From the Vault: Secret Box

By Eilene Lyon

This is another artifact from my teen years in Guatemala. The painting on top of the handmade wooden box has chipped away in places, but depicts Volcán de Agua and Lake Atitlán. To give you an idea of the size, it’s just under 5 inches wide. The secret lies in knowing how to open the box.

Let’s see what my teen self decided to stash away in here. This is the first time I’ve opened the box in decades!

The glass vial actually predates our time in Central America. Before that, we lived in Pennsylvania. My friend, JoAnn, had a make-your-own-perfume kit, and this vial held my creation. I never lost the memory of the scent, and learned much later that it closely approximated pikake (the Hawaiian name for Arabian jasmine). I still like it, though I’m not a perfume person.

The ticket stubs all post-date Guatemala. Two are from Corvallis, Oregon (my second high school and Dad’s alma mater). Two are from when we lived at Wright-Patterson AFB in Fairborn, Ohio. That was where I attended my third (and final) high school.

The three concerts are The Doobie Brothers, Steve Miller Band, and Chicago. I went to quite a few others, but apparently these were my faves.

The white ticket was for the Sadie Hawkins Dance my sophomore year. I don’t recall going that year, but I did go my senior year. The guy I asked junior year turned me down flat. I did not date much in Fairborn, and I think that may have been the only official school dance I ever went to. Never Homecoming. Never Prom. A friend and I did get up to some mischief on prom night senior year, but that’s a whole other story.

The small key goes to my first diary, but the cheesy lock on that was twisted open a long, long time ago, so the key is worthless. The two flattened metal objects are a penny and nickel I put on the railroad tracks in Corvallis. FYI: they are hard to find after the train goes by.

The knotted leather was a bracelet I wore until it broke. I can’t recall the origin: when did I put it on? when did it break? No clue. There may be a photo of me wearing it somewhere, but that’s not something I’m willing to dig for!

Let’s see what’s in that miniscule Guatemalan band box. Perhaps that was the BIGGEST secret, and needed an extra layer of shrouding.

Finally, a few folded bits of paper. The largest is the first “love note” I ever received, from my buddy, Andrés. There’s a lot of teen angst in this one and very little love. And he spelled my name wrong! I think Andrés and I “went steady” for about 3 hours before I called it off.

Later, I had a big crush on the bass player in my older brother’s band. Bryan and I were in the same class, actually. We dated (and double-dated with brother Steve, who had a driver’s license) for many months.

I guess you could call this my second love letter. I thought Bryan was a bit serious and I knew we’d be moving back to the states, so I broke it off. I felt so bad about how it ended that I had a very hard time breaking up with anyone for a long time afterward. Maybe that’s why I never seriously dated again until I was a junior in college.

This last item is not from the box, but is a matching piece of handicraft. It’s a little notepad inside a carved and painted wood cover with a similar scene to the secret box. It’s also very small, maybe 2 inches wide. Hardly a size worth trying to write on.

Well, that’s a fun little trip down memory lane for me!