reminded of that special memory.
My Memory Box is almost like my own personal time machine. Those sick and rainy days where I am down on myself, or just almost feel like I am drowning in life, I look back at everything that I have been through and accomplished. This being said, my box doesn’t only have good memories in it ..Some are just there because they are important, and they have made me who I am today. Not everything important is a good memory, but that does not take away its significance to my life.
When you pick up a piece from my memory box, it’s like you are looking at a piece of me. The cards from my graduation of fifth grade, the shoe I wore to school to student council elections when I won fifth grade class president, the love letters from my first middle school crush, to the small mum the Marquette moms made me. All of it lays inside of my tiny box.
My favorite thing in the entire world is to go through it. I don’t even know why. It just makes me feel more like me than anything else that I do. But of course, I only do it on special occasions. So if one of my friends who has never been to my house before, or dosen’t know me very well, finds my box, a large grin is on my face.
“What’s all this?” They ask curiously.
“This? This is me, all me.” I answer. After their head tilts a little to the left in confusion, I sit on the floor and go through it with them by my side. It’s a weird way to get closer to your new friend, I know. But it dosen’t make it any less fun for me. They may be bored with my life, so we would stop and go do something else. But as soon as they leave, I go through it.
I think that my favorite part of my Memory Box is that it isn’t finished, and I won’t ever get to see it when it is. I like it a lot though, because it’s a tangible piece of me, all jumbled together in an unparticular and unexpected way. It’s me in a box, and it is my greatest treasure.