Garbage in my Trunk…

Where I was…

The title is not a metaphor, or a reference to my ass…

Yesterday I called my son Jonathan to say, “I’m on the way to your house. Oh, and I have a bag of garbage in the trunk.”

Jon Jon is the only person I know who would not only empathize with that statement, but have a story…

I was on the way from Hiawassee Georgia to Deland Florida (a sentence I never anticipated writing…) for Thanksgiving and the dump wasn’t open yet, so I put my effuse in the trunk of my car together with my Louis Vuitton duffle, spare cooking pots and a bag full of all the shoes I own. I am a bit of a vagabond these days.

Jonathan’s story is that last year on New Year’s Day, on his way home from another cabin in the Georgia mountains, he and his friends stashed all their spare garbage amongst two ATVs on a trailer they pulled behind his truck (yes, this child was raised in Ponte Vedra…). The dump was not open, they were hung over and it was a windy day. As he tells it, they were driving down the two-lane highway and trash kept falling off the truck: a full garbage bag, booze boxes, heavy bags full of empty bottles and the pièce de résistance – an entire venison limb that had not been eaten…

Instead of stopping and securing their jetsam, they just kept pulling over each time something fell off the truck and one of them would limp back to retrieve the remains – including the spare body parts…

Jon Jon and I have decided we like to be in beautiful, difficult locations. We like the challenge of living places that require trips to the landfill, heavy machinery and familiarity with fuse boxes and propane.

This Thanksgiving my family is redefining the expression “home is where the heart is”.  I am still not permanently settled, and so my ex-husband and the kids celebrated their Thanksgiving last weekend (I mean he’s English…), we are all gathering in Deland this weekend, and Christmas is in the mountains of Georgia.

We are figuring it out, mastering the most beautiful and difficult of all regions – the loving, accommodating familial heart…

Where I am – Jon Jon and Kallie’s house…