FREEDOM WHEELS

Carmen Micsa B.A., California State University, Sacramento, 2009

PROJECT

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in

ENGLISH (Creative Writing)

at

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO

FALL 2011

FREEDOM WHEELS

A Project

by

Carmen Micsa

Approved by:

______, Committee Chair Doug Rice

______, Second Reader Joshua McKinney

______Date

ii

Student: Carmen Micsa

I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this project is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for the project.

______, Graduate Coordinator ______David Toise Date

Department of English

iii

Abstract

of

FREEDOM WHEELS

by

Carmen Micsa

In my memoir, I analyze the topic of freedom: personal, political, philosophical, and psychological freedom. Through my immigration journey to the United States from my native country Romania I explore the multi-faceted notions of freedom, as I grapple with my new identity. While struggling to become part of a new country and leaving behind family, friends, and my Romanian heritage, I reflect on what it takes to be truly free. Is there such a thing as total freedom? Does happiness result from being free?

To sum things up, my intention was to depict a universal journey of becoming a

United States citizen, while trying to attain personal and spiritual freedom, even though in gaining freedom, I lost my old self. Yet, the promise of a better life was alluring and fulfilling.

______, Committee Chair

Doug Rice

______

Date

iv

DEDICATION

I am honored and humbled to dedicate my memoir Freedom Wheels to my

beloved father Danut Gramatic who passed away at the young age of 53 while I was in

America thousands of miles away from home. I will never forget his kindness and

wisdom that have guided me through my life's journey. He was the one who taught me to always believe in myself and reach as high as I could to fulfill my dreams. I would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to my mother Cezarina Gramatic who encouraged me to search for freedom and happiness in America.

Another very important person in my life is my wonderful and supportive husband Catalin M. Micsa who has helped me become the person I am today. He will always be the bright shining light in my life, for which I am very grateful.

I am also very proud to dedicate my story to our beautiful and smart children Alexander

P. Micsa and Sophia I. Micsa, who were my main reason for going back to school. I am

grateful for them always and I wish them to always be free, kind, and loving to one

another.

And least, but not last, I am very honored to dedicate my memoir to the people

who brought us to the United States, our amazing friends, Joe and Gay Haldeman, to

whom we will be forever grateful.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Dedication ...... v

Chapter

1. GETTING LOST...... ……………………………………………...... 1

2. THE DEPARTURE ...... 5

3. GUARDING CHILDHOOD ...... 10

4. NEW YORK'S SIGHTS AND FREEDOM ...... 15

5. ATLANTA ...... 20

6. FLORIDA ...... 26

7. AMUSEMENT PARKS ...... 31

8. EXPLORATIONS ...... 37

9. LIBRARIES AND BOOKSTORES ...... 48

10. MY FIRST JOB ...... 56

11. CALIFORNIA ...... 65

12. WORKING AND REMINISCING ...... 70

13. PAST AND PRESENT MEMORIES...... 77

14. FREEDOM ROCKS ...... 84

vi

1

Chapter 1

GETTING LOST

I remember getting lost on my bike when I was seven. I was visiting my grandparents and cousins in Birlad, the Northern part region of Romania, called

Moldavia. It was a warm summer day with very little wind. My Dad went out to meet some friends, so I decided to learn how to ride a dusty, old bike that I had found in my grandparents’ shed. It squeaked and creaked under my light weight, but I was determined to subdue it and ride it downhill, for my grandparents’ house was built on top of an unpaved, rocky hill. I fell more than five times, scraping my skinny knees on the rocks and loose gravel. However, after about 15 minutes of fighting to keep my balance, I rode my bike with ease and confidence. I avoided rocks and bumps in the road, and had a smooth ride. I talked to myself often, mainly shouting left-right orders, since I didn’t know much about the bike, other than it resembled an untamed horse. I was the jockey in the saddle who had to keep the bike straight and follow an imaginary line in the dust and dirt to avoid falling.

