Brass Music Box
There is a tiny brass music box that I was given when I was about 5 years old. It is the first thing I can remember someone outside my family giving me, and I still have it. His name was Alex, and he was a grown-up that I talked with sometimes. It's Swiss and plays an old Swiss song, on the end of a broken chain, tarnished, and it has been with me on every move I have ever been on. It seems so tiny, like it should have been lost, but whenever I move, there it is, and I play it once before packing it. Unplanned, it has become part of the ritual of moving.