Recycling
Prologue
One of my fond childhood memories was going to the dump with my dad.
In those days, "the dump" was a big hole or pit dug in the ground, big as half a football field. Most of the dirt from the hole was trucked out and used as landfill somewhere else. People paid a few bucks at the entrance, drove to the edge of the pit, and threw stuff in.
The "stuff" could be as innocuous as grass clippings and old newspapers, or as toxic as antifreeze, paint, old televisions, refrigerators... The bigger or noisier the stuff was, the more fun it was for me to push off the edge and watch it tumble and crash down below.
When the smell or level of stuff in the pit neared the top, dirt was dumped back over it, packed down, and grass planted. Another pit was dug somewhere else, and so it went.
Admittedly, there were downsides to the old dumps. Years later, the huge subsurface chemical compost piles would endanger ground water, seep methane gas into nearby basements, and create dangerous sinkholes as the ground continued to settle.
But still... it was a lot more fun than recycling.
Nowadays, people in our city have to separate different kinds of stuff into different containers picked up on different days by different trucks for different disposition. It's a big pain in the ass.
And woe to anyone that puts the wrong stuff out on the wrong day! Such gaffes could result in strongly worded letters from the city. In melodramatic prose they explain how nothing less than heroic intervention at the recycling center had saved us all from the apocalyptic mixing of metal soup cans with plastic milk bottles.
My wife has always been happy to let me deal with our household's waste processing responsibilities. I've tried to get her and our boys to help separate stuff during the week, but in the end it's always me sorting it out in the garage.
And with that, the stage is set for our little story...
Chapter 1
The rain had been falling steadily all day, as it's been known to do in Portland, Oregon. The somniferous white noise drumming on the roof had put me to sleep on the couch, well before Letterman came on the air.
I was dreaming of a cabin; a bed and breakfast on the Oregon coast, where my wife Jennifer and I had once vacationed in the long lost time before children.
In my dream, the sound of the rain on the roof had turned into the sounds of the surf on the beach. Jen and I were lying together on a lounge chair, hiding from the morning chill under a thick blanket. I could taste the sweet afterglow of hot chocolate in my mouth; the empty cups were on the deck next to us.
We watched seagulls hanging nearly stationary before us as they faced directly into the steady breeze off the ocean, like airplane models in a wind tunnel, flying but going nowhere. The wind's constant force had made all the trees and bushes near the beach list away from the ocean, conceding to the wind the sculpture of their shape as the price of their survival.
Jen gently shifted her shoulder that was touching mine. It was intimate; it was soothing. I sighed contentedly. We snuggled together without a care in the world.
The lounge chair dipped briefly under me. A second sensation joined the touch on my shoulder, this one a grasping of my hip. I couldn't say if it was a moment or an hour later, when I was gently rolled onto my back.
I kept my eyes closed, stubbornly holding on to the thinning threads of my pleasurable unconsciousness. It was Jen who I felt roll now, coming to a stop lying flush on top of me. I caught the scent of her hair. I could feel her curvy body resting on mine, from her chest on my chest, and on down to where she notched my shin bones into the cleft between her big toes and the accompanying rows of smaller toes.
I resisted as long as I could, but when I could feel her breath rippling the hair of my mustache, I had to give in. I cracked my eyes open, just enough to see my beloved wife's face inches from mine, a mischievous glint in her eye.
"How's my
big... strong... man...
doing?" she asked, using her best imitation of a breathy Marilyn Monroe wishing JFK a happy birthday.
I looked up at her suspiciously, blinking to bring her into focus.
"Hmgfhumf."
"Really? That good, eh?"
"Hmph."
"I know what you mean, sweetheart. I hadn't realized tomorrow was paper recycling day either."
"Oh,
son
of a..."
Before I could complete the oath, she plastered her lips to mine, playfully opening her mouth wide to trap the vowels, narrow enough to catch the consonants.
I soon stopped struggling and returned the kiss, wrapping my arms around her to hold her to me. When I tentatively touched her lips with my tongue, she made a surprised little squeak and returned the favor.
