A.
Placed upon my left hand, on my middle finger, lies a gold ring.
It is an evening like any other. I am on the Parlors settee, my brother lay strewn upon the floor beside me content with a game of solitaire, my sister in the room above practicing the piano at a most untimely hour. The song is muffled through the ceiling and filtered into unrecognisable fragments. I am attempting to read through this distraction, yet it is my mothers voice that brings my attention to a hault. She is next door, awoken from an afternoon rest, calling to us the same question again and again. “Who is …?” “Who …playing?”
‘What is she saying?” I asked my brother for her words where stifled and he was much closer to the door than I. My brother ignored my enquiry, which was to no suprise as I was already in motion to ask her myself.
“What is it Mama?”
“Who is playing that music box?’
My mothers door was open, yet she questioned me with her words but not her eyes, for they were else where in the room looking for something I did not understand.
“Mother, what do you mean music box, Elsebeth is playing music upstairs’
“No, no not that music, there is a music box playing” Her face was startled yet burdened with the pain of a memory I could not identity. She spoke at me but not to me, for I was not there nor she here. She turned ubruplty, following the senses of her ears, and commenced on her quest.
Weary of this state I have rarely seen her in before, I followed, trailing her upwards towards the 3rd floor. At first it seemed she was to burst into my sisters room, blurting out her usual complaints about the noise, but she abruptly stopped before the door, and bent to her knees. In the square space that led onto the stairway and connected the upper bedrooms was a mount of disorderly objects taken from the house of my passed away Dear Nana. Whilst my mother perched in an ususual state of contemplation, I made haste to go into Elespbeths room and silence her recital myself.
On return I sat beside my mother who had once again moved into motion. Hasty hands pulled, rearranged, lifted and moved various objects. She was digging. The deeper she went the more I begun to imagine a light, airless noise. It tinkled quietly, it whispered and soothed a strange and unfamiliar melody. It got louder, it stopped whispering and began to sing, it was no voice but a soft hum of music. My mother moved the last obstacle, a lid to an old tin container, and behold, within her quavering hands held a small, silver jewelry box. But at that precise moment, as her fingers touched the lid to open its contents, the music deceased, and once again we were in silence.
“Mama?”
She was entranced, beheld by this antique object no larger than a book and no taller than 5 inches. She spoke, yet her eyes remained focused upon the silver lid, together they were still and gleaming in the quaint light.
“Yes my dear?”
“What is that?’
“This was a Jewellery box that belonged to my Mama, and before that to hers too. They are fashioned to play music whilst the lid is open, and to stop once it is shut.”
“But how did you hear it? I could not.”
“Because it sung to me my dear, it sung. It wanted to be found, to be remembered. It wanted to tell me that death may take hold upon ones body, but there are other things for a person to live within.”
Placed upon my left hand, on my middle finger, lies a gold ring.
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