WITH

by Lisa

Tonight, we change the clocks and put out the Big Trash. These things coincide in our town, and both make me very happy.

Goodwill has become picky about furniture donations in the last few years. What Goodwill won’t take, we collectively “put out” with hope that someone in need will take it home before the trash truck takes it to the landfill. Some things on these streets are truly done in, but now and then, it’s the former owner that’s just done with it, ready to move to the next store-bought thing. Those are the best things on the curbs.

Once upon a time, when I was Without, I cruised the alleys looking for the next chair to replace the last chair that endured one Trash Season of use. Now that I am not Without, I drag used-up things to this alley and try to ignore what might be somewhere else, waiting. What’s really waiting is my half-empty storage unit that I’ll be loading into the Jeep for that last long drag across town. The Tiny Camper of the Future also hides some Big Trash-sized things that can leave us. Fall Big Trash came and went and I missed my chance. It was already cold, anyway.

Winter piles up on me like too many couches in one room, too many thoughts in my head in the early dark and the long night, not enough space anywhere to move. This weekend marks the turn. Since age five, I have looked at bare trees in February with hopelessness. It won’t happen. No Spring this year. No Summer, no sun, no glorious life-giving greenness, no flowers ever again. But then, like crocus blades, refrigerator boxes and broken shutters accumulated from last November to now begin to pop up on the streets. Carpet pads, cut into correct four-foot lengths and rolled and tied, fill the edges of the sidewalks. Huge black trash bags bulge into the road.

And daffodils soon follow.

I am curious, like our big beautiful dog, about what’s in that box and that bag, but he can sniff for both of us. I’ll keep my hands off. I’ll let him tell me all about it. There’s nothing in there that I need, unless it’s a disco ball.