Bitter-sweet Nostalgia

I cannot fathom why some moments, places or people get engraved in my heart with ink more indelible than most... why they stick and, when least expected, resurface with an almost unbearable intensity. One such time and place is my grandparent's house in the country, where I spent the better part of my childhood summers, the BEST parts of my childhood summers. A small house built in the 1940's, sometime before communism engulfed the nation, on a much beloved street corner with view of hilltops that my grandfather, perched on his wooden leg, used to promise me as gift in an uncertain but near future... hilltops that today, though I never did receive for they were never his to give, shape the contours of my love for this country.

In the midst of an intense bout of nostalgia for this long gone time and place and in dire need for some fresh air, I stole two half days of my mostly busy schedule and headed for a walk down memory lane. In a world where EVERYTHING changes at a pace I can't seem to follow, it is so soothing to see that most things in this place at least, have not yet changed. Here, the air is still crisp, the roads are still made of mud and stones, farmers still walk their cows to and from grazing and water wells. Here, people still use horse-drawn carriages to move about, still plow the land the old-fashioned way, still move in rhythm and in harmony with nature. Here, the morning sun is still greeted by roosters' songs... well, at least until their heads are chopped off by hungry hands...

In front of my beloved house:


The promised hills:


Water wells still used:
Timeless roads:
Timeless moments:

Everything is still done the old-fashioned slow way... By hand, with love, with patience and care, with thoughts of tomorrow, with love for the land. Of course, some of those thoughts could and should be extended to the creatures that sustain this way of life. See, this rooster for example... few weeks back, there were 5. Now he is the last one on the list, the last one to land in my uncle's soup...
And these adorable little piglets... they will eventually meet the same fate...

What!?! Really? How can they eat these little creatures... stinky though they may be!!!

Same goes for these turkeys! Who's next???


What about Rex?

He is safe.... for NOW. As long as he stays under the radar and protects the land!

This house, this land, these moments in time, I owe it to them, my grandparents :

Weren't they GRAND?

My grandfather Dumitru, a.k.a Mitica, was a war hero who went through both World Wars and gained a huge collection of war medals, the friendship of Romania's last King and a wooden leg. He never worried a day in his life, promised us kids not only the surrounding hills, but also the moon and the stars, never delivered on any of his promises to anybody but always kept his happy-go-lucky spirit until the day he died.

My grandmother Felicia, plump, blue-eyed, dark-haired and considered a beauty and quite the catch in her youth, during communist years, ran an underground business of selling hard liquor made of plums that still grow to this day in her backyard. She used to run her household with an iron hand and she would spice up my summer nights with wild and scary tales of Satan.... probably to teach me, in her own particular way, the power of prayer. She, along with her two sisters lived a childhood filled with hard labor, under the harsh discipline of their demanding father. Of the three sisters, she is the only one who continued the bloodline of their family. The younger sister, in whose apartment I now live, married too late for children and, the last sister, the only one still alive today, unfortunately I do not know that much about.

She is the last link to a rich history and era that is almost nearly extinct.

I feel such a deep connection to this side of my family, my grandmother and her younger sister especially. One grim morning, too many years ago, I woke up from a dream with an uneasy feeling... I had had a bad dream. As soon as the fog lifted from my sleepy brain I realized where the uneasy feeling came from: my grandmother had died. I knew it with every fiber in my being. In my dream, there were many people... sort of like for a wake. And, though I never saw who it was for, I ....felt... my grandmother's spirit hovering somewhere and nowhere among these people at that wake. I jumped up from my bed and went to tell my mother to call her mom... for I feared she had died. The time it took for my mom to disagree with me, the phone rang. Exactly two weeks later, I awoke with the same bad feeling from another bad dream: my grandmother had come to take her younger sister in one of those old-fashioned 1930's planes. I again jumped from my bed and told my mom to call her aunt... Before I was finished, the phone rang again.


And so it is, perhaps, why I now hold on to this place, these memories, this precious time of my life. I don't think I ever mourned them properly... I don't think I was ever ready or willing to leave this country, to change this way of life.

Though this place has stood the test of time, though its roads are still the same... its people have gone, have changed, have moved away.... and so, I realize, have I. Nothing can bring back time... The ease and innocence of my childhood... The love I read in their eyes... is this what I am searching for? Is this what perfumes the air I breathe at their little house overlooking the promised hills?

Something there I will always be searching for... Some part of me will always be missing them. And, i believe, so it has to be. At least for me. My heart bleeds of love for them, love for that time... and does so willingly. For it is in my love for them, that they will live through me.