I also love boxes, especially little ones. It’s a fascination I attribute to my Grandmother, a special person in my life, who kept a number of boxes on her dresser, many of them with music. My favorite was a crystal bowl with a silver ballerina on top which played the Skater’s Waltz.
When I was about 4, Gram showed me how to twist the ballerina perched on her toe until she couldn’t go any further and pull up the little nob on the lid to set her dancing to the tune. Once when I sneaked upstairs to have a go at the ballerina by myself, I dropped the lid and broke off her outstretched arm. Gram was very nice to me about the accident, which made me love the box and her even more.
About 10 years ago, a couple of years before she died, Gram gave me a beautifully wrapped small package. It was the box. I keep it on my dresser along with an assortment of boxes given to me over the decades.
Once visiting Gram, I found a round tin filled with buttons. She told me that they were her mothers and perhaps her mothers before then. But she couldn’t be sure. There’s a lot that’s unknown about these generations of Czech speaking New Yorkers. I still use the buttons from this box for mending and projects, although I’m more careful than I used to be to avoid the brittle ones.
In 1993, about six weeks after our first child (Clio) was born, Gram came to stay with me, Jeff and Clio for 10 days. Given that Clio was awakening from the so-called slumbers of early infancy (which we never experienced except in contrast), it was a wonderful distraction to have Gram help with the endless bouncing and the cooing.
Clio was a very busy baby who thrived on sound and movement, which made for a lmany 5:00 am runs pushing the jog stroller up our dirt road. As far as Clio was concerend, the bumpier, the better.
One day when we were feeling particularly ambitious, we packed up the diaper bag which seems now to have taken an absurd amount of time and energy and set off for the Shaker Museum in Enfield, NH on Lake Mascoma. There was a striking calm about the place. Even Clio was subdued. Life as a Shaker appealed to me in a way I had never imagined previously, especially the peace, calm, equity, and—I admit now though I wouldn’t allow myself at the time—freedom from the constant worry and bother of caring for a tiny baby.
Gram and I had a wonderful 10 days and when the time came to say good-gye, I offered her this Shaker Music Box which plays… well, Simple Gifts.
Long before First Grade, Clio stopped cooing, and although she still bounced with excitement, she stood on her own feet when hopping. Over the course of that year, Clio learned to skate, ski, swim and play soccer (sort of; she mostly looked at the sky and other kids). And she became a brilliant reader.
Reading is hands down Clio’s favorite activity and one of her special gifts. Although Clio’s quite reserved, she sometimes lets down her guard and allows other people (especially her little sisters, Zola and Finley) to hear her lovely and animated reading voice. Recently she has begun to write a novel, but I’m not allowed to see it. Only other kids.
Clio decorated this jewelry box for me as a Mother’s Day gift. It’s filled with beaded treasures that the girls offered me, many of them original creations. My favorites include a dried lima bean and pea necklace and a pin made out of my Second Grade class picture.
Zola is the “middlest” of our three daughters. In addition to being a good musician (she plays violin and guitar), she is an asker of questions. In fact question asking is one of her most remarkable and laudable qualities.
When Zola was in Second Grade, she took weekly ceramic courses for the entire school year at Bateliers, a childrens’ workshop a 20-minute walk from where we lived (on a boat) in Strasbourg, France. Zola created dozens of treasures over the course of that year, most of which we’ve left on the barge out of fear of breaking them during transport.
Some of the gems are a beautifully proportioned vase, a scene depicting Zola’s imaginary world and a dragon bowl, the ridge of which is formed by the circling green tail. Here is the only bowl small and stury enough to bring back to Vermont. I put my “chouchou” (French for hair elastic) and earrings in it each day.
Finley is the youngest Doyle girl (though maybe not the littlest for much longer; her legs have grown another foot…) When she was in Third Grade, she made this box in school out of a recycled cheese box. On Valentines Day, she presented it to me along with a poem she had memorized in school. It is not unusual in France for children to prepare poems in school to offer as holiday gifts to their families. I think it is a charming custom that I wish we practiced here, big and little kids alike. Perhaps, in fact, I’ll try to initiate it.
Clio, Zola and Finley surprised me with this box on my birthday in 2006. It was May and we were on a three-week long backpacking trip in the Alps. I was touched that they purchased, packed away and carried the delicate box without my knowing.
Someone (he says, probably a woman) gave Jeff this box in the days when he had a “real” dog.
Now he has Crocus, a 10-pound Westie who loves him dearly, but who pales in comparison with Jeff’s earlier dogs. Take Melody for instance, the huskey border collie mix who sang like a wolf and picked blueberries and ate them.
Crocus yaps and runs away from her bowl of kibbles when Pistou looks at her askance. Pitou is our other dog (also a Terrier but a very cool mut that everyone adores). Poor Crocus is profoundly uncool and unpopular with all but the die hard dog fan.
It’s kind of unfair that Jeff has gotten stuck with Crocus, especially since he was the only one at the Lyons puppy market to say no. One great thing about Jeff, like the Jeffly guy on this box, is that he makes sure that his dog feels loved.
Jeff’s motto: “Love the one you’re with!”
I can’t tell, but I can show you what was left inside by Kathryn: a striking pewter heart necklace and a ring.
“Finley who gets dressed up even for school” (as Zola sometimes taunts) plans to make good use of them. Perhaps she’ll wear them with her retro flower bell bottom pants and matching top while grooving with the Beatles, the Bangles and the Turtles—some of her playlist tunes.
Finley, unlike her mother pictured here on our barge in France, learned how to dress from the French. I briefly tried to match the French standards for stylishness, but after a week of feeling mal dans ma peau and hopelessly outclassed by the other parents in the school yard, I took perversely to dressing down. By the time we moved away from France, this favorite paint splattered and shredded t-shirt had become my uniform. At one point when even I thought it was time to commit it to the rag bag, one of our daughters spotted it and exclaimed, “Mama, you can’t throw that shirt away. That’s the one you always wear to meet us at school!”
