Member-only story
Reflections on Identity
Packing Up a Life and Marriage
When It’s Time to Move On
A photo pops up on my phone on Sunday evening. I open it and quickly glance at it while stirring a pot of soup. I squint to make out the image without my reading glasses: two stacks of translucent plastic bins, five in all.
“What am I looking at?” I text back.
“Your stuff!” responds D, my ex-husband. “I put it all nicely in storage for you, so you can go through it at your convenience. I paid for two months, so no rush!”
I see right through his exclamation points— his attempt to mask guilt with enthusiasm. He and I both know what this really is: I am, finally, being kicked out of his house. The exclamation points do not soften the blow.
I recall some of what is in these bins: the white eyelet dress I wore to my parents’ wedding, a stuffed white dog that my father gave me when I visited him in the hospital before he died, a biography of the dancer Maria Tallchief my mother bought for me when I was sick with bronchitis in the third grade.
I picture these items with vivid detail despite not having looked at them in over twenty years: the 95 cent price tag in the top right corner of the book, the jaunty red beret on the stuffed dog’s head, the kelly green trim on…
