The Box

     This is the story of a box. It is not a big box, as boxes go, nor is particularly small. What it once held, no one recalls; any mark which might have identified it in such a way has long since been painted over and papered over and taped just so to the point where the original box is only just discernible as the now slightly lumpy shapes of five pieces of cardboard.
     The box had sat on its shelf for years when a pair of young hands picked it up and overturned it, scattering its long forgotten contents across the floor. These same hands held the box steady even as they were splattered with pink and yellow paint, and were made sticky all over with glue.
     It was a day or two later, when the box was lifted down from its perch and was twisted about, admired from every angle. For a moment, it sat on a bed awaiting its purpose, until a raggedy dolly, not long outgrown with placed gently inside. Slowly, the pair were returned to the shelf, there to while away the years.
     Time passed, as it always does, before the same pair of hands, hesitating here and there, finally found the box again. Between the books, and the old jars of paint brushes, they paused, almost reverently, then quick as lightning, they tossed in a photograph, two teen-aged girls, standing side by side, a lake in the background, and the dark, blurry imprint of a thumb obscuring a tiny part of one corner. As the air caught it, the photograph drifted down, to rest beside the dolly.
    Over the years, the box received many new occupants, a receipt recalling coffee for two, a rose, one intended as part of a bouquet for a mother's grave but accidentally left in the car, not found until hours later, a class ring, a graduation photo, a little black book filled with handwritten poetry. The box changed too, as pink with yellow stars with painted over with blue, then black, then collaged over with magazine pictures. Only the hands remained the same, growing slowly older, but never failing to find the box, to bring out dolly for one more hug, to float over photographs and touch gently on the receipt. Such was the life of the box, until the hands took up the dolly, passed her to another pair of hands, far younger, then returned the box to the shelf, to hesitate before it no more.
     For so long, the box waited as it moved from house to house, shelf to shelf, but was never looked inside. For years it waited as treasures found other places, one mantels or shelves of their own. Patiently, the box sat on its shelf, until a pair of gnarled, wrinkled hands took it down and put it gently on the bed. Shaking, they lifted out photographs, smiling that faces now long gone. Carefully, they pulled out a receipt, a memory of the day a so long ago, it was forgotten to all but the owner of the hands, who whispered, "She kept it?" Wonderingly, they paused over the rose and the ring. Hesitantly, they flipped through the book of poetry, laughing and crying at once. Finally, the hands left, the box still waiting on the bed, waiting for the next pair of young hands to turn the door handle and entered the room. The box was waiting to be overturned once more, to picked up by this new pair of smooth hands, and taken in arm with the jars of pink paint, as the rose was crushed by the book of poetry, the ring lost in the snarls and snags of the carpet, and the receipt floated down to the floor, there to sit until garbage day.
     This is the story of the box, as once again, freshly-painted and dried, it set on a bed, awaiting grandma's old dolly, together again to while away the years.