The Secret in the Box

The secret of the world is in a box, she said, as she smiled at me for the last time and walked out of the house forever. I was a kid then, but something inside of me knew that there was something special in that sentence, something hidden that I had to find out eventually, and only then could I understand that girl walking out of my house for the last time.

That was over 50 years ago, and I still remember her smile as she told me that last secret and left. She grew up next door to me, and until then we had spent almost all of our young lives together. She was a year older than me, and was the first friend I ever had, and I cannot imagine my childhood without her. Life was much simpler then, and our days were spent running to the park, playing with toys, and pretending to be adults who never got mad at kids.

Having no siblings, she was my closest person in the world, and taught me many things, with that smile that made me believe she would always be there with me. I didn’t know then, but she was my first love, and her image followed me for many years, even when I wasn’t able to find her ever again.

Of all her toys, her favorite were this colorful boxes she kept as treasures, and I was the only other person in the world allowed to play with them. We use to just look at them, invent their history, put things in them, and take them wherever we went. The boxes were the objects in the world that represented our friendship, our love.

Throughout my life, I have collected many boxes, and I have found the secret of the world in all of them, just as she told me that last time. In all of them I have found her image, her smile, our memories, the innocence of a pure, young, world. The secret of the world, of my world, is in my childhood, and it is saved in the many boxes I collect, next to her.

SaveSave