forgotten memories rediscovered

Opening just one of those dusty boxes that had been shoved against the rear wall of the lower garage when grandma Nell passed away more than ten years ago, Ila Guerze-Rozen, forty-something mother of two children under the age of 6 years, rediscovered items that triggered long-forgotten memories. “Oh my word, these are pictures of Roberto and Juan, my brothers, from when we were just children,” the petite brunette said while wiping tears from her brimming eyes. “I had forgotten that we traveled so much back then. Look at little Juanito crying in the arms of that mascot that resembles a bipedal rodent, whose name rhymes with Sticky Blouse.”

Since none of the other boxes contained sentimental treasures nearly as emotionally-moving as the contents of the first box, so Mrs. Guerze-Rozen threw them out following a merely cursory pawing-through. After a bit more shuffling and a thorough sweeping, Ila stood back to look at the fruit of her labor, a clean, out-of-the-way area where she might sew, mend, darn, and sit quietly with a nice cup of tea and ruminate on her station in life.

While in the process of putting away her cleaning implements, Ila started upright, bolting to her new sitting area and tearing into the box of treasures, searching for something she had seen earlier but not recognized until bending over to pick up the smaller, blue dust-pan, which had itself triggered within her an odd but powerful sense-memory by falling from her hand and coming to rest at a peculiar angle against the closet's back wall. Picking carefully at the corner of a small wooden box, an item that she had previously overlooked, she pulled away a strip of paper tape concealing the sliding cover to a small hidden compartment. The secret drawer was empty except for a slip of yellowed paper upon which was written – in the large, boxy letters of a child – a simple message, that being, “Love.” With a smile as wide as the Rio Grande and a heart buoyed with sheer joy, Mrs. Guerze-Rozen shifted her weed stash to the hidden compartment, slid its little door shut, reapplied the paper tape, and went upstairs to wake her children from their afternoon naps.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit