The Ballerina Inside My Jewelry Box

     When I was 8 years old, I received a gift.  I can't even remember who it was from, but I opened a gift, and in it was a beautiful white jewelry box with a ballerina inside.  You know the kind...you wind up the little piece of metal on the bottom of the box, and poof, you have a twirling ballerina inside the middle of it and places to put your jewelry on both sides of her.  That ballerina sure could twirl, but that wasn't all that she could do.  She could see everything that happened in that small bedroom that I lived in.  She knew me more than anyone.  She saw a girl that would spend hours listening to read-a-long records, and she knew that I would sing all day long if I could.  She knew that I lived to play my little keyboard and pretend that I was in a band.  She saw the hardships that I had with my father and she watched my brother and I hide out in the middle of our adjoining closets.  She knew that my brother and I fought to the death most days, especially during summer breaks, but she knew the real truth.  She knew that we were best friends.  I started to forget about her as I grew older and denied her the opportunity to twirl. I had better things to do with my time, like talk on a landline phone to my first boyfriend and sneak cigarettes into my room.  She saw me hide those cigarettes in soda cans but she never told a soul.  She watched me sneak that first boyfriend into my room, and still, she never told.  She watched me sneak in late at night after hitching a ride home from cheering a basketball game with a boy that I wasn't supposed to be in a car with.  She watched me cry for days after I suffered from my first broken heart, and she never said a word.  She just stood there.  She watched me pack up that little bedroom and move out at the very first opportunity that I had, and I took her with me.  I'm not sure what made me think of that little jewelry box, but she is in my attic now.  Maybe I should take her out and let her dance again.