As I opened the wood slatted doors to the storage space in the back of my apartment’s garage, standing on a chair borrowed from the teens habitat in a neighboring stall, I felt claustrophobically close to 8, tip toeing down the upstairs landing.

It had been just over a week since I’d cleared this ambry of wanton relics, brought down the boxes, the green suitcase. But it smelled like mother’s house of cats and was covered in the dust and cobwebs of a much longer time.

Of late my free time had been spent renovating the inside of our two bedroom apartment. Deciding to stay put desired a makeover, one I was more than willing to sport after months of looking, calculating and recalculating a house. No, I would just wave a brush over each room and take down, put outside the green suitcase. What need is there for memories in the presence of brass rose light-switch plates and gold-sprayed crown molding?

And yet there I stood on a borrowed chair after dropping the kids to school, after pulling the car in and back out again for what, coffee? The gigantor dog stared ahead at me through our tiny car, refusing to exit, convinced life happened on the road. The garage ports were quiet. The complex was typically void of any hoorah sans that time Sarah took out John with a light saber and the police came. This morning, like the attic down the hall to the right, the one with the door that never quite closed and went creak in the night, this slatted cavern was deep enough to make finding that one thing painful, shallow enough to touch my way back through the dark.

On tip toes I coerced the green suitcase from it’s habit, flopped it around this way and that as a means to put it’s opening right in front, ripping tears from the ducts of my life. I’m tired of this as I unzipped. I’m sad for this as I dug through. I’m angry at this as I stacked up. Pictures in books of pages in piles un-named and dated. Arms full I left there, the green suitcase unzipped.