Little box contains mountain of memories

Cheryl-Anne Millsap  /  Staff writer

A treasure box can hold childhood memories and keepsakes gathered throughout a lifetime. (Brian Plonka/The Spokesman-Review) Have a treasure box? Do you have a treasure box filled with things you collected as a child? If so, tell me your story. The tale of your treasure box might be included in a future column. On the Web For an archive of great Home content, including Treasure Hunting columns and Cheryl-Anne Millsap's blog, access the information at no charge at spokesmanreview.com/home.

Remember when you were a child and everything you found was a treasure? A pretty stone, a broken shell on the beach, the Mercury dime that surfaced in the backyard after a hard rain and other souvenirs were slipped into the pocket of your jeans and taken home to be saved, tucked into a cigar box or shoebox and put away.

That box became a treasure box.

Over the years I've discovered so many of those little treasure boxes. At estate sales, flea markets and garage sales, buried in the jumble of bits and pieces for sale, I picked them up and peeked inside to find a collection of marbles, or Boy Scout badges or baseball cards. Sometimes there were letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and cards.

They were more than just boxes full of junk; they were miniature time capsules that held the little things that had been special to a child.

I've been going through my things preparing to pack for a move, and I found my treasure box.

My treasure box is an old toffee tin from England. The candy had been a gift to my grandmother and she'd saved the colorful tin. I found it on a shelf in her closet and asked for it. The odds and ends that had been collecting on the windowsill in my room that summer were transferred to the box. Now and then something else was added to the mix.

When I opened the box the other day, for the first time in years, I found the photo of my father I had slipped into the box when I was 10 years old. And a sea horse picked up at the beach. Things that were special to me alone.

I've been sorting through a lot of things I don't want to pack. Moving is a good time for that.

But I slipped the treasures kept in my grandmother's toffee tin back into it and put it aside to go in a box.

Some things are too special to toss.