Becky walked the flower bed collecting their strewn black bodies.  They’ve been with us for more than a year and I’ve wanted them gone almost as long.  Their cheap plastic heads are always snapping apart, too fragile to take the daily battering of soccer balls and kids on scooters, their little solar powered bulbs barely shining anymore.

They fall over.  We put them upright, shoving them farther this time into the mulch.  They fall over again.  We put them upright, shoving them farther into the mulch.  They fall over again.

No more.  Like I said, Becky pulled them up just now, cradling them as one large pile of tinkering pieces to a large trash can, dropping them to the dark bottom.

“It was dark in there.  They started lighting up,” she said.  “Sad.”

It was like they wanted one last chance.  “Look, I can still work,” they seemed to be saying to her, so she said.

She’s a sucker.

And this is one of Becky’s most attractive qualities.  Not her love of decorative flower bed lighting, but her empathy for all things – animated and inanimate.  It borders on nutso sometimes, sure, of course, but at least she feels something.  And on days when I don’t, it’s good to have someone around who pities the stuff in the darkness at the bottom of the trash can.

Series: None
Tags: