Something to do with lettuce

He hands me the lettuce over the low fence that separates our yards. His is weed free, full of herbs, fruit trees, fertiliser and rocket. Mine holds a small up ground pool, erected each summer to appease my need to be close to water. My yard is a mass of concrete, quaint second hand yard furniture and succulent plants that hold their own against my well-meaning hands, fingers I wish to be green but, at best, are a pallid shade of lime.

He moves to sever another lettuce from the ground and I tell him, "it's ok. I probably won't be cooking tonight, I'll eat out". That I'll let him know when I need another. He fills a jar of fresh oregano and hands me over a potted plant. I smile.

After explanations of how to care for the plant that cowers in my arms (It senses my inability and I sense the inevitability, though I wish that were not the case). I lay out my bounty on the kitchen bench.

John, who bears an Italian name too long to pronounce, who insists on being called John, passes me these lettuces frequently. And with optimism I go to wash them, but hesitate. I take many small animals, slugs and things, back out to my own garden to destroy my own plants because I can't bear to flush them down the sink with the remnants of soil.

Sometimes I pick off the outer leaves hopeful that the creatures lurk only on the edge of the vegetable. Leaves and bugs are laid out on my own soil. ‘Composting.’ I say, though I know nothing of what this means.

Those lettuces that don’t have company, free of six legged creatures, are stored.

And the lettuces gather in my refrigerator and wilt. They beckon to be prepared into a salad, some form of healthy meal, and I open and close the refrigerator door and the light within illuminates my green guilt until they resemble lifeless forms. As I throw one out another replaces it. 'He has a bounty of them in the yard, it makes him happy for me to take them,’ I justify because I cannot bear to tell my neighbor, the old man who lives in the same house he grew up in as a child, a man who still sleeps in the same room he did as a boy, that, while I love his stories, I really don't care much for lettuce.