Compass

The latch to the small trunk opened and I looked inside, memories staring back at me.

Memories from when I was a child, and when I was a teen, all in separate little piles in the 24 by 12 inch trunk. Each item, big or small, pointed to one person or another; reminded me of a person, and the moments I shared with them. The memories flooded my brain, filling it to capacity until I had to let them be set free.

I reached for a Russian doll my grandmother gave me when I was a girl. I took it apart and set each doll side by side, from big to small. Their painted faces smiled up at me, but all I saw was my grandmother smiling gently at me as we played with them.

She told me stories of when she was young as we played with the dolls, taking apart the larger doll to reveal the younger, smaller doll inside. For each story she'd tell me, she'd open the next smallest doll. The stories she told would dig deeper into her past, her face growing younger and younger in my mind with each doll we took apart and put back together again. Once she told of as far back as she could remember, all eight of the dolls were staring at us, ready to be put back into the other older doll to start over again.

It was a cycle, and was a tradition we both shared every year when I'd visit her in the summer, until she passed away in her sleep when I was eighteen, her life lived and full.

I smiled as I put the dolls back in reverse order and placed it back into the trunk, my hand brushing a red scarf folded right beside it as I did so. I picked it up, the rough material brushing my skin as I unfolded it and wrapped it around my neck, playing with the strands as another memory consumed my brain.

My mother, knitting something red and long. The basket of yarn, a basket of many colors, sat at her feet as she knitted, a line of red yarn leading from the fabric to the yarn in the wooden bin.

She'd knit while we were watching a movie, television, or just when we sat and talked. The red fabric grew longer, and soon she started to make small tassels for the ends, and I knew then what she was making.

I asked her who the scarf was for, and she replied, "It's for you when it gets nippy outside." I was surprised, and held a grin on my face as I waited for it to be done. She beckoned me over once she clipped the last part of the last dangling thread, and wrapped the scarf around my neck, kissing me on the forehead. "I love you."

I smiled. "I love you too, Ma." I wore that scarf every winter until it got old and tattered. I was afraid of injuring the fabric more, so I stopped wearing it.

I sighed, unwrapping the memory from my neck, and refolding it and putting it back in the trunk. Only a few more items remained in the trunk, most of it consisting of journals I had gotten throughout the years to write in. Family members and friends had gotten me the journals, and I had filled them to the brim with my thoughts and actions, and my imaginative storytelling and poetry.

My eyes travelled around the wooden chest and rested on my camera. My bulky, beautiful black camera. I picked it up and looked through the broken lense, the colors distorted through it. I sighed, wishing that it worked again. I shook my head as I remembered how I had broken it.

My dad had gotten it for me for my fifteenth birthday. I adored it and thanked him, and went outside and took pictures. He showed me how to develop the photographs, and how to take care of the camera.

I had my camera for four years, taking care of it properly, until I accidentally slipped one day trying to take a picture in the forest. I slipped on a moss covered tree root and fell, getting red scratches on my arm and hands from trying to keep myself from hitting my head. In the process, my black camera tumbled from my hands and hit the stream a few feet away. I heard the splash and got up quickly, ignoring my red-stained hands.

The stream was only a foot deep, and I could see my camera, my poor camera sunk to the bottom. I fished into the water, and touched the sleek metal of the camera, grabbing hold of it and pulling it out. The lens was broken, a repairable fix, but the water was an iffy subject. I looked inside the camera, knowing full well that the film inside was ruined, exposed. I ran back to my house, in hopes of my dad knowing what to do, and he said it was broken beyond repair.

He told me not to be sad that I had broken it, and that it was an accident. I believed him.

I put the camera back into the trunk, and scanned the trunk for anything else meaningful. My irises landed on a red pack of cards, and I lifted the pack out of the trunk, opening the box, the cards falling out in unison into my awaiting hand.

I shuffled them about, the cards flapping as I mixed the numbers and letters together. I then fanned them out, visualizing my brother in front of me. We'd play all kinds of card games with these when the lights went out during storms, using flashlights to see our cards.

Go Fish, Rummy, Concentration, Solitaire. You name it, we played it.

Now there are missing cards in the deck, either from forgetting to put the deck up and hurriedly smashing them into the box it came in, or using sneak attacks while playing the games and forgetting where you put your cheat card.

I put the cards back into a formed box shape, and put them back in the cardboard box they came in. A brass compass caught my eye, and I exchanged the cards for the compass.

I turned it, the arrow in the middle moving with the turns. I remembered when my best friend Andrew would use it when we'd go exploring in the forests near our houses. He'd hold it up in front of him, his posture straight as he looked down at it and around us.

"The river's this way, Maggie. C'mon," he'd tell me once he'd figured out where to go. We'd trudge through the green land, trying to find our old tree house. We used to go there when we were little to escape everything, whether it was his parents fighting, or my worry about a family member and wanting to get away and cry. He was always there, my rock in a hard place, and he still is.

"You still have it?" I heard behind me.

I smiled and without turning around replied, "Yeah. I've kept it in here with my other nostalgic items." I patted the side of the trunk. He hugged me from behind, getting on his knees to do so. He put his hands over mine, holding the compass with me. He leaned and rested his head on my shoulder, his cheek against mine as he turned the compass, the arrow spinning again.

"I missed seeing this thing." I could smell the faint scent of mint on his breath, and it made me want to turn and kiss him.

"Do you want to go and find it again?" I asked him, thinking about the tree house of our childhood.

I could feel him smile. "Yeah. I'll meet you outside, Mags." He kissed me on the lips lightly before rising with the compass in his hand, and he walked out of our bedroom.

I closed the trunk quickly, and went to meet my husband out on the back porch. I had a feeling more memories were going to be made at the tree house.