But when I began gently rolling her from side to side in my embrace from below, rubbing her body over mine, she pulled back from my lips with a loud smack.
"Hold it right there, buster," she said sternly. "You get paid
after
you do the recycling, not before."
"But I'm not awake yet. I shouldn't use power tools when I'm sleepy."
"We've already discussed that. If you become disabled, I'm supposed to turn off the machines."
"That's only if I'm brain dead in a coma; not euthanized for stitches in my hand!"
"Oh. Well, six of one and half a dozen of the other."
"What?"
"You say potato, and I say patahtoe."
"I do have this stuff in my will, you know."
"Are you sure? Your filing system is so bad I'll probably never find it."
I sighed in resignation. "I guess I'll just have to take my chances."
She slid sensuously off me, stood and held out her hand to help me up.
My lady sure seemed to be... lascivious, the last few days. Who was I to complain? I kept the image of her sultry expression firmly in mind as I busily collected the waste cans from around the house, taking them out to my sorting area in the garage.
My sorting duties are considerably smaller now that my sons are away at college. You could never tell what you'd find in the cans from their rooms. In one respect it's too bad — emptying their garbage cans was one way to see what they were up to. It was the way we found out when they became sexually active, and... oh, sorry... too much information.
The recycling containers are large plastic cans on wheels that get rolled to the curb on each can's designated day of the week. The cans have a bar in front that the collecting trucks hook with a hydraulic arm. The arm plucks the can off the curb, sweeps it up to dump it in the back of the truck, and then returns the can to earth with a loud empty sounding thump. (Garbage people have never had it so easy.)
Bending over to sort stuff isn't great for my back, so I've built a waist high workbench among the cans in the garage. I can easily sort stuff on top of the workbench and just push it off the edges into the different cans; no post-sorting stoop labor involved.
After the bathroom, kitchen, and rec room cans come the cans from our office areas. Both Jen and I have nooks in the house with phones and internet connections, where we work from home occasionally. Mostly they're hideaways for bill paying, letter writing, and story writing.
Despite the many times I've gotten after her about it, Jen still doesn't take protecting us from identity theft seriously. I bought a shredder for her office, and parked it right at her feet. But she still occasionally tosses bank statements or credit card applications into her wastebasket un-shredded.
Rather than keep nagging her about it, I eventually resigned myself to pawing through the paper from her office before pushing it into the blue can. I didn't really mind. It was just one of the little accommodations that husbands and wives make for each other.
I imagine that since I'd stopped mentioning it to her, she didn't realize I was still sifting through the paper from her office.
Jen's office waste can was unusually full this week; it looked like she'd done some sort of filing cabinet purge. It was so full that I almost compromised my household data security responsibilities.
But I realized that if she'd done some kind of office housecleaning, there could be a
lot
of the wrong kind of stuff in there. So I buckled down and started in, pushing items that passed inspection into the blue can, nearly page by page.
That's how I found the letter.
It was sandwiched between two of the seemingly millions of clothing catalogs she gets in the mail; I normally would have missed it. It was hand written, tri-folded as if it had once fit into a mailing envelope. It was in a handwriting I didn't recognize... at first.
My Dearest Jenny,
Please forgive me for writing... but I'm already missing you. I'm still coming down from the emotions of last week.
My heart breaks a little more, every time I remember our wonderful night together... when you held my eyes with yours as you lay beneath me, the tears rolling down your cheeks.
I know you meant it when you said that it would have to be our last time together. I believed you when you said you were committed to Gerry.
But I can't help myself. I have to tell you what I'm feeling.
If you could see yourself the way I see you, you'd understand. You light up like the sun when we're together. I can't help but believe you have feelings as I do — that we haven't written the last chapter of our lives together.
When we made love, it was as if we'd never been apart. Yet only days later, the emptiness I feel now... It's as if we've been apart forever.
Please know that I love you still. I love you enough to take whatever part of you that you can offer.
The pain of separation I've felt after our bittersweet night together has been beyond belief. Yet I would gladly feel that pain again, if in exchange I can be with you, and hold you, and love you, as much as you will allow.
I am forever yours,
LB
