New Beginnings
She got out of her car, closed the door and ran through the rain. The storage room was in front of her - B11. Other people's compartments were on either side. The long, low building was one of dozens. Sovereign Storage the sign at the front gate read - Keep it safe - keep it locked.
She swallowed hard. The key felt cold and foreign in her hand. She almost turned around then, ready to run, almost decided she wasn’t strong enough to do this after all.
It was the fear that maybe she hadn’t come far enough to be here that finally made her move. She put one foot in front of the other and the next thing she knew she was at the lock. She fit her key in the slot and clicked it open. The garage style door clattered up and snaked into place along the ceiling. She flicked on the light switch. A lone bulb in the ceiling came on, illuminating a stack of boxes and furniture wrapped in blankets and bedding. The leftovers of her marriage were all there. The bed they had purchased at Immeubles Verdun and slept in for so many years. The desk he had used at McGill University and had finally given up on. The sectional they had bought because they thought that a whole family would be able to sit on it and watch television. But that never happened, and she hadn’t come here for those things - the reminder of who she’d been. She reminded herself that she had come to make a specific attempt to finally put the most painful stage of her life behind her.
She worked through the boxes, moving first one and then another as she made her way deeper into the storage unit. Finally, she found what she was looking for. It was tucked away in the back corner - a trio of boxes marked Nursery.
She should simply take the boxes and put them in her car but she couldn’t. Instead, she knelt on the cold cement floor and opened them. The Winnie the Pooh lamp lay on a stack of pink flannel bedding. She had wondered how it would feel to look at these items, each so carefully chosen, none of them ever used. They were like bits and pieces of her heart, lost along the way.
She picked up a tiny white ‘onsie’ that was rolled into a ball and held it to her nose. There was no smell except for that of cardboard. No baby powder or Johnson baby shampoo. Of course there wasn’t - no baby had worn this, or wakened to the light that shone from the Winnie the Pooh Honey-Bucket lamp.
She closed her eyes, remembering her baby, remembering every nuance of the nursery, remembering the night she had packed all this away. In her mind she saw a tiny dark-haired baby girl with her Daddy’s blue eyes.
She slowly got to her feet again. It was time for all these things to come out of the bleak darkness of the storage unit. They were meant to be used, played with. They were meant for a baby’s room and she was finally prepared to now give them to the Shelter for Families In Need. One by one, she carried the boxes to her car and one by one she stepped toward her new tomorrow, her tears now mixed with the raindrops of the afternoon shower.
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