For nearly three decades there's been a missing keystone to my personal archive. A small box, 5" x 6" x 10", that originally contained an electric iron. My mother and her mother have argued back and forth for years over who had been responsible for the box, who had last seen it, and when—but all of us were certain it had been lost for good, because every stone had been overturned, several times.
Yet tonight I found an unturned stone, and the prize beneath. At my grandmother's house on Rosedale, in the bottom drawer of an antique wooden file cabinet filled with tax and business records from the 1970s. Intentionally hidden behind the spring-loaded file support panel at the back. There was the box.
Inside, 8mm films of my first, second, third, fourth, and fifth birthdays, several early Christmases, trips to the zoo, kite flying in the park, and much more. Even the stop-motion films I made frame-by-frame with clay figures and Lego sets when I was a little older.
Thirty-nine precious gems in a treasure chest, I tell you.
