Possibilities Boxes

The boxes were stacked to the ceiling and left only a narrow path for Lucinda to navigate. Her childhood home now unrecognizable. The formal living room on the left side was completely blocked off and Lucinda was sure her mother had filled every available space with her possibilities boxes.

That was what her mother called them as she filled each one with pieces of her life, Lucinda's, Amy's, their fathers and her mothers. There was every test and essay each of the girls had ever written all neatly marked on the outside in childish block lettering. A box devoted to every year of their lives. Every Christmas, Thanksgiving, party that happened and those that only happened in her mothers head. Boxes from the old house on Olive Street that had never been unpacked.

Each box a real or imagined moment that her mother compulsively captured and sealed shut. Lucinda wondered how many boxes had her name written on them.

"Luci, are you in here?" Amy asked.

"In the back," Lucinda said as she tried to pull a box down without bringing all of them crashing on top of her.

"Jesus Christ, Amy said, "It smells like formaldehyde in here."

"It's the boxes," Lucinda said. "Help me move this over," she motioned to the box on the floor.

"Where?" Amy asked. "There's nowhere to put it."

"Just push it out of the way so I can try and see if we can get into the kitchen." Amy grabbed the box and dragged it away from the pile. The tape gave way and the contents spilled onto the floor.

"Look at all this," Amy said, as she combed through dozens of dried out paint brushes, pencils, ribbons and crumpled up scraps of paper.

"Remember this?" Amy asked, holding up a shadow box filled with the decayed remnants of flowers. Lucinda took the box and a felt a familiar tightness building in her chest.

Suddenly she was six years old. Her mother had taken them to the park and told her and Amy to go pick wild flowers. She had collected a few and gone back to show her mother when she saw her sitting on a bench a strange man next to her. They were holding hands and then... She remembered and that was exactly the problem.

"Well?" Amy asked, waving it at her. "Do you don't want it?"

"We're going to need a dumpster or three," Lucinda said, taking the box out of her hand and tossing it on the floor. The glass shattering cathartic. All the memories. Being here. Everything was coming back. Everything she tried to forget was coming back all at once.

She felt her sisters arm around her.

"Breathe," Amy said. "Damn it. I'm sorry. I didn't realize how hard this would be."

"I just want to burn it all," Lucinda said. "Every box, every scrap of paper. Everything."

"It's not going to change things."

"Maybe not. But this. Leaving everything like this. All these boxes. She had to have known how hard it would be."

"I don’t think she had a choice.”

“But we do,” Lucinda said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a lighter.

That afternoon Lucinda filled a small 10 x 10 box with the few pictures she had of her mother, taped it up and wrote Possibilities Jeanne 1956 on the outside. Rest in peace mom, she whispered.