My name is Anna, and the man I raise works for the city.
My dad, Joe, works as a garbage collector since I’ve been using reason.
Department of Sanitation. Garbage collection. Whatever you want to call it, I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.
My dad, Joe, worked as a garbage collector.
My mom died when I was three.
Cancer. Fast and cruel. One day he was there; the next he was in the hospital, and then he was gone. Without warning. No time to prepare.
After that, we were alone my dad and I in a small two-bedroom apartment in the southern part of town. The type of place where the radiator rang in winter and the windows get stuck in summer. But the rent was stable, and we made it work.
We didn’t have much, but we always had enough.
My mom died when I was three.
The heating was still working. The lights worked. There was always food; sometimes just pasta and butter, sometimes scrambled eggs for dinner. But there was always something.
My dad went to work at 4:30 every morning. I could hear the door closing gently, I felt the apartment moving while he was trying not to wake me up. When I got up to go to school, he had been working for hours.
He came home smelling of metal, exhaust pipe, sweat and something I could not name but always recognized.
My dad went to work at 4:30 every morning.
My hands were callous. Almost every night his back hurt. Some nights he barely spoke because the fatigue had exhausted him until the last word.
But there was never a lack of a meeting of parents and teachers. He never forgot my birthday. Not once did it make me feel that it was too hard or too hard or that it was not worth it.
When I was little, I thought all the parents did that. Later, I realized how weird it was.
He never apologized for his work. He was never ashamed.
My hands were callous.
When asked what he was doing, he said it bluntly: “I work for the city. Sanitation.”
“It’s honest work,” he added. “And it keeps the city running.”
Then I met Ethan, during my second year of residence.
I was visiting a friend at the hospital where I worked, and we ended up in the same elevator. He smiled at me. I smiled back. We started talking and somehow we didn’t stop.
She was firm in a way that I wasn’t used to.
“It’s honest work.”
He was calm and attentive. The kind of person I listened to when you talked and really remembered what you were saying. I wasn’t trying to fix everything or give you advice you didn’t ask. He was just listening.
After three months, we were having dinner in a coffee shop near my apartment when you asked me about my family.
“It’s just me and my dad,” I said. “My mom died when I was little.”
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said quietly.
“Nothing happens. My father raised me alone. He works for the city. Sanitation.”
I was calm and attentive.
I watched Ethan’s face carefully, waiting for the reaction he had seen before. The subtle change, the polite assent that actually meant discomfort.
But he just nodded. “It’s hard work.”
“It is,” I said, surprised.
“Do you like it?”
“He is proud of it. He says he’s honest.”
Ethan smiled. “So that’s what matters.”
At that moment I fell in love with him.
“It’s hard work.”
A few weeks later, I took him home to meet my dad.
My dad cooked spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread, the same food I had made for special occasions throughout my childhood.
That night he spoke more than he had heard him in months, laughing at Ethan’s stories, asking questions about his work.
When my boyfriend left, my dad turned to me.
“He’s good to you.”
“It is, Dad.”
“That’s what matters, honey.”
I took him home so I could meet my dad.
When Ethan proposed to me six months later, I said yes without hesitation.
But the problems started almost immediately.
Not with Ethan… with his family.
