Garbage Removal: Part One

Part One of Two


A friend burst into my kitchen this morning, brandishing a newspaper and spitting fire.

“Look what they’ve done to us!” she exploded. She snapped the paper open in my face. “I know you never read the paper,”—no frittering time with mere accusation this, but straight on to angry indictment—“so I’m reading this to you!” She spewed the reading at me, her raging voice reciting an article that detailed our city’s revision of policies and procedures regarding garbage removal.

Garbage removal? I wondered in amusement. She’s furious about garbage removal? I took a deep breath, struggling to concentrate on the words rather than the rancor. It was a good decision, for it enabled me to pull away from my friend’s fury.

Such beginnings to a day are difficult for me. My home is a peaceful place; quiet; alive with contentment. In the mornings, when my husband and I flow toward the day like parallel streams thawing from a winter’s freeze, ours is a home of particular gentleness. The day will muddy our individual waters soon enough, thank you; we needn’t stomp through the silt first thing upon waking. So we putter about our rising rituals, wrapping each other in soft hugs, talking quietly, toasting the new day with a glass of water to splash down our vitamins. We have survived the years of hectic mornings gathering lunchboxes and homework papers, scrambling for matching shoes, refereeing escalating wars between siblings who wake in a contentious mood and can’t seem to get off to school without passing it along. We’ve lived long enough that it’s just us now, thawing the edges of sleep in the warmth of each other’s company.

So my friend’s early morning outburst was all the more unsettling for my lack of preparedness. I was, after all, still comfortable; vulnerable, one might even say, as it hadn’t occurred to me to gird my emotional loins, there in the kitchen, with the coffee pot gurgling and the cardinals feeding on sunflower seeds just outside the window. I was ambushed.

The cardinals, as it turned out, were a blessing. I could look at them and appear appropriately pensive. While my friend assumed I was giving careful thought to her reading, I could take a deep breath and gather my wits. Her words began to filter in through a sturdier receiver, now fortified by a shield of reason. Garbage removal, eh? Collection cut to one day a week, huh? Citizens having to pay more money for excess trash, are they?

“That’s great!” I jumped about the kitchen, arms raised in victory. “It’s about darned time! This is terrific!”

She stopped her reading, momentarily silenced by my unwelcome exuberance. “And…” she growled, continuing her reported litany.

“Can you believe it?” I wouldn’t be stopped. “It means we’ll start recycling more! Less landfill! Less poisoning of the earth!”

“Just where do you think we’re going to recycle,” she snapped, “since they won’t even take most of the plastics I put in the bin now?”

The discussion went on for the better part of our three-mile walk through the woods. If my friend caught the irony of that argument taking place in that setting, she never mentioned it. By the time we returned to the heavy scent of coffee, we’d agreed to co-cycle all acceptable products: we would collect the magazines, cardboard boxes, computer paper, various plastics and other recyclables from our homes each week, and carpool their delivery to the nearest recycling center that would accept a wider range of materials. My grin beat her glower.

[to be continued]