The Jewelry Box

When I was growing up, the most favorite piece of furniture in my bedroom was a small secretaire, a small desk, made of two different types of inlaid wood. It had a bit of a rococo feel to it in its design of curved legs and the curviture of the fold out lid that closed the desk with a fancy and important looking key. I was about thirteen when my parents bought it for me at a fancy furniture store downtown. I was absolutely in love with it. I stored my favorite little perfume bottles in it, my favorite velvet ribbons I wore at the time to tie my hair back in a ponytail, my favorite copies of Paris Match with articles of my favorite singers and actresses, like France Gall, Francoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot, Mia Farrow, Cheryl Miller. It held my first attempts at writing poetry in tiny little exotic paper notebooks. It was my little treasure chest. When many years later, my parents decided to move to the US, they had all their expensive antique furniture and objets d'arts shipped in containers to Arizona where they had bought a beautiful house about and hour and a half from Monument Valley and the Navajo Reservation, as they both had a fascination with Native American culture of the South West. I was heart broken to learn that my small treasured writing desk had not been included in the containers, as my mother put it, "It had no real value" compared to the 17th century antique dressers. It really put into perspective how ultimately irrelevant I had always been in the scheme of things. She knew I absolutely adored that desk, even though it was considered cheap in the larger inventory, as it was factory made. Anyway, I always missed that desk, its sleek feel and pretty wood, it tiny little drawers just right to hold my adolescent treasures, its smell of polished wood and lacquer. Then, last year my husband surprised me with a beautiful big jewelry box, that looks like a small version , in its lacquered inlaid wood design, of my cherished lost desk. It feels the same, smells the same, has these tiny drawers that now hold my rings and bracelets and necklaces. Some little sprite was looking out for my bruised feelings, because now each time I open my beautiful jewelry chest, I see my favorite desk again, and all its treasured memories, that now are turning the contents of the chest into new favorite memories with each new gift of jewelry my husband tries to fill it with.