It was a warm, cheerful summer’s morning in ancient Greece. The birds sang beautiful, joyful songs in the olive groves, awakening the people of Athens and their sweet tunes pulling the dawn sun out of her rosy pillows beyond the tall, violet mountains.
From the glistening, dark green, and slender oval leaves drooped dew-covered olives of all colors; scarlet, black, and green with bright red pimentos. In the coral-colored sky was a single stratus cloud, breezily and lazily drifting through the morning sky. The soft breeze that was pushing the cloud, waving the grasses and stirring the tree leaves carried the warm radiance of the sun in the East. Dew dripped from blades of grass, shingles of roves, leaves of trees and bushes, from everything--cleansing the world to start the new day with a clean slate.
All was sweet as brown sugar and lovely as a candy heart. But, on that wonderful, picturesque day, the vile essence of pain and senseless violence rang out, braking the sweet, gentle tunes of the songbirds. For, late yesterday afternoon, a tiny baby girl had been born. It was her father’s decision if she would live happily in the family household or be abandoned to die alone in the world.
The girl’s father, as most ancient Greek fathers did, favored boys over girls and despised weaklings and runts. He chose for her to be abandoned. Solemnly her mother took a basket and placed her, rapped in a blanket, within it. The basket was gently set near a creek, for the mother hoped and prayed that the nymph of the creek would take pity on the small child and protect the girl.
But the mother, through her tears and grief, had precariously placed her baby to close to the water. The chill river water lapped at the little girl. She--who had been previously sleeping soundly--awoke burst into tears, crying loudly. By pure chance, in the nearest household, was a caring, gentle woman. She heard a baby crying. And--although most women would never dare what with it not being a celebration--she crept out of the house for a little investigating.
The woman, Iris, was saddened--yet not entirely surprised--to she a little baby girl bobbing in the waters of the creek. The creek very nearly pulled the girl away--and only the gods knew if the basket had buoyancy enough to keep the baby afloat--but Iris quickly snatched the baby up and pulled her away, clutching her tightly and protectively. She wasn’t a water nymph, but some might say that the girl’s mother’s prayers had been answered.
With that, Iris hurried back to the house to ask her husband if she could keep the girl, for the ancient Greek’s believed unjustly that men were the masters of the household.
After a short but heated argument between the two, they resolved--with mixed feelings between the both of them--that the girl would become a member of their twelve slaves, making them have thirteen.
Once the baby was deposited into the slaves’ courters, the slaves huddled around her. One, named Lydia, suggested ουσ. καλοκαίρι, θέρος, or Summer, after the season in which the young blessing had been found. Everyone agreed and so, that was the baby girl’s name.
*****
Summer yawned sleepily, awakening early dawn twelve years later, on the first day of summer. She looked around blearily. She gasped, a sudden spark of urgency in her green eyes, and lunged for the window--which was covered by a plain wooden shudder--and threw it open. She saw that, to her great relief, the dawn sun was merely peeking above the horizon as a sliver smaller then last night’s moon--which had been a slender crescent.
Despite the fact that the morning was new, Summer rushed hurriedly to collect and put on her single pair of day clothing. It was a rectangular dress that stretched a little farther then her knees with holes for the head and shoulders. The dress was a clear, dreamy blue, much like the summer’s sky.
Straight after that, Summer rushed out of the slaves courters and into the men’s dinning area. All of the dirty dishes and plates of last night’s feast (free men only) still lay forlorn and abandoned with heaps of U.R.F., or Unidentifiable Remains of Food. Sighing, Summer hurried about collecting these distasteful dishes, which she deposited into the kitchen for another slave to clean.
Next she amassed several jugs for water and rushed off to the closest creek, which happened to be, ironically, the very creek where she had been left and found years before she could remember. Summer was just about to plunge the first into the water, when she paused.
She addressed the nymph of the creek, as she had been taught, “May I please take some of your water?”
Water lapped at the base of the jug which was being held over the creek, as if asking to come inside. Summer took this as, hopefully, the nymph of that creek giving her permission to collect the water. She then dipped them, one by one, into the cool waters. Once all three of them were full, she carried them--one on her head and one occupying each of her arms--back to the house.
Summer then set the trio of ruddy clay jugs down in the kitchen. Almost as soon as she had placed the third and final jug down, another slave whisked two away. Already the people of the house were demanding a breakfast of goat cheese, olives, and other foods.
She sighed, knowing that she had a long, long days’ work ahead of her.
*****
Summer reached high above her head and plucked a beautiful, ovular olive as black as midnight. Still-fresh dewdrops showered down on her from the glistening green leaves of the olive tree as she picked the wet olive. It made the olive look even more delectable....
She continued picking endless olives from olive trees of all colors; from every shade of green, to burgundy red, to shining black. Each looked more wonderful and awe-inspiring then the last.
Summer wished to pause and eat one--or two--but stopped herself. She had other tasks to tend to. Still, it took all of her will power not to taste one.
Her wicker basket full to the brim with juicy, colorful olives, she raced away from the olive groves, careful not to spill any of the treats she had collected, and back to home.
She set the olive baskets down and darted away again, this time with a milk pail in her hands. She was going to milk the goats.
*****
Once she was finished with the weary task of milking Saffron, a jumpy young goat who always wanted to play, Summer hurried back to the house, goat milk sloshing precariously in the pail.
She set the pail down in the kitchen. She was downright tired. She had first hurried to the creak to collect water, returning with heavy, filled to the brim jugs, then rushed around collecting olives from the groves, and lastly milked an antsy goat. Summer yearned for the days end, but Apollo’s chariot was only halfway through the sky, and she still had to retrieve firewood.
She knew that the day’s work had only just begun.
-KittyLover8
© 2012
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