Childhood

My grandmother was eighty-four when she gave me the box.

It was musty and dog-eared, and held together with masking tape.  And in it: a collection of toys.  Plastic farm animals.  A doll with eyes that moved in her head. A doll who had eyelashes, eyelids that closed.  A blind teddy-bear.  A couple of swirly balls. Some tattered old books.

And I took them solemnly. This room, these people, the hospital bed: it all called for solemnity. 

“This is my childhood, take care of it for me.”

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I’m eighty-four now.  The box has seen additions: A little doll who speaks when you pull her feet – I’ve lost my head over you – here comes my bodyyyyyy – a couple of dresses I once sewed myself for the blinking-eye doll; a once-trendy angel toy; a little figurine of a ballerina that, in truth, I stole once from a stranger’s bookshelf.  A diary unwritten in.

I lean over at a little girl who’s all wild brown curls and freckles, who is never still for a moment. A girl who is really nothing like the girl I was. But still I hold the box out, against a backdrop of sterile hospital white.

“This is my childhood, take care of it for me.”

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work