During my bike ride through unpaved roads, I ended up in an unfamiliar neighborhood with derelict homes, overgrown lawns, stray dogs and cats in the streets, and clotheslines full of hideous shirts, skirts, and pants fluttering in the wind. That’s where the gypsies lived, I thought to myself, gripping and hugging the handlebars with resolute, but shaking hands. I can’t remember much, though, other than the thick dust that wrapped around me like a tight burrito. I coughed a lot, but stayed alert and pedaled my

2 bike with wide watermelon motions, until I finally broke up crying. Deep down, I felt I would find my way back to my grandparents’ house. Yet, for some odd reasons, I feared getting kidnapped by the gypsies and turned into a little gypsy, wearing colorful and strident long skirts, no panties underneath, as the rumors went around about them. Face smeared in soot, sleazy hair standing up, big earring hoops in my ears, I could see myself put out in the streets and turned into a beggar. After almost an hour of horror movies running through my head, I found my way back to my grandparents’ house - exhausted and short of breath. Returning home had been more rewarding than learning how to bike that day, which is why I forgot to tell my Dad. Instead, I told him that I would never get lost again, which obviously was far from the truth… Losing and finding ourselves is part of the ubiquitous labyrinth that lures us in and makes our lives a constant mystery.

***

Train, plane, car, subway - a universal journey. We flew from Bucharest to New

York, crossing the ocean for the first time. I had a strange feeling that I collided with the clouds - a unique and unforgettable merging. The people on the plane were Americans,

Romanians, Germans, Indians, Asians, so we were all part of that big metal bird, whose pilots tried to fly it far from the sun.

We arrived in Frankfurt in just two hours, where we stopped and changed planes.

At the Frankfurt airport, everything around us was perfectly clean; it gave us shivers just to walk on that impeccable floor. Mircea impressed by that cleanliness just as much, exclaimed: “Here if you drop your ice-cream on the floor, you can pick it up and eat it.”

3

The trip to New York was long, but it didn’t lack a certain American flavor. On the plane we had all the necessary amenities on the plane, such as video, headphone radio, and, of course, American cuisine. We just loved the turkey sandwiches, which were quite a treat for us. My parents bought turkey on rare occasions like Christmas or

New Year’s Eve because it was really expensive.

We were only in our early twenties, but we had already experienced many frustrations. As a child, I had to accept the refusal of my wishes like having sweets, or a new toy, as if the refusal were part of my daily routine. That’s why I found myself dreaming of food frequently, since regular food was a treat, not a necessity, for most people during the communist era. Anyway, I understood this later, and was even pleased that my parents hadn’t spoiled me. More than that, they had given me the opportunity to see the world in its true light, leaving the make-believe aside. Not having all the goodies I wanted when I was a child, made me more grateful for what I received later.

“We’re going to land in just a few minutes,” Mircea interrupted my revelry. “Stop dreaming, sweetie.”

“All right,” I said, suddenly losing my interest in the food and everything else around us. I wanted to keep my eyes open as wide as possible to concentrate on New

York City, which looked big even from the plane. Mircea was excited to get to New

York, but I was simply restless. My green eyes, almost entirely red from traveling for fifteen hours, bulged out like a pair of binoculars. My whole body shook with excitement the same way a virgin shivers at her lover’s first touch - hands clapped together in a frantic applause, praising the spectacular image of New York that was part of a huge

4

jigsaw puzzle - America. I felt like a goddess. Pretty soon I could see the ocean and

several buildings from the plane, but as I watched, my mind was too little to encompass

the vast view offered by the greatest metropolis on earth. I imagined the Statue of

Liberty rising out of the ocean to greet us.

While looking through the small window, nudging each other and stretching our necks for a better view, we could decipher New York's hidden life at a glance, pretending to go below the surface of things and analyze the world around us in its astounding complexity. To Mircea, this journey meant exile - in case we decided to stay - to me, it

was the craving for happiness and change.

5

Chapter 2

THE DEPARTURE

Our voluntary departure and absence from Romania signified a new beginning in a totally foreign country, whose language we were lucky to speak; it also meant leaving behind our Romanian heritage and traditions. Mircea wanted to visit and explore

America. I was uncertain that I only wanted to stop there. I felt that we owed it to ourselves to try something new, even though Mircea thought I was impulsive in my desire to start from scratch and forsake the worn out shoes that had carried me over the ocean just fine in favor of a new pair of shiny shoes. Trading our old lives felt like wearing a silk blouse that seduced my skin with its soft suppleness and made my body tremble with anticipation, whereas to Mircea it meant keeping and wearing his old shirts - they were simply comfy.

