I crouch on the rectangle of concrete immediately behind our townhouse, a small pink dust broom in one hand, dust pan in the other. All against the wall, piled in mountainous heaps, lies the grey, ash-like lint that was just pulled from our dryer vent. It's draped like moss on our pea plants, all but dead now, on a camp chair folded up against the wall. Some has fallen in the inflated kiddie pool, some along the edge of the grass. It looks just as if it had all exploded from the small circular opening some fifteen feet up and drifted indiscriminately onto the ground below.
And within the debris are the remnants of lives long past. The lint itself made up of tiny fibers from hundreds - maybe thousands - of shirts, pants, socks, undies, sweaters, dresses, overalls, bibs, and who knows what else. Held fast in each grey clump are more hints at other lives: gum wrappers crumpled into small silver balls, scraps of paper absentmindedly left in pants pockets, a paperclip. Each clump is an artifact. How long ago was that gum chomped? What has become of the guy who wore those pants? Is he dead? In prison? Living somewhere else oblivious to the beauty and wonder and miracle of his life?
A light breeze kicks up, stirring the small bundles. Most just quiver, but one or two smaller pieces break away and tumble towards the grass. Stopping in the middle of the concrete pad. The stiff white bristles of my broom scoop them into the dust pan, joining the pile already there. I dump the whole insubstantial mass into a grocery bag.
Living in a rental unit is this way. You live in the wake of other people's lives. Though they have cleaned up after themselves, shreds of the past remain. When we first moved in, we found a card lying flat on the top shelf - a cheesy expression of love handwritten on the inside. In our last place, under a drawer in the bathroom a slip of paper with weekly weigh-ins recorded on it showed us that the previous occupants had been more or less the same size as us. Or maybe it had been the ones before them. Junk mail and catalogs occasionally show up addressed to previous occupants.
In a way, these people who we never meet are our neighbors in time. This lint I sweep up is just another scrap of their lives. I wonder how much is left.
