The Four Year War

Bela hates running errands with me. I've written this before; she is a home-body. But for some reason, nothing irritates her more than having to drive the recycling in.

If you are one of the many millions of people who live in the city of Chicago, you probably have a big blue recycling bin right next to your big black garbage bin lining the alley behind your house. Unless you happen to live on my street. 

A popular (and populous)  neighborhood, Ukrainian Village for some reason missed out on the big recycling program initiated several years ago around here. The city went from blue bags to blue bins, and while the rest of the city marched ahead into a new era, we pseudo-ukrainians got stuck collecting stinky bags of plastic, paper, and glass in our kitchen pantries.

Once a week - ok, once a month - I would lug the sticky wine bottles, the yeasty beer ones, and the old ketchup containers to the Center For Green Technology, which graciously provided a city-wide drop off site. Located approximately 1 mile from our front door, requiring less than 1 minute to transfer bags to dumpster, this ritual had Bela writhing in her seat, moaning and complaining from the back of our Mazda. 

You've never seen a child complain so vehemently about a chore which required nothing of her but her physical, passive presence and a few minutes of her time. She neither sorted, rinsed, collected, hauled, nor dumped any recyclable ever. It's funny how something so harmless (and, in this case, painless and environmentally responsible) could cause so much grief in our family.

But yesterday, this all changed. Bela had come home from school after throwing up all over her desk, and was wedged between our chaise lounge and the windowsill, listening to audiobooks. Mae was building a lego house for her horses, and I was straightening up the living room. There was a commotion outside, a lot of yelling, cars honking, and the unmistakable sounds of large, heavy objects being unloaded off of trucks. I peered out our second story window, out through the rain... and what did I behold?

They had arrived. Even though they came about 4 years late, we all ran out into the street to admire our new recycling bins in the rain, to chat with neighbors about the unlikely event, to bond over this new exciting change in our lives.

 And that (we hope) closes the chapter on our family's 4 Year (recycling) War.