THE WIND BLOWS

FIRST HAT

Winter is over.

They repeat it on the radio, on TV, and if you turn the calendar’s pages you will notice that snowflakes make way for almond trees in bloom. I have no excuses: I have to go out.

‘Anita, you can’t spend all your noons laying on the bed! Look at the sun out there, go out, enjoy it’. Mum is right: the window, framing the landscape like a mobile phone’s camera, shows a cruel sunny day. It’s warm. Despite my ability in lengthening my arms with oversize jumpers, I’m wearing a light t-shirt. ‘Take a walk, buy an ice cream, anything that helps you emerge out of that bedroom: be a flower, blossom’. She started an online course in creative writing one week ago, she’s feeling inspired.

I’m going out on my terms: thanks to this blue FILA bucket hat covering my eyes, nobody is going to see me out there. Wide brim, blue strong material, a big logo pinned like military pins: perfect. 
There are people in the streets, everybody’s feeling like flowers waiting to blossom.
But I do know about the most solitary places and I do know that the streets at the borders of the park behind my house are lonely branches in the shadows. Don’t be sad for me, ‘cause I’m not: not being seen gives great benefits. It doesn’t cause any stress, any involvement, any judgement. It’s almost a privilege, think about it.

It’s sunny, but it’s still cold: the air is suddenly frozen and a rough wind has just started blowing against my back. I came out of my cocoon too soon, mum, it’s not time to blossom yet. I’m going back home, I’m ready to bring the curtain down. I turn myself fast and the cold air messes up with my hair, making my blue bucket hat flying away. Ugh, it’s so boring, so tiring. I run towards it until it reaches the ground, I pick it up, I get up. Without even letting me focus him, he speaks to me.

‘Can you pass me the ball?’
He can’t be older than 9. He’s standing right down the street, wearing an oversize soccer t-shirt.

 ‘We were playing, but the wind tried to take the ball away from the neighborhood. Fortunately, you stopped it!’
Actually, the flowerbed close to my feet blocked the escape of this fugitive Super Tele. There it is.
‘So, can you pass it to me?’
I reach out, I see my arms naked after months of covering jumpers. I grab the yellow sphere and with a goofy move my right leg sends it towards the little boy. As a miracle, it lands close to his feet. He smiles at me, I feel I still have muscles.
‘Great! See you, bye!’
There is no sign of my bucket hat, I think it has flown faraway. My hands touch my sweaty cheeks, much hotter than the sun which is slowly going down. He’s running, running to the horizon, stolen by the wind.