She twirled, her blue tutu flounced, as she pirouetted around her glass floor, the mirror capturing and reflecting the performance to ‘London Bridge is falling down’. It was always a ‘must have’ highlight of our visits to Gran. “She’s an enchantress” Gran used to say, but that was as much information as we ever got. She teased and said all would be revealed “in the goodness of time.”
She died at home, Mum nursed her in my old bedroom, vacated when I scored the placement into University College. Gran’s multicoloured crocheted rug, her present to me on my tenth birthday, gave its comforting warmth back to her during that last winter.
I tried to get home every few weeks – ever enticed by Mum’s ‘Sunday Roast’ and a catch up with an increasingly enfeebled Gran. The music box inevitably played second fiddle as my late teenage years were taken up with girls, partying and study, but when Gran came to live at home, it reappeared on the little dressing table next to her bed, wound and ready to entertain. Whenever I was home, Gran loved lifting the lid and directing the ballet.
The tinkling, sometimes scratchy music was still able to provide treasured moments, and Gran was ever ready to claim centre stage. Her blotchy, wrinkled old hands would wind up the mechanism before the performance could proceed. We would be together, her in bed, me close, on the blankets. Precious times, memories that continue.
Mum is now the ‘Gran to my own couple of kids. She is the keeper of that little dancer and in our honoured family tradition, has the music box prominently set on the mantlepiece. She delighted in bringing it down when we visited – it was a guaranteed show-stopper for our four-year-old twins.
It was Christmas Eve. The children were beside themselves with excitement, Day Care having worked the kid’s anticipation levels to fever pitch. Mum had the tree decorated with all the old favourites, the angel that I had made in primary school still taking the top spot, the lights twinkling, a veritable bonanza of colourfully wrapped, beribboned boxes and packages buoying the day’s feverish energy levels.
There were excited squeals, laughter, tears and mayhem. Mum had a CD of carols ready and we all sang Jingle Bells, Rudolf and attempted Away in a Manger, interrupted finally with calls for ‘The Music Box!’
Mum obligingly got it down, wound the key and the ballet was off. I have a photo somewhere of that moment, the sheer wonderment on the twin’s faces, the little dancer, slightly out of whack, but memories attesting to her enchanting powers.
Time gets away. I had been promising a declutter for ages and was finally under the house, battling the spiderwebs. A box marked ‘Christmas stuff’ surfaced. Old decorations, an angel and a cardboard box – the Music Box. OMG, with bated, breath-holding anticipation, I gently wound the key as a lumpy throat and maybe even a tear fell, with London Bridge!