I suppose that title should read, “Past Life in Boxes”.  Yesterday David and I went to the warehouse in Canton, Mass. in which over sixteen years of our lives repose–and not in splendor.  In 1994, with sons five and two in tow, we moved to London.  I won’t say anymore about that because, after these months of writing, if the subject of being a stranger in a strange land were a dead horse, it would be glue by now.

When we left Brooklyn we put some stuff in storage, as you do.  After all, we were on temporary assignment, two years, three at the most, and no doubt about it, we’d need some of that stuff when we returned.  And…we don’t.  Oh sure, David’s journal from his Junior Year Abroad (“Dear Diary, I can’t believe how much I miss Ellen” yeah, neither can I), the lock of hair from James’s first hair cut, our Senior Theses (‘Alien Victorians: The Pre-Raphaelite Movement’, ‘Sonia Delauney: The Forgotten Modernist’), my Vassar diploma, some things are worthy.

But, we don’t need mismatched baby shoes, stained snowsuits, even more stained onsies and a 1992 world map puzzle that assures us it is “Up To Date!”

That picture of David with the high school crew team is cute, for sure, and I look terrific in the one with Richard Simmons (wait, what?).  The first five of the birthday letters my father has written each grandchild for the past 21 years are so precious they should have been archived more carefully, and the pictures of my sister and me dressed up for Halloween as a couple of very short beatniks (berets, bongos, 1965) are priceless.

But really, this little assemblage?  That’s a key to someone else’s apartment in Brooklyn (an apartment I coveted, true), an empty box of Certs (was it empty when we packed it?), a superball, a pad of stick-less sticky notes (the tape is still sticky, though!) and what seems to be a selection of felt dots.  We also found (and this is just a sampling) a sewing machine that even Mr. Singer wouldn’t claim, video tapes, several “My First Christmas” bibs, two high chairs, a stroller, a rusted ironing board, hair dryers, blenders, a wicker swinging cradle that I am sure I stole from Rosemary’s baby, and this slide.

It looked so big when the kid from 7B fell off it and got a concussion in 1993.  It seemed too expensive to just throw away when I packed up in June of 1994.  My 21, 19 and 13-year old children didn’t indicate that they still wanted it, so it will go where other hazardous toys do: yard sale.  You should have seen the shudder that rolled through me when I opened the box of my maternity clothes.  Let me tell you, if those bibbed smocks, stretch-paneled trousers, flap-fronted industrial cotton nursing bras and giant underpants are any indication of what was ever considered stylish or even wearable, it’s a wonder pregnant women choose life at all.

So after the four hours we spent in Indiana Jones’s warehouse full of crates all marked ‘Ark of the Covenant: Miscellaneous’, David and I came away with a few meaningful mementos, hacking dust-induced coughs, uncontrolled hysteria and a reindeer-shaped cookie cutter.  Who could ask for more?  Well, those things and that photo of me with Richard Simmons.

Oh come on, I love that dress.