It’s Big Trash Week in Susquehanna Township. Once a year homeowners are allowed to put out at the curb all the miscellaneous junk that’s too bulky for the regular weekly trash pickup. Most items are permitted -- carpet, mattresses, furniture, appliances, anything that can be lifted by two men. We’re limited to two tires per household (rims removed). No hazardous waste is allowed, nor are building materials. The stuff should be out by 6:30 a.m. on your regular trash day, and no more than twenty-four hours before that.

Trash day in Woodridge is Wednesday, but most people started this weekend. A lot of us tend to put out the same size pile every year. Most of it isn’t stuff that’s accumulated just since last April, but stuff that’s been hanging around forever that finally seems to be taking up too much space.

This year we put out (among other things) the Sony TV that died just before Christmas, the Fisher-Price kitchen set that Lynn outgrew at least ten years ago, a 5-foot by 2-foot framed poster of Rosa Bonheur’s painting “The Horse Fair” that I used to have in my classroom, the first birdcage we used (bought for $5 from a neighbor on whom we had to force the money), and the cheapo-cheapo TV cart that could not accommodate our new, larger set.

Ron is very energetic about these things. He doesn’t cling to “stuff” if it merely has sentimental value, especially if it also doesn’t work. (Although I continue to be mystified about why he never divests us of the lawnmower we haven’t used since we hired a service in 1986.) It’s harder for me to let go of things. But this afternoon I did take a deep breath, descend to the basement, and begin to pull out some material that I think I’m ready to part with.

Some of the stuff, I’m astonished and somewhat ashamed to report, was still in the same box in which it had traveled from my last apartment to this house in 1976. (Yes, ‘76 -- twenty-five years ago next month.) One such item was a “grinding mill” (so I know from what was written on the box -- I didn’t open it), a nineteenth century replica apparatus for grinding coffee beans. It had been a wedding gift (to me and the first husband) in November of 1975 from the members of an American literature class I had that year. I’d used it decoratively, although it was functional, and when we moved, it got put in the basement awaiting resurrection, and I’d forgotten about it.

I parted with two cartons of teaching materials -- old copies of the English Journal and Notes Plus, both publications of the National Council of Teachers of English, along with clipped articles outlining presentation strategies, writing prompts, and classroom management tips. In the unlikely event that I ever address a classroom again, I can remember what really worked from before.

I also decided it was time to abandon two boxes of craft materials, some yarn and fabric and old patterns, also hauled from Chambers Hill during the Bicentennial. Also a Christmas tree stand that we’ll never use again, a bunch of ceramic planters that came as baby gifts (the baby is nearly 16, remember), and the baby monitor that used to pick up broadcasts from other baby monitors in the neighborhood.

Oh, and Irwin the Indian. This was a 16x20 oil painting of the head of an Indian brave done by a local artist (whose name, Irwin, signed at the bottom, became the name by which I called the figure). It was a birthday gift from a boyfriend in 1972. I’d taken two courses in Native American studies and written a long paper about the forced Lakota relocations later depicted in Dances With Wolves. Although I had an interest in such material, I didn’t necessarily want to decorate my house with it. The portrait was well done technically and of soft blues and greens that really did look nice in my bedroom. But it was the first noticeable indication that this boyfriend was finding less and less to say to me. He broke up with me six months later, and I grieved him for two years. I can’t tell you why it’s taken so long to say goodbye to Irwin.

And, finally, I gave up the beat-up leather coat that had belonged to my first husband. You understand, of course, that he’s been gone for eighteen years, and that of all the lost relationships of my life it’s the one hardest to feel sentimental about. (Both the worst and the best I can say about that marriage is that it was boring.) I really thought that coat was gone -- it was shabby and had a torn sleeve by 1980, which is why he didn’t take it with him. If Irwin was going, certainly that coat should too.

I see most things through a poet’s myth-making eyes. I can find meaning in the way the cream swirls up in my morning coffee. Ron is much more practical, and in that way we complement each other. I was proud of myself today in what I had been able to let go of.

“I’m finally clearing out old junk from the basement,” I said to him.

“Okay,” he said. It was obvious he did not see the symbolism here.

“It’s the basement,” I said, “the place where we keep the deepest, darkest junk.”

“Well, of course we keep it in the basement,” he said. “We don’t have an attic.”

And so we walk together out to the curb, Mars leading Venus. It is good this way.