PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

She wore them with pride and strength; every toy carried a memory, a stage in her life, a story to tell. Only three blocks away from the Appia Antica park, walk straight ahead and then turn left. I remember the address as if it were my own, that old-wrinkled building always guided me towards her chamomile-tea smell and her stories to tell. Sometimes her stories left me laughing like bubbling champagne. Sometimes her stories made me cry rivers of tears. But most times, each story was a key to unlock her mind and all she hid behind those rimless glasses. My Great Aunt never failed to enchant me with her astonishing collection of so many shapes, sizes, colors and feelings carried by those toys. I’m still not clear-headed as to what stroke me; was it that they represented an alarming number of egg-shaped Italian chocolates my Aunt Fiammetta ate? Or whether she kept a mental database for when each toy was added to her shelf? Or maybe the fact that she could recite, without doubt, every story the toy had to tell? I remember the yellow racing car standing courageously on the fifth shelf; she used to tell the story about how she met my Great Uncle the day she found that toy inside the chocolate egg. I remember her saying that my Great Uncle, accompanied by the racing car, had a pace way too fast for her and had already gotten to the finish line, leaving her behind as wilted as the sunflowers she had on her porch. I remember she wore that story as a medallion and it wouldn’t have surprised me if half the citizens in Rome knew it as well. Every year we visited meant new toys, every year meant new stories, every year meant new life lessons. That was the special thing about my Great Aunt’s Kinder Egg toy collection; they truly represented her life’s timeline. All her ups and downs were scarred into each toy, her childhood memories, the love of her life, her adolescent years, even that time she went to jail. I’ll never truly know if the toys happened to be the exact date her stories happened. I’ll never truly know if the memories she told were truly and deeply hers. I’ll never truly know if each toy really carries a story or she just happened to be a chocolate lover that preferred an interesting lie over a boring truth. I’ll never truly know, but I like it better that way.