My mom brought back from Rome a little wooden table music box with inlaid flowers. This was when I was in high school so it must have been in the mid 80’s, I can’t remember exactly. I do recollect though that I would listen to it's tune and found it to be very poignant at the time. It was the theme from "Romeo and Juliet," the one by Henry Mancini, not Tchaikovsky.

I thought about it because of some muzak in a store was playing Mancini’s Moon River and Steven thought it sounded like something from a Hayao Miyazaki movie.

Moon River, if you recall, was the theme in the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" with Audrey Hepburn, but to my little son it sounded like anime music. Isn’t that funny? A melody no matter how it’s arranged maybe has an archetypal place inside of us, and for awhile lies dormant in the mind, but when a synapses turns it on again it’s path ricochets to such different places in each person; the same song invoking a strangely varied recollection or reaction.

Anyhow, that day I went up in to the attic to track down some things to give to the Veteran’s truck that comes round to accept donation every few months; but also, I was on the lookout for the music box. I really thought it was probably gone or broken after all this time, but I found it whole, unbroken and without a scratch. I wound it and opened it and it still played.

It used to sit next to the crushed velvet couch beside one of the bulky brown end tables, remember? It looked so out of place. It was so dainty, on it’s skinny legs, like a little fawn or something standing there next to that large, hulking bear-like table with it’s fat brass lamp that was so bawdy and loud. What did they have in the socket, a 100 watter? It was so fucking bright and blinding. But then, there was that little thing beside it, delicate, bittersweetly chiming music from the tender tiny keys inside, singing about lost love and a quiet, unavoidable, ensuing tragedy...

You know, why do I even remember this stuff? I was just thinking that I most certainly have the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Between the insomnia, the fillings in my back teeth and all the drugs I did when I was young my husband will have no choice but to be attending me when I’m an old lady by dusting me with talcum powder and plucking the hairs from around my areola to preserve my vanity.

But something will click, a retrospection of some kind, and I’ll go and start digging around the old things that I’ve accumulated, or what I’ve been given. Something interesting or not so interesting turns up in the back of that dusty, dark room for me and it’ll give me a chance to take another look-see, or a listen.