Nell Minow

This is not the box I am going to tell you about. But it is another box from a collection, or, I should say, collections, assembled by my grandfather. He died before I was born, and my parents gave me his initials to honor his memory. He never went to high school but he read everything he could, and he was a sophisticated and erudite man and his love for antiques and curios and his eye for anything especially beautiful or witty or unusual was passed on to my mother. He had many collections including the books of Lafcadio Hearn and engraving blocks by the English artist Thomas Bewick. But he especially loved antique wooden boxes. 

His widow was my grandmother, a woman of the old school who thought praise would spoil you. She was not the kind of grandmother to bake cookies and give bedtime kisses, but she had a mischievous twinkle in her eye. When she died, my mother found that she left notes on almost everything in her apartment with directions on who should get each item (some clearly showing that her designations had changed over time). Mom could not figure out how to open one box, so she brought it to dinner with the family. Our cousin Peter found a hidden button on the bottom that made the box’s lid pop open. My grandmother’s last note was inside: “To be fought over.”

We gave Peter that box, but I got this one.