This excerpt is taken from my Show &Tell seminar. What do you have to share? 

Pink Satin Boxes

One of my favorite things contains oodles of small trinkets, worth no more than a dollar. The pink satin diamond stitched box, most likely once home to women’s gloves or a small sewing kit, opens with a small loop of satin ribbon.

Inside the faded box lies a treasure trove of small plastic plates in a hue of colors, replete with plated lobster and peas, turkey dinners, and trout with blotches of green peas. There are china cups and silver teapots, baby bottles and heads of cauliflower, a pineapple, a fried egg. A pair of badminton rackets and small pots and pans dot the jumble. There’s a meat grinder, a spoon and a miniature roll of paper towels. A muffin pan and laundry basket complete the mix.

Running my hands through the heap, there’s a gentle tinkling of plates against spoons against cups. This brings me back to a home on Ann Street.

As small children we’d often visit my grandma and grandpa’s home and race to the dining room. There, in grandma’s cherry serving buffet nestled among boxes of “pretties” sat the coveted pink box. Me, my sister and cousins would reach our chubby hands in, delving into the world of miniatures.

We would play with this box for hours and hours, letting our imaginations guide us on our adventure, and shrinking us to play among the land of littles. I was always fascinated with miniature things, and coveted my cousins’ dollhouse. How I longed to live in a such a place!

Today, the pink satin box lies nestled in my office. It is one of the few things I requested to inherit from my dear grandma when she died. I was 26 years old. Among her most cherished items in our eyes were the pink box, the milky green depression glass bird-shaped candy dish which was always bursting with hard candies, and her prized collections of beautiful antique plates. I walked away with the pink box, but any one of us would have been equally blessed to have received it.

Although this treasure is worthless to others, it is priceless to me. My coveted pink box.