Things the Garbage Men Won't Take

I love the miracle of the garbage men who cart away the rubbish in my life. They arrive so early to my house each Monday they seem like fairies in the night. No running curbside in my pajamas with a forgotten bag; I can never catch these tricky goblins. Plus it’s Monday; who is at their best speed on Monday morning? So yes, the bags and bundles must be flailing on the lawn the night before or they will spend another week stinking up the garage.

They take everything, these guys, and last week they were cursing my name, I am sure. The pile of garbage covered the tree lawn and spilled onto the sidewalk. The detritus of so many years hiding in my garage and attic and basement. Two mattresses that graced the big boy bed of my son, hand-me-downs sagging and stained. A broken table. Another table, functional but ugly. Five bags of regular garbage, banana peels and coffee grounds spilling from their bags. Two baby strollers. One broken soccer net. One thousand little toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals that I snuck into the bottom of the cans. A broken mirror. Already had my seven years of bad luck. It can go too while the guys are at it. An iron fireplace grate given to me by my neighbor. He’s gone too, but it was a beautiful Arizona lady that lured him away. A broken lamp. A piggy bank with no lid, the money already spent anyway. A broken ladder, covered in peach paint. A pile of empty boxes. A tiny bassinet for a baby doll. The little daughter that played with it has also vanished. Yet another table stained with homemade red silly putty and the two matching chairs that were always being used to scale the desk to the fish tank. The puffy slip from under my wedding dress worn so many years ago.

But its what the garbage men won’t take that I am thinking about today. They won’t take tires or fire extinguishers. They can’t be bothered with my broken heart or the bruised ego or giant vacuum of emptiness that are eating up my vision and soul. I even try to trick them like I did with the paint cans. Wrap up these inadequacies, brokenness, unspent dreams and squirrel them away in a box criss-crossed with duct tape. Duct tape covers a multitude of sins I know. But the garbage men caught me that day and ripped the taped boxes open before spilling the cans and paint all over the lawn. It looked like a crime scene. I know better than to sneak things into the garbage these days. And duct tape doesn’t work so well when dealing with feelings and dreams.

And so these things stink up my heart. The books I don’t read to my children. The deeds I don’t do for my sweet mother. The kind words I don’t say to my students. And most of all these days, the pile of garbage is filled with the dreams I never tried for myself, the harshness and emptiness I let others impose on me, the broken pieces that I can’t quite fit back together of the woman I used to be and the one I want to become. And that refuse is doing much more damage than the reeking moldy bags of cheese in my garage.