Trash Day: Tiny True Stories #3
Getting deep (or not) about a crow and garbage
Welcome!
to the third edition of Tiny True Stories! If you’re new here, hello, and thank you! I’m so happy to see you.
A special hello to all of you who subscribed after reading last month’s post about my miscarriage. I am honored by the absolute DELUGE of kind messages I received of people sharing their own brutal stories: strangers, colleagues, former professors, long-lost college, high school, and middle school (!) friends, friends of friends, and even close friends. Thank you, thank you for sharing with me. I’m so sorry.
Many said it feels better to know we aren’t alone, which is true, but for me it was heartbreaking to know so many people are suffering quietly, and want to talk about it, but can’t, for a thousand reasons. But I’m very glad to know that my story helped you feel the tiniest bit less terrible. I remain there, with you.
Today’s Tiny True Story
And now, maybe, for something a little lighter. Kind of.
Trash Day
On trash day, the lid had blown off the neighbors’ overflowing bin. It was a gray day, and I was taking my daughter out for a walk in the stroller because I didn’t know what else to do. She loves trash day. She points out every single bin on the street, says “uh-oh” when one is tipped on its side, no matter how many times I tell her it’s okay, things fall over sometimes. She loves the banging of the truck, listens for it coming from blocks away. Once it comes, we follow it through the neighborhood. The trash collectors wave to her. “Mommy, look!” she says. She never gets tired of looking.
As we left for our walk, my daughter noticed a crow perched on the edge of the neighbors’ overflowing bin, plucking at a plastic grocery bag. She was transfixed. The crow looked up at us for a minute, then kept going, his desire greater than his fear.
When I write this story, I can make it grotesque—the bins were wet and dripping from an early morning rain, mud from the gutters slopped along the sidewalk, the sky was gray, cold, I was sweating because I was overdressed, and the bird kept plucking at the bag, over and over, and got nothing.
I want to tell you instead that this was beautiful for my daughter. And it was, in a way; crows are glossy no matter how gray the sky, and its beak on the plastic was sharp, precise, decisive.
But of course it’s simpler than that. Children are smarter than adults because, for a little while, they can see things as they are, without the weight of interpretation. (Look at how I put my own shit on this crow: watch this crow, on a trash day, so decisive; I never know what I’m doing, never feel like I’m doing the right thing, the crow never doubts himself.) But even that is not so simple. Now my daughter is three, and now she says things like “What is that crow doing? Why?” and I might say, “He’s hungry!” and she says “Why?” and more and more I do not have answers for her.
Let’s cut away the rest. Let’s look right at the thing and see it as clear as we can. It’s beautiful; it’s grotesque; my daughter was just laughing at the funny bird, the way the bird held onto a precipice and tried and tried again, and never fell.
Today’s Letters of Recommendation
Paying writers a living wage! It’s Labor Day Weekend! If you haven’t heard, many writers (members of the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, a union for Hollywood writers) are on strike for a fairer contract. Most writers are barely making ends meet, not living large, and contracts built for syndication no longer make sense in a world of streaming. For context, SAG-AFTRA members need to make at least $26,470 annually to qualify for health insurance. Only 12.7% of them make enough to do so. (You can read more about that here!) You enjoy so much of what you enjoy (podcasts, movies, TV) because of writers. Help support them in their strike here!
My friend Meg has a new book out now, called “This Is a Book for People Who Love Dogs”! This is a book for dog lovers written by a poet. You’re going to want to get it asap.
This poem by Clint Smith:
You can hear him read it here, in this interview with Stephen Colbert.
A really good egg, fried in lots of butter.
Until next month, everyone.
I do not see you on the blue sky app. Do you need a code?
"Children are smarter than adults because, for a little while, they can see things as they are, without the weight of interpretation." <-- this thing, 10000%. This sense of possibility and curiosity -- I keep wondering how we can reclaim this as adults.