The anticipation and desire for change go back to my childhood. As a little girl, I often became bored with my dolls. I used to replace them with cars and soldiers, wishing

I were a boy. I also had moments when I hated my dolls, and in a fit of rage I would cut their noses off, as if that were enough to bolster my self-esteem and confidence in myself.

Then, as a teenager I was a tomboy, playing soccer with the boys all day, being like them and imitating their gestures. I even spat and cursed like them - realizing in the end that I couldn’t escape my feminine side. Instead, I embraced it and looked for more productive ways to escape my easily bored ego, by replacing the trivial with the novel.

***

6

We finally reached Wonderland on July 10th, 1995, a memorable day for us. We landed at JFK Airport in New York, our first stop on our adventure. The airport looked as engulfing as a whale, connecting us to the outside world - more like a jungle to Mircea - an exciting show to me. The stifling summer heat made our bodies sweat in intense drips rolling down our spine and staining our T-shirts – our inner being, however, stayed cool embracing the heat, as we floated on the riverbanks of fairy tales filled with enthusiasm and hope.

After going through customs we met our friend, Carol King. We only knew Carol from correspondence, so when I saw a short, energetic lady, holding a piece of paper with our names on it, I knew right away that she was Carol from the way her eyes, hands, feet, and her entire body seemed to go through waltz, rumba and tango movements of expectation. She waved at us. A different waving this time. The wave of a stranger meeting us for the first time. The wave of our first American friend.

“Hi, Carol! Nice to meet you!”

“Nice to meet you, too! How was your flight?”

“Excellent,” we both answered.

“Okay! Let's hit the road!” she replied, and rushed us out of the buzzing airport, whose inexorable language wrapped around us like an electric blanket, warming our souls and minds.

Our first contact with American civilization was as I had imagined so many times.

We took a yellow cab and crossed Manhattan from one end to the other until we arrived at Carol's apartment. On our way, we passed bridges, houses, stores, trains, and people of

7 all nationalities, race, and gender - all part of the melting pot that enchanted us.

Everything was like in an orchestra. The higher the tonalities, the more exciting the action was. Like in a Bach’s Fugue...New York bustled at its highest intensity. The skyscrapers - part of this majestic orchestration - established a link between the earth and the sky, between the Western civilization and the Eastern one. Our first impression of

America and New York was different - I really liked the bustling New York, whereas

Mircea felt indifferent to it. However, we both agreed on one thing: shock. Beauty and ugliness mixed in an inexorable way: you looked right, and you saw a beautiful building; then you looked left, and noticed a homeless old man pushing a shopping cart.

After our initiating 30-minute ride across bridges, freeways, and crowded streets, we arrived at Carol’s cozy one-bedroom apartment, beautifully furnished, which resembled the ones we had in Romania. The only difference was that her place was modern - we couldn’t help noticing her computer. The year we left, we only had a few computers at the University back in Romania, and I barely knew how to use them. Now

Romanians have everything we have here, but not much money to be able to afford them.

Our first day in New York was tiring, so we went to bed around 6 o’clock in the evening.

“Boy, are you really going to bed?” Carol asked us.

“Yes, we’re,” we both answered with our eyes half-closed, sinking our heavy heads on the pillows and drifting off in the sweet world of dreams. American Dreams, that is! Colorful and bright; promising, liberating, and grandiose dreams of tourists becoming Americans.

8

***

I don’t think I dreamed of anything the night of our arrival. Yet, when I got up and looked around Carol’s apartment, I felt the same forbidding freedom invade my soul just like when I was 14 and left home to study English in depth in Timisoara, a city about

20 miles away from Lugoj, but mainly to be free of my parents’ incessant fighting. I abhor fighting, which is why I’ll stick to kissing - a phrase I read in a book: "We only have two choices in life -- we can either kiss or fight." I chose to get away and leave most of my old life behind in the hope that my parents’ scandals will end. Still, I couldn’t stop fretting about my mom, thinking that my father - when drunk - would beat her up so badly that he might kill her one day. I also worried about my dad, as my mom’s reasoning resembled the darkest and longest night when enraged. She threw a mirror at him one time, cutting him on his hands. Another time my Dad smacked my Mom over her head with the square bell mounted on the wall, after the two of them had a heated argument.

