One of my favorite movies of all time is "Amelie," the Academy-Award winning French film from 2001. There isn't a piece of it I don't love; I soak up every scene in delight. It is a genuinely charming movie. I'd like to share a tiny example of life imitating art.
This is a heart-tugging scene in the film where our heroine, Amelie, secretly reunites a lonely man with a tiny box filled with some of his childhood treasures, which Amelie discovered hidden in her flat bathroom decades after the man stashed it away and forgot it.
Amelie -- The Treasure Box scene
As it turns out, I too, had a treasure box. My mother recently unearthed it from her vast archives of stuff, and sent it to me. Like in the film, all the memories came rushing back as I saw things I loved and played with over 40 years ago. The kitten box -- once filled with candy from England, one of the things my dad brought back for me from one of his long trips to the UK. There is a tiny bark canoe from a trip to Green Bay, Wisconsin, a felt Superman cape lost off an action figure, a puce-colored Gumby from a ten-cent toy dispenser machine. A little plastic spaniel, a little plastic Halloween cat from a cupcake. From Germany, a little girl standing on a magnet -- you'd put it on a table and put another magnet underneath and she would spin and spin. And finally, a "coin" commemorating the Apollo 11 moon landing, marked July 20, 1969.
I am so glad that my mom understood the value of this collection of mine, and kept it safe. To be able to access again the simple but encompassing joy of little childhood treasures, to be able to time-travel back even for a moment, is indeed priceless.
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman