Shiny Pretty Box

I have before me a shiny pretty box. It’s roughly the dimensions of a shoebox, but it’s much heavier. Now, I don’t often use the words “shiny” and “pretty” side-by-side in a sentence often, but, I must admit, they do apply to this box.

Darned if I can tell what it’s made of. Some type of metal, I’d guess, because it’s silvery and highly reflective, reminiscent of a perfectly polished mirror. It’s cool to the touch and so smooth I’d swear it was some high-tech liquid polymer confabulation.

Adorning all the edges and corners are tiny gemstones, and these, too, I can’t pinpoint. I highly doubt, of course, that they are legitimate diamonds and rubies and sapphires and opals, but they sure as heck look like it to my untrained eye. They reflect the overhead light beautifully, scattering it about like colorful Christmas tree lights connected to a high-voltage cable and thrown into a House of Mirrors.

I am entranced by this shiny, pretty box.

Somehow it is soundproof. How do I know? When I tilt the box side to side in my hands, I can sense something moving inside, but I cannot hear it. At least I think I can’t. Once I put my daughter’s stethoscope to it (a toy, but it does amplify sound) and received a surprise. I expected to hear a rolling or sliding noise as I tipped the box about, but instead I heard an odd slithering sound, a cross between what you might hear if you overturned a goblet of sand while a roomful of people whispered poetry in a foreign tongue.

I know your next question. No, there is no way of opening the box. At least no way that I can discern. Many hours have been wasted (?) seeking a way to open this simple container. Raiding my daughter’s toy chest again, I scooped up a magnifying glass and examined every square millimeter of the darn thing. No seams indicating a lid to be found. There isn’t even anything I can make out to be a lock, unless the lock is so tiny as to fit within or behind one of those mysterious gemstones.

Where did I get it? That’s the strangest part.

We bought our first home, a “starter” home, six years ago last spring. My wife was pregnant with our first child, so me and a buddy basically moved all of our furniture, clothes, and other stuff up from an apartment forty miles south, over the course of a long weekend. We thought we were done Monday night when Steve called out from just outside the front door, “Hey guys, what’s this?”

On our porch was the box.

Some kind of housewarming gift? Something we overlooked, perhaps some keepsake from my wife’s youth? No on both counts. None of us recalled leaving it there while unloading the truck. I glanced up and down the street. No one was out. Indeed, what had been a gorgeous day had turned dark and cloudy, my nose telling me a thunderstorm was a near possibility that night.

I brought it into our house, and by the end of the week it found a place in the basement, on a shelf next to the hot water boiler.

I take it down once or twice a month for study.

And now I ask you the question that never entirely leaves me mind, day or night:

What’s in the box?