Dumpster Mom

So one year when I'd say goodbye to Lilly at school, I'd run around and stand by this rose growing on a vine on the fence and wait to wave at her going into her classroom. That rose and I spent a year, me standing next to her and picking off her dead leaves - just touching her up while I waited for my little girl to go into her 2nd grade classroom.

This year I have a different view.

I drop her at the gate and then I run around the side and I get to stand next to the big blue dumpster. Heaving its dumpsterness at me.
I have to squeeze in along the fence because Dumpster has the prime spot, and so I am shoved between Dumpster and fence waving like an idiot at my 4th grader. There are no other dumpster mothers. It's just me. And a lady who stands a little farther away, in the tasteful section of the parking lot, kind of looking sorrowfully at me.

I am sure by the end of the year, I will be hugging the dumpster and we will be as close as the rose and I were. Sharing the journey. And collecting trash.