The “dinner scene," however, stands out and resurfaces and erupts from the deepest layers of my memory. We were having dinner at the small square table in the kitchen separated from the living room by a door, when my father began arguing with my mom:

“You’re the biggest fool I’ve ever seen...And you eat like a cow.”

“And you’re a dirty drunkard,” Mom replied, flailing her arms up and down, as if getting ready for take-off.

9

“Mom, leave him alone! Please, don't argue with him,” I said, predicting the big ensuing fight.

“You call me a drunkard? How dare you, bitch?”

Before I realized it, my father had already smashed my mother’s head with his plate full of broth. She began to scream and cry - her eyes red with tears - hair full of broth that trickled down her face. Tears and broth. Crying and yelling furiously, plus a wall decorated with broth. That was the menu for that evening, which was enough to keep me awake all night – shaking under the hot-cold sheets.

10

Chapter 3

GUARDING CHILDHOOD

My husband was in the shower. I stretched out, shaking sleep with a loud yawn.

The humming of cars drew me to the window. The heights and sounds of New York hushed the summer morning. The humid heat that crawled inside the apartment reminded me of the hot summer nights back home, when I tried to soothe my convulsive body after my parents’ long fight into the night. The only consolation was my passion for school. I knew the next day would be brighter, as I looked forward to playing teacher at school.

Rozalia, my sixth grade French teacher, a woman in her late 40s with hair as colorful and nuanced as the French verbs, changing from red to strawberry blonde, often allowed me to come to the front of the class and teach. She knew I loved the twirls, roll- ups, and twists of the French language and that I was planning on becoming a teacher one day. The minute she would summon me to the front of the classroom, I would grab the white chalk and wrote the French conjugations: “Je suis,” “Tu est,” “Il est…” on the double green blackboard. Showing my classmates the changing moods of words made me feel important. Above all, it wrapped my soul into a soft-feathered comforter, as I knew that my parents meant well and wanted the best for me, and even propelled me towards leadership. Thus, the soothing melody of the verbs, the screeching of the chalk and nails on the board wiped out worries from home.

After a few minutes of filling up the board with verbs of actions, “mentir,”

“jouer,” and so on, I would let myself slip into the fluctuation of the French verbs

11

conjugation while my scampered soul found forgetfulness after my parents’ fight.

Although I had to pay attention to the endings that changed every time, it felt like a

planned change that I could take on. It was as precise as the train schedule with its

arrivals and departures: some letters arrived at the end of the verb, while others departed,

or dropped, as our French teacher emphasized to make things easier for us to remember

from one class to another.

My enthusiasm with the French language made me come up with new ways to

draw my teacher’s attention. One day I made up a sign that read “Ambassade Francais”

on it. Ms. Rozalia smiled with delight and surprise when she saw it displayed on my desk

located right in front the middle row.

“Aren’t we lucky to have the French Embassy right here with us?” she said, hands

clasped in a bon voyage of laughter and delight.

From that day on, I made sure I put the sign on my desk, which started as a joke

first, but then it became my serious duty, making sure I helped all my classmates who felt linguistically challenged by the torrents of fluctuations, intonations, and inflexions that drenched their untamed minds. Also, to my surprise, the silliness in displaying a paper

sign written in uneven letters did not make me the object of my classmates’ cruel jokes,

which I took as an encouraging sign of domination. Even though we were all little

pioneers1 who pledged allegiance to the communist party and regime, I revered my

freedom in choosing the French over the Romanians. The refinement, style, and curled

1 Between the ages of 7 or 8, children in Communist Romania became pioneers, wearing the famous red scarf bordered by the Romanian flag colors, red, yellow, and blue that was tied in the middle by a clear ring, holding together old worlds and ideas.

12

lips practiced during my French classes were all fringes and ropes that aided in my

emotional departure from Romania, the land of born poets, as one saying claims.

