when i was in high school, my parents gave me a cedar chest. it was an old-fashioned blanket chest in a rich cedar finish that had been in the family for a number of years before it became mine. my dad carefully refinished it before gifting it to me, and when i opened its hinged lid, it smelled fantastic.
we called it a hope chest. it was empty when i received it, and for the next few years, it sat in my room in kansas, under the window that looked out onto the wheat fields. over time, i filled it with my most treasured things.
i included a piece of junk jewellery that my grandfather gave me in a small velveteen box, which was fake and gaudy and i knew was worthless.
i carefully wrapped up and saved an ugly wooden frame that held a decorative mirror, which mike, my boyfriend from summer camp, won for me at a visit to the kansas state fair. it had a black background, a painted red rose and garish mirrored script that said "love you." it stood as documented proof of my teenage romance.
i added several large white three-ring binders that documented my 16th year, which i spent living in finland. they were stuffed with brochures from places i visited, and photos of my finnish family and our summer cottage. the albums had countless pages of photographs from parties and evenings out with friends, tickets from dance clubs, and cartoons carefully clipped from the finnish newspaper. i stuffed small memories into pockets in the bulging album: notes written in finnish on graph paper from our school notebooks and folded into small origami shapes, used and worthless lotto tickets and the paper tray liner from the helsinki mcdonalds, folded into a small square.
the memory books included many pages of memorabilia from a train journey to leningrad and a day cruise to stockholm. alongside the albums, i added a dark wool soviet navy cap i bartered for on the russian black market, with some of the the rubles secretly stolen across the border in the sole of my shoe.
once during a moment of teenage rebellion, i caused a family fight, and something was thrown during the midst of the yelling. i can no longer remember the reason for the argument or what the object was, but it hit the side of my cedar chest and left a dent in the wood, which my dad later filled with remorse and wood putty.
over time, the box filled. when i left for college, i folded up and added my mortar board from high school graduation, an empty budweiser can saved from an evening of cruising main street with a car-full of friends, and a dried corsage from my prom date, jody. i saved cards and letters from bill, my then-boyfriend whom i later married. i even added a few things for the future--some iittala glass candlesticks, given to me by friends when i left finland, some tea towels my mother gave me that i saved for when i had a home of my own.
i can no longer remember everything i put in my cedar chest. while i was at university, someone stole it from a storage unit my parents rented in rural kansas. when it first happened, i was upset, but i have to admit i wasn't devastated. the memories were still fresh, some considered better forgotten, and the minimalist in me saw it as a forced purging that wasn't completely unwelcome. but as time passes, i want my hope chest back. i want to flip through the albums, and look at what the younger version of myself considered precious.
while there's no guarantee, i am quite certain i lost nothing of real monetary value. all told, i'm relatively sure the contents never exceeded the value of the box that held them. but for me, the memories are now priceless and irreplaceable, and i can't understand why anyone else wanted my teenage box of hope.