Читать книгу Clouds Of Smoke… The Story - Gianluigi Ciaramellari - Страница 6

Once, my son Sasha and I, (who was 4 years old at the time), were traveling by car on a highway, when he surprised me with another one of his “whys?”, typical of that age.

It was a winter Sunday morning and the fog did not allow a good visibility, so I drove slowly, especially where the road crossed stretches of farmland. Sasha was sitting in the back, in his “car seat”, bound by the seat belt.

At one point, on the left we saw what remained of an old sugar refinery and the child asked me why there were flashing red lights on the chimney, which was still standing. But he asked me in this manner:

“Daddy, why are the lights of that tower on?” in the rear-view mirror I saw his face awaiting my answer, he was expecting a prompt and thorough response.

“Sasha, those lights are used to warn the birds to be careful not to crash into the tower. They light them at night and when it is foggy, like today!” I replied, waiting for him to ask me a second why. Instead he kept quiet. I felt guilty for not telling him that that was not a tower. Then I stopped the car in a rest area.

The old refinery was truly a ruin, only the "tower" still stood high and proud, it looked like a rocket stuck in the ground, after precipitating and destroying everything around it.

“Sasha – I said, trying to find the easiest words for him - that's not a tower. It’s a chimney and when it was alive, it smoked a lot.”

He looked at me as if I was about to tell him a story of wizards and dragons.

“Then it died because it smoked too much?” I wished I could have recorded him.

“No, it died because nobody needed it anymore” I noticed a change in his expression, he looked sorry.

“You know, - I continued - the chimney is a tall, tall tube, which is necessary to blow the smoke of the fire that is lit at its foot into the sky.” Sasha looked at the chimney and, without taking his eyes off of it, he asked again:

“Daddy, then all the clouds in the sky are made of smoke?” I needed to find a simple and short answer. You never know where children’s questions may lead you.

“No Sasha, smoke comes from fire, and clouds come from water and all the clouds in the sky are made of water.”

And for the rest of the trip, my son wanted to know everything, about smoke, fire, clouds and water.

Gianluigi Ciaramellari