More Lessons In Recycling...

As Friday is trash collection day, Thursday nights usually find our neighborhood recycle bins being picked over by a rotating assortment of interesting characters depending on the week - a homeless man with Turrets and a flashlight, and a little Indian woman named Jarona (I think) among them.

Then last night, as Dean and I were returning from our occasional Mex & Margarita night, recyclers we'd never met or seen before - a man in an electric wheelchair with three young girls who must have been his daughters, the wheelchair flanked on either side by two or three large garbage bags full of cans and bottles for which they'll get paid pennies a piece, probably at the recycling center at the Ralph's down the street.

And I didn't want them to feel uncomfortable in our presence, so when I got out of the car, I smiled and waved and asked them if they needed another bag. One of the girls translated to Spanish for her dad, and I could hear him say to her "solamente una," so I looked at him, held up my index finger, and said "Just one? I'll be right back." and I went into the house to grab another bag and collect whatever cans and bottles we hadn't already put in the container.

I came out with a big, black trash bag and four beer bottles, handed them over, and said, "Have a nice weekend!" To which the father smiled and waved back, and the girls wished me the same.

And then in an instant, as if I'd drunk one margarita too many (which I hadn't), I went back into the house and started crying for them. For the dad in the wheelchair who probably couldn't walk or work, and the three little girls, two of whom looked like they could be Joey's and Maddi's ages and one much younger, who had to spend their Thursday night picking through garbage cans for recyclables to help their dad pay for who knows what. Nobody does that with their children if they don't have to...

But then Dean put his arms around me and said, "It's ok, babe. They're working together, and they're being a family. Together."

After taking a few seconds to consider what he was saying, it occurred to me that the girls weren't sad or ashamed to see us pull up, and the dad looked me in the eye and smiled when he thanked me for the bag. And when Dean went back out to water the lawn, he saw the dad barreling ahead in his powered wheelchair, the girls skipping and laughing behind him. I, too, could hear their laughter from inside the house.

And in that moment, I was reminded...

That poverty was in my mind, not theirs. That whatever feelings I might have for them - amity, empathy, compassion, perhaps - pity should not be among them.

And that dignity and joy are always ours to have, if we choose them.

shinae