Trash

I guess this is another "story of stuff," a variation on the one in the post below. Where my daughter lives, there was no garbage collection. (She's just this last week managed to arrange to have it collected once a month.) So the stuff never goes anywhere. Or it didn't. In this photo she's just starting a recycling program. In a matter of weeks, the kids in her canton gathered 16,000 bottles. (They counted because it was a competition.)

I was thinking about this because it's Monday, the day I get to take out the trash. I hate to admit it, but I love throwing things away. There's something so therapeutic about getting rid of stuff. I like to think it just evaporates from my curb.

Sometimes I wish there were parts of my life I could put in there, too, bad memories, mean and sad moments, slips of the tongue, an entire summer of rain, a college romance (maybe that's the wrong word for it), terrible decisions. I guess that's why Catholics go to confession. And many to therapists. Me, I would rather talk to a large black bag, something I could close up with a tight knot and have trucked far, far away . . .