On the right side were the holidays. Green and red tubs filled with Christmas ornaments. The orange crates held Halloween. Easter didn’t have a container, so you’d put the toy rabbits in a clear plastic bag along with three pink vinyl baskets, one for each daughter. You flash on the many mornings your girls ripped open packages under the tree or mad scrambled to collect candy-filled eggs. Sarah would put a ten-dollar bill into three golden eggs, hoping each child would find only one. The odds of that happening were not good and so you had to whisper clues to each daughter. The night before, after the children had gone to sleep, you and Sarah filled the eggs with candy then hid them. Your wife stayed up super late arranging baskets on the couch, creating a perfect still life overflowing with chocolate bunnies, American Girl accessories, iPods and so much more. You always thought she went too far, spent too much. Now a dead spider was stuck in its own web on the porcelain statue of the Easter Bunny.

To your left were neatly stacked opaque, plastic containers filled with Sarah’s green glass collection, still bubble-wrapped from the previous move, as well as other platters and vases and pottery that will never be opened by you or Sarah again. The hoarding and collecting phase of your marriage was a good one, when you were building a nest together. History now. In twenty or thirty years your daughters might open these tubs looking for treasure…for answers. More likely they won’t give a shit. Somewhere in the stacks is the wedding china; a frilly ornamental pattern neither of you would ever chose now. Picking it out had meant the world to Sarah; so much so she’d made you take off work and go to the department store to see it. She had been so excited it made you excited. Sadly, that phase of your marriage was over.

To be continued…