Ridiculous things. He has things. She has things. They have stuff.
Antique Candlesticks, Georgian, Late Victorian, Some turn of the century curiosities that appear like a fabulous beast from a medieval bestiary, 3 clawed feet, feathered body, a neck that grotesquely curves to hold the stem in it's beak, Rococo.
Dolls, the old ones that tip and their eyes open and shut, porcelain or with cracked and blistering paint. A pair of old folk-dolls, home-made, shaped people sewn together and stuffed with cloth then features painted on, from a farmhouse.
Art supplies, drawers filled with things it would take a hundred lifetimes to use. Old oil paint tubes, foil, the life squeezed from them or dried up, labels, of wine they drunk and laughed to, the skull from a marmot picked from a high mountain scree. The rattles and fangs from a rattlesnake, found flattened on the road. Buttons, in every pattern, size and color, bits of yarn, string.
The collection, a map of their wanderings, the treasures found together and separate, their tastes, idiosyncratic.
A left-handed conch shell, having been told of Chirality, that in seashells this is rare, very, and that once upon a time it was different, all shells curved in the other direction - and so, this a commonplace curiosity that anyone could recognize but only a select few would appreciate.
The strings to an old violin, keys from a flute, a clarinet, mother of pearl from an old trumpet, old books with leather covers and spines, Catholica, reliquaries, a bottle of holy water from Lourdes, an old font, Antique printing boxes to show off their small collections; Box Number One: an ancient Bronze Roman coin with Trajan's bust, sea shells and brain corals picked from the beaches on tropical vacations, an ivory chess piece (knight), 4 Postage stamps (Paris, Berlin, New York, Prague), An antique postcard of an old bearded scholar surrounded by books, black and white, a quartz crystal, a tapered and flattened beach pebble with a hole drilled through the smaller end, a fairy point, an arrowhead, these artifacts found along the riverbank leading to an entire collection of artifancies, flint knives, spear points, Indian Hammers and rocks that surely were something, just feel how they fit the hand, but their purpose as yet eludes them. A whole summer walking probable creeks and watching the banks from which they might erode, beautiful fall nights when the leaves were turning, sunset glimmering on the creek, the quietude of one's thoughts. I digress.
3 Old Magic Lantern Slides - 3 Oriental Ladies enacting the "hear, see, speak" no evil motif, an old lead type letter P, a piece of amber with fly inset and what appears to be the furry leg of a spider emerging from milky clouds, a fossilized elk tooth, a robins blue egg, an antique skeleton key, Georgian probably, and the cast iron front-piece to a keyhole...
There are the Items that defy explanation, every-bodies life is made up of these; improbable things, fancies, ideas, lay them out like the bowerbird and see who finds value in them; the provenance as it were. The roadmap of their relationship so far. Box Number One - The Springtime of their relationship.