Additionally, I felt the French language was less rigid than Romanian, bending like soft leather when nouns and verbs came together to form intelligent and coherent sentences, whereas the Romanian language felt stale to me. We had our conjugation of verbs just like the French, but our sentences were longer and more winded rephrasing the same concept without moving forward, as if stuck in the turbo-engine of timelessness. In a blog about Romania, the author points out that as opposed to the capitalist society, the communist society is static, which is directly correlated to the language that the communists wished to impose on us on top of our language. Communism, the author contends, needed more pompous words that conglomerated to form sinuous expressions, phrases, and long sentences that only pointed to the fake character of our communist society – a world that repudiated change using its toughest repellants.

I often felt trapped in those monotonous windmills of conventionality whose blades turned in circles to lull our senses, as well as constantly lie and deceive us that we lived wonderful lives sheltered from the rapacious capitalism, where too much freedom led to alcohol, drugs, insanity, and crime. My way of escaping the Quixotic windmills:

Edith Piaf’s song Je ne Regrete de Rien, which Ms. Rozalia played for us during class using an old cassette player that screeched and whirred like a smoker swallowing his coughs and fighting to regain his breath. Our teacher had us work in groups to figure out the sentences and analyze their meanings. The words jumbled at times, and trying to translate the song felt disrespectful to Piaf’s crystalline voice. I particularly sensed and

13 detected Piaf’s confidence in living life sans regrets, guilt, or shame, which was a slap in the face of the communist pendulum swinging and dangling like a merciless dagger ready to stab its detractors.

Ms. Rozalia sensed my proclivity towards change, which she welcomed and encouraged with one exception: she wanted me to “guard les eaux de l’enfance,” which at the time I understood that it meant for me to remain a child at heart. Now looking back at the wisdom my teacher passed onto me, I feel it’s incumbent upon me to literally keep my inner childhood eyes open. Moreover, I felt that both life and writing share the innocence of a child who perceives every little detail, such as blades of grass brushing against time.

As a child, I always spent large chunks of time in the park across the street from our apartment. My favorite pastime, when not playing soccer, tennis, swinging, or doing gymnastics, was to pick up dandelions, or “blowing flowers,” as I used to call them. The fuzzy, rounded tops tickled my nostrils every time. I still blew hard to send their little fine hairs dancing in the wind, while, of course, making a wish. It seemed I would run out of wishes, but picking the flowers, I would be mesmerized with the gossamer threads and feather like flowers. Their name comes from the French ‘dent de lion,’ meaning lion's tooth, due to the jagged-edged leaves of this weed that grows both wild and cultivated. In spring the park in front of our apartment exploded with dandelions, fine parachutes of sanity sent out in search of freedom, traveling across continents.

14

“Are you ready to go explore?” my husband asked me, coming out of the shower, beads of sweat and water still glistening on his large, flat forehead that Romanians perceive as a sign of intelligence.

“Ready or not…Here we come, New York!” I replied, stretching my hands out in a superman’s flight.

15

Chapter 4

NEW YORK'S SIGHTS AND FREEDOM

Oases of freedom, big cities exhilarate one’s soul from the paved streets strewn with garbage to the tops of their skyscrapers reaching all the way to Heaven. And yet, this vertical freedom felt incarcerating in itself, as the heights of those grandiose skyscrapers loomed like humpback whales over our minds and hearts like, immense and unforgettable. Was freedom supposed to be scary? Was it truly dichotomous in its good and bad wrapping that made it illusory and desultory when one could sniff it, but not really able to attain it? For now, we just decided to explore New York together with our friend Carol, who would be our first American guide, guiding us through the sights, smells, and sounds of a metropolis that engulfed us like a hungry lion’s mouth when we least expect it. Mircea, however, kept on top of things by consulting his maps and figuring out the trajectories and routes that would take us to the main tourist attractions, or simply to the trains and buses that took us around.

The “Apple Bus” was our starting point in exploring Manhattan. At first, I didn’t know what to wear, so and I shuffled through my unpacked luggage to find something appealing. After all I was about to come in touch with the most famous and infamous city in the world, so I wanted to impress and be impressed by New York. Mircea was, of course, like most men. He put on his blue summer jeans and a blue T-shirt that matched his eyes and outlined his pink dimpled cheeks. Carol also put on a pair of worn out jeans and a long-sleeved, burgundy shirt, although it was hot.

