IV
I fetch the salad ingredients and a knife, I turn on the radio, and start chopping.
Beeping and the three o’clock news begin. They warn of a heat wave and an expert explains that for elderly and people with basic illnesses the weather can be life-threatening. An expert of The Martha Organization gives cooling tips to apartment houses: window blinds down and bed sheets to the freezer. The Rescue Department continues, that making an open fire in the South is prohibited, and finally the reporter asks a first grader, what is the best thing in summer, and the child answers, swimming and eating ice cream.
I view the growing grass on the yard and the scorched, dry spots from the open window. I remember from my childhood the sound of the lawnmower in the mornings and grandfather’s pride in the afternoon, when he presented the evenly cut, green lawn. I don’t remember the weather being this hot back then.
The feel of guilt sneaks through the door and I know that if I’d give it my hand, it would drag me somewhere deep and dark, and it would ask, why don’t I care, why am I all the time so focused in myself, and how is it possible that I’ve let the lawn grow to look like that.
A banging knock interrupts my thoughts.
Well, there’s a fine woodpecker, I notice, and then I continue chopping.