This is a real life moment told as a story. Please comment and enjoy!!! (I wish I could include a picture of the box but I can't find the wire to my camera...)

My Music Box

I was very young when my music box found me.
I was an odd kid; I loved garage sales. All sorts, both big and small. They have always seemed to have a magical feeling about them to me. I once found a metal box with money hidden in the cloth lining… to me a treasure. Anyways I was at such a sale when I saw the small plain wooden box the painting of men herding animals while laughing and talking on the lid. I was enchanted by the box and opened it.
It was the perfect size to fit little secretes inside.
The old lady who was selling her old memories that had long lost their glamour caught me gazing at the box. She picked it up smiled and told me it used to be a music box. Then she proceeded to tell me that it no longer worked and hadn’t for some time.
She looked so very sad as she held the broken music and as she said she couldn’t even remember what song it played… She had never been able to work up the courage to break open the wooden block that protected the mechanics to fix it. She just couldn’t bare the thought of seeing it in pieces… She obviously loved that box.
She smiled, handed it to me and told me I could have it for free.
I looked up at her with awe, and despite the fact I was only seven years old I understood how hard it was for her and my responsibility to take very very good care of that box.
And I did. For years it kept my little trinkets and doohickeys. I would stare at the wooden shield preventing the song from playing… “What song would it play if it could?” I would ask myself, “Would it be happy or sad?” The box held a mystery, a magic. What was inside the box? It held something inside I had no way of grasping, sensing or imagining. The gift of music was promised to me if I could repair it’s broken heart.
Thus I hunted avidly for someone, anyone, who could fix my music box.
I tried watch shops, music shops, music box shops, but when asked if they would fix it they all replied in a stiff manor “We don’t do that here!”
“But then where?” asked I.
There was never a reply.
More years passed and I continued to ask “Oh my music box what secretes do you hide?” Sometimes I would consider tearing the protective wooden piece out and thus expose the inner working and innards of box, but I would always think of the old women’s tired face and lose conviction. It felt as if I would rip apart her heart if I did and I would quickly put the box away.
So there it sat on my shelf. A sad and lonely object in my closet.
One day I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to know. It was years later and I was now a young woman.
I took the box in my arms and braced myself.
I tore off the wooden divider.
What had plagued me, dared me, taunted me, made me dream, what I had hated loved and wondered about for years and years of my life was gone in a flash. The wood piece was barely glued in, made by a loving hand in Switzerland.
I awed at the array of shiny metal mechanics that would work the music. It had been stopped forever mid song like a watch stopped in time. I could just imagine the woman’s face when she opened it that tragic time, and found that the music had died.
I sat there on my bed staring at it for a long while.
It smelt like old wood.
New energy filled me along with a new purpose. I was determined! I would fix it! Not only for me but for the old women long gone and to show all the people who said they couldn’t that I could.
I went to work.
I fiddled, I prodded, and there were no clues on how to fix it to be found. I searched for a screwdriver. I was ready to pull out all the pieces and completely decimate it, when I noticed something.
A tiny wooden button.
It was as small as a pin head and I had never noticed it before. It seemed painfully obvious now. It was the trigger that in better years would have started the machine to run and play the song. I looked at it. I wondered how many times it had played before it stopped. Ten times? Ten thousand? Million? Once again I was lost in my imaginings of when it worked, the people that made it, the person that bought it, and finally me who’s cared for it all these years even though it was crippled and old. I began to play with the trigger turning it back and forth…
Then a miracle.
The box began to play the long lost song…
I was surprised. It was beautiful. The pieces whirred and clicked to life. A discordant sweet sound came floating out of it and into my soul.
I was so happy. And a little sad.
After all this time my goal was over. It worked now. I must admit I was very emotional and teared up a bit. And as the mist pasted over my eyes I remembered all that I’d been through and the women before me and the creator before her.
My music box played on.