16

“Aren’t you going to be too warm?” I asked her.

“Not at all. And you better take a sweater with you, because it’s awfully cold in

the train from the air conditioning.”

“Oh, I see,” I said unconvinced.

“How cold could it be in the train?” I asked myself. In Romania all our buses,

trains, trolleys, and so on were as hot as Hell in the summer, so why all this fuss about it?

These Americans - I said to myself - sure like to complain a lot, because they’re not used

to giving up their comfort. I finally put on a pair of blue slacks with yellow flowers on

them and a yellow T-shirt that my mother used to wear, but gave it to me before I left.

The train was one block away from Carol’s apartment. We rode it to Times

Square. From there we walked to the Marriott Hotel to catch the “Apple Bus”. Before the

tour started, I allowed the skyscrapers, which I had only seen in movies, to dazzle me

with their soaring heights. I felt helpless watching those tall buildings made of glass and

steel. The firmament united with the roof of the skyscraper into an irresistible harmony -

a music of loftiness, of the infinite.

After stepping on a double-decker “Apple Bus,” we headed towards downtown

Manhattan, where we saw one of the tallest buildings in the world, The Empire State

Building. Then we went to Wall Street, which looked very professional. The whole

panorama of the city displayed in front of us like a huge Chinese fan, showing off its

skyscrapers that composed through their multidimensionality a big spider web, a veil in time and space. Starting from the tall buildings, I could generalize and state that everything is exquisite and grandiose in America.

17

Later during our tour we reached the famous Central Park, which was bigger than the state of Monaco, as our young, cheerful Chinese guide told us. I longed to see the beautiful park, but most of all I wanted to see Salinger's ducks. They looked just like I imagined them when I read Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The three of us sat down

on a bench in the park, watching the ducks dive and then come back to the surface of the

pond. They were part of a poetic landscape, but also of an alienated world that didn't have

enough time to admire the beauty of nature. I got a sense that our hungry eyes were open

wide to the novelty, whereas other people seemed to take their own surroundings for

granted, especially when immersed in it for too long, which is why the fresh eyes of

tourists make a countries, cities, or parks unveil their real beauties.

At the end of the tour, we fell under the spell of Saint John the Divine, the biggest

church in the world, which could hold the Statue of Liberty without any problem.

Entering the church, I realized how close we were to GOD, and yet how far. Mircea was thoughtful and seemed to share with me the same mixed, uncertain feelings. He walked slowly through the church with his eyes fixed on the high, vaulted ceiling, in close communion with the infinite blue sky, as if he could see a secret ladder that took him all the way to God. Saint John the Divine was a vertical church, looming into the white, puffed up clouds that circled the sky in swirls of freedom. Moreover, the church from the inside unveiled its true heart, being a spiritual link between our hurt, maimed humanity and the Divinity.

We ended the day with Chinese dinner, which challenged our palates with flavors of ginger and scallions. I liked it all right, but Mircea kept his loyalty to our Romanian

18 food that we grew up on without deviating to exotic fares and cultures. We rarely went out to eat at restaurants back home, and if we did, there was only one type of food that we had been eating for the last 22 years: traditional Romanian. Our cabbage rolls filled with pork and beef, our mititei, which is minced meat shaped in long rolls and then grilled, and our rotisserie chicken were the only comfort we knew – they fed our souls and minds with gratitude for procuring the food after standing in long lines together with our parents to buy meat, milk, flour, sugar, and so on.

The following day we had to manage our way around Manhattan by ourselves.

Carol, our guide through “the mankind Inferno of New York,” had to go to work. We decided to go to the Metropolitan Museum. The museum, a well-lit, sunny building with big marble columns was a place of universal culture, a bridge between Western civilization and the Oriental one. The paintings by European masters in the 16th and 17th centuries fascinated us together with the Egyptian section.

