EXOTIC SUMMER

Exotic summer I left the newspaper on the table. It was pointless, I couldn't read. Presbyopia is a strange disease of the middle age: it strikes you exactly at the time when you need to see things up close rather than from a distance. Holding a chair on one hand and a glass of ouzo on the other, I walked through the beach, and fixed the chair at the water´s edge. The water invaded my shoes, freezing my feet. I looked at the sea. When I was seven, they beat me out of it to give up playing. My lips had gone blue, same as the tips of my fingers, however I still insisted on breaking my underwater record. Then we ran, and while wrestling, we rolled on the hot sand; we dug big holes, stuffed half of them with prickly weeds, covered them with a plastic bag and put sand on top of it all. We liked watching grown-ups sink into those childish traps. In the afternoons, we used to fish from the rocks, or we were peeling one another's skin, to finish off what the sun had started. Sometimes, we used to wander in the alleys, terrifying with our shouting and running, the aunties, who offered us mastiha cream plunged into water or Turkish delight, provided we behaved. Once, the fishermen got a big fish. They called it "the dog". It had sharp teeth, big as my fingers, and one dark, round, dying eye. It moved its tail from time to time. I came to "like" it much later, when I realised its great terror for being out of the water. All in all, these are my memories of summertime back then. They are so distant now that they seem exotic. They are shouting at me "Be careful not to get wet or you will catch a cold". It's the end of May, the end of a season, the end of an era, one would say. In a few days time, another summer will start...