Little Mima had always loved reading, watching cartoons and movies, and dreaming. She dreamed of strange worlds she had read about and created her own. She connected reality with imagination, merged the past and the present, and dreamed of the future. In these daydreams, the most common magical object was a music box.
She had often read about them as relics of the past—about boxes that, when opened and with their first notes, would awaken an indescribable nostalgia in those who heard them, along with all the emotions, memories, and untold stories.
Perhaps the best representation of such boxes is the little music box from the animated movie Anastasia. The story of a lost princess from the Romanov royal family and the final recognition and reunion of a grandmother and granddaughter—through the melody of a small music box. A box that seemed to hold an entire world inside, an entire family’s story, and even the story of a whole country.
That’s why I decided back then: If I didn’t have a music box that could bring back existing memories, both known and unknown, then I had to get a new one—one with which I would start my own tradition and bring the magic to life.
For one Christmas, my grandparents fulfilled our wish and bought Ana and me each a jewelry box. As similar as they were, these two boxes were also different—just like my sister and me. Each had its own charm. When wound up, mine played the enchanting melody of Mozart’s Für Elise, while Ana’s melody was one I could never recognize among the well-known classical compositions (which doesn’t mean it wasn’t one).
What made Ana’s box special was the little dancing couple that twirled while the music played. And just like those small differences, we, too, are different today. Her life is dance, and she adores it—it is a part of her. And me… music itself has always been more important to me.
I could sit next to my box for hours, winding it up endlessly and imagining stories about it with my eyes closed. How old was it? Who did it belong to? What had been kept inside? Who had gifted it to its previous owner? And so on, endlessly. A new story every time, new characters—never entirely real, since the box was brand new, but close enough because they must have been part of a family. That was what mattered.
Those boxes remained in my childhood home, in the country where I was born and raised.
I moved away, got married, and had Sofia. My grandmother left Serbia for the first time when she heard I was pregnant. Despite being nearly 80 years old, she applied for a passport for the first time, embarked on a long journey without hesitation, and never once doubted her decision.
She came a second time a few months after Sofia was born. And she visited several more times after that. But that first time, when she saw Sofia, was special in many ways.
During one of our walks, at my grandmother’s request, the three of us went into a nearby store that sold all sorts of trinkets—household necessities and the biggest little nonsense items that no one would ever truly need, yet someone would still buy. On one of the shelves in that store, there were snow globes. I had never owned one, but I had always wanted one. I had never told my grandmother this, yet she always somehow knew how to fulfill my wishes before I even voiced them.
She picked one of the globes, which had a beautiful angel inside, and said: “I want to buy this for Sofia, so she will always remember her great-grandmother Bia.” I didn’t object.
Although she was too little to hold it herself, from the very first day, Sofia was mesmerized—first by the music that played when the globe was wound up, and then by the magic of the trapped snow that never stopped falling over the little angel with folded hands.
That globe now sits in our living room. Sofia is older now and can take it and wind it up on her own, which she does quite often.
Since last week, every time she talks to her grandpa—my dad—somewhere toward the end of their conversation, she asks him to turn on his music boxes, while she winds up her snow globe at the same time. She then sits by the phone, listening to the cacophony of different yet so similar sounds, without blinking.
In her eyes, I recognize little Mima from years ago, who dreamed so vividly—perhaps of something just like this. And in the eyes of grown-up Mima, a few tears always appear, ones she tries to hide.
Magical boxes and music that tell a family story. Feelings, distances, losses.
If I didn’t have an inherited music box with a story behind it, my daughter now has two. One was bought for her mother by her great-grandmother and is waiting for her in a distant home, and the other belongs only to her—it is here, always within sight.
Great-grandmother Bia is no longer with us.
But the music remains, and with each note, it brings her back exactly where she was not so long ago.
And as long as that music and those boxes exist, Sofia will have her own little nostalgic story about a wonderful person who loved her beyond words—even before she was born. She will have an angel watching over her and memories that will surely never fade—at least, not as long as we are here.
And so, at 30, I have received my own story about family and heritage, passed down in small ways from generation to generation. Now, my music box holds far more value than ever before. Now, its sounds trigger a flood of mixed emotions and streams of tears down my cheeks—not just from sadness that she is gone, but from joy that she was ever here.
Thank you, Grandma.
Your Mimče
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