Sunday Morning

This morning I awoke at dawn with a ‘popping’ sensation in my abdomen. Having just had a total abdominal hysterectomy, my first instinct was that I had somehow succeeded in ripping internal stitches apart. However, as I lay in bed, slowly coming to my senses, I decided that everything was still okay and, instead of leaping from bed in distress I lay quietly, savouring the sounds of Sunday morning in my neighbourhood.

Well, perhaps I didn’t savour them all...

The predominant sound was that of a helicopter circling nearby and I wondered idly whether they were looking for a hi-jacked motor vehicle so early on a Sunday morning. In closer proximity, the intermittent sound of traffic moving along the nearby main road spoke of a lazy weekend as opposed to a pressured weekday. As someone walked along the street, the irritating dogs next door set up their awful, ear-shattering barking and I cursed not only them, but also their owners whom I have never once heard chasten them to be quiet. Not once. Those dogs bark like that day in and day out until I am fit to commit murder. Got to do something about it, but what? This is South Africa and all I know about my neighbours on that side, hiding behind their eight-foot walls and vicious dogs is that they are foreigners and there are quite a few of them living on the property. Would hate to piss them off if they are the vengeful kind...

As the dogs quieten down again I refocus my thought on the helicopter that is still circling, but further away now. Down the street an impatient foot on an accelerator revs a car engine and, from one of the many backyard rooms nearby, I hear the clatter of pots and pans, the flush of a toilet. Then, seemingly directly on the other side of the eight-foot wall I hear one of my anonymous neighbours clearing phlegm from his throat... and my stomach somersaults nauseatingly.

As the sounds of human endeavour and life increase in this overpopulated concrete jungle, where backyard rooms are mushrooming and gardens and trees are disappearing at an alarming rate, I hear the chatter of birds. I savour the cheerful, chirping, cheeping, chattering birds going about their business, just as they do every day of the week. No faster, no slower, no earlier, no later.

Curling into the foetal position, I shut out the increasingly noisy sounds of a city that is slowly awakening and focus my thought on all the little feathered creatures greeting the day. Smiling, I drift back into lazy Sunday morning sleep.


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