In the evening we met Carol and went to China Town, where the twittering of the

Chinese was only blurred by the big dragons looming over on top of buildings. After walking around through wafting smells of Chow Mein, baked pork buns, Shumai

(dumplings filled with pork meat and mushrooms), and many other exotic dishes that we had never tasted before, we also passed by small shops full of magic sounds, color, and exotic variety. Following our friend’s advice, we chose to have dinner in Little Italy, which was very close to China Town. We enjoyed our chicken cacciatore, which we split, as we were still not used to the heaping portions of food that translated into freedom to

19 eat as much as one desired, but with the caveat of weight gain. So from that perspective, freedom was undesirable; it burdened an individual with health and aesthetic worries.

Unfortunately, this was our last night in New York. We said good-bye to our friend, Carol, who told us: “You can always count on me, when you come to New York.

You’re not strangers anymore.”

“Thank you,” we said gratefully, though we felt like strangers, and knew that we would always be. Our roots were in Romania. The Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade said that we all have our tree, which symbolizes the center of our beings - a constant watcher of our lives. The only thing is that my tree has flexible roots. Maybe it can also live in a different soil. I'll see about that... An adaptable tree...

20

Chapter 5

ATLANTA

We were to meet our dearest American friends, Michael and Anne Lindsey, who invited us to the National Atlanta Science Fiction Convention. Michael is a science fiction writer. He has published several SF books and has been translated into eighteen foreign languages. He is a discreet, shy man with a well-built body and a wide forehead that tiptoes into his balding spot on top of his head. His brown eyes reveal his inner feelings and thoughts in descending order, resembling the shallow end of a pool that gets deeper and deeper as we advance from the steps. His eyes become darker with serious stories - tunnels of pummeled memories from when he fought in Vietnam. When he cracks jokes, however, his eyes light up like a funnel of mischief. He is a brilliant man and a great storyteller who has captivated us with his stories, even if we have heard them more than once.

Anne, his wife, an energetic woman - the perfect example of the happiest person on earth, puts a variety of smiles on her round, beautifully shaped face. The more I have come to know her face, the more I realized that Anne has the most complex smile I’ve ever seen. Sometimes her smile cascades into a sparkling giggle and laughter, brightening up the lives of the people around her. Other times, her smile turns into an incandescent

Flamenco dance whose rhythms end up illuminating different parts of her face, from her lips, to the cheeks, and ending up with and her eyebrows. Yet, her smile is the brightest when she can help her husband with the typing of his novels, for she feels useful and

21

supportive. To me, she is like a squirrel, running to and fro all the time, always in search

of something. The fruit of knowledge, maybe.

“There they are!” exclaimed Mircea.

“Michael and Anne,” I said, bouncing from one leg to another in a flamingo

stance.

Hugs and happiness.

“Boy, we missed you!” we both said at the same time.

“We missed you, too,” Anne replied. “How was your flight?”

“It was great …We’re so happy to see you!”

“O.K., guys, let's take the subway and go to the Hilton Hotel,” said Michael.

In the train we talked a lot, but not as much as we should have. I noticed that there

is always a gap, when you meet someone whom you haven't seen for a long time. You

want to say so many things, but you’re reluctant to set your thoughts free. It's like you are

out of topics of conversation, or like you’re trying to explore the corners of memories and

dust them off to reconnect them to the present in an ignition of words, sentences, and

phrases.

We arrived at the Hilton hotel, where we were going to stay for four days during

the convention. The Hilton was the most exquisite hotel we had ever stayed in. The hotel

loomed over us like a giant - the polished, shining glass that reflected back its vertical

massiveness with all of its 24 floors. The abundance of fountains and exotic plants in the lobby made us feel that we stepped in one of Indiana Jones’s movies, with the exception that the shining, transparent elevators were our roller coasters. We took the elevator that

22 ran on the outside of the building to our room on the 21st floor. On our way up the building, we saw Atlanta open its colorful wings to us in infinite butterfly fluttering. We were mesmerized with its mesh of elegant, sophisticated skyscrapers that dwarfed the white, Asian, and black people who rushed in the streets in frantic waves of dizzying fast forward movements - foreign to our slow lifestyle back home, when bureaucrats reeled time in slow motions, as if fishermen afraid to scare their catch. Anyway, I understood our ascension in this elevator/roller coaster as freedom to fly, to spread our wings, while being careful not to crash into the looming skyscrapers.

I also wished we could ride the elevator forever just like when my father took me to the Fair and delighted me with different rides. For some reason, they all seemed too short, so in the end, I was always disappointed and frustrated. Yet, my father refused to let his princess be unhappy, or God forbid cry, so he would buy more tokens every time.

After I took the same ride again, I felt my heart expand like a bubble gum balloon that deflated when the ride was over. Still, I learned soon that my father’s heart was as large as the Ferris Wheel. I knew how to get more rides out of him by smiling big and kissing him on his cleanly shaven, smooth cheeks until he gave in and bought me more tokens for more rides. Therefore, just like I kept extending my childhood ride, I now felt that freedom was like breaking all inner and outer barriers that we impose on ourselves sometimes. Isn’t this the greatest freedom? The ability to start over. Weaving beginnings and endings into things that come alive through choices we make. Yet, freedom felt to me like a short carousel ride that made it hard to enjoy America’s opportunities as visitors.

23

To immigrate, I thought, was to go on a ride, then another one, until it was all over. My father used to tell me: “I guess you had enough.”

“Yes, Daddy,” I would say, but deep down in my soul I was not contented, for I

wanted to ride on the joyous path of childhood forever.

***

Our hotel’s room was big and bright. The minute we entered the room, Anne took

a picture of us – picture perfect smiles, tears of joy, and compliments. And then, we had

to unpack. We brought a lot of presents for our friends, but Michael’s favorite gift was

the Romanian wine. We got him a bottle of red and white wine.

***

We had dinner at Fisherman's Cove, where we ate exotic dishes, such as lobsters

and oysters. It was the first time in our life that we’d tasted such delicacies. And we were

in our twenties at the time... But I guess we all have magic moments in our lives that

spark our consciousness. Also amidst mouthful of seafood, the gap in our conversation

narrowed like squinting eyes in the sun. We felt we didn’t need our sunglasses anymore;

squinting at one another’s minds, hearts, and souls made us talk and talk for hours over

dinner, till our mouths became numb. We covered everything from politics, religion,

literature to philosophy, while carefully dissecting the lobsters. We went to bed late that

evening, tired from the trip and all the excitement. Our hearts were filled with happiness

and gratitude towards our friends.

The next day we had more time to wander around Atlanta, a horizontal city, in

which the old and the new mixed with in a see-saw like careful balance. We decided to

24 start with the older part that morning and visited the Underground, the oldest historic center in the city. From there we went to the Coca-Cola Museum, which has always been a marvelous example of progress in time, changing its taste and aspect. The most famous drink in the world came into being by mistake: the one who prepared the soft drink mixed it with soda, instead of plain water, and that's how Coca-Cola was created. That doesn't mean that creation is arbitrary. Coca-Cola is simply the universal drink that quenches our ancestral thirst, I felt. I also realized that, although mankind was heading towards extinction, it only became thirstier and thirstier.

After lunch, we participated in the first round table of Atlanta’s SF Convention.

Its title “Editors are not your enemies,” was intriguing, for it gave writers another perspective on the editors’ real jobs and duties. I enjoyed the free, interactive, and fun discussions, while eyeing some of the participants dressed up in Star Trek costumes.

There were very many things going on at the Convention, too, but because SF literature did not capture my interest so much, I focused more on the people, some of them famous writers like our friend, Michael, and others simply SF fans. I particularly enjoyed watching people from all over the world getting together because of their affinities, irrespective of their race, religion, or nationality.

We met a lot of writers, and some of them knew about Romania, or their books had even been translated into Romanian. We were elated whenever someone knew a little bit about our country. It gave us the assurance that we were not isolated from the rest of the world. Our voices were thus being heard; we didn't live among the deaf or the blind.

At the same time, the SF convention gave us a unique chance for introspection, for

25 plunging into our lives in search of our true identities, but most of all the opportunity to understand American culture and literature better. So, after analyzing ourselves, we wondered: “Where were we Romanians in the world from a cultural, social, and political point of view? Were we some old-fashioned, retarded people who could not compete with the Western world? Definitely not, since literature transgresses any type of border: spiritual, cultural, and political. It just melts away in the big idealistic pot .

26

Chapter 6

FLORIDA

Next stop on our itinerary: Gainesville, Florida. We arrived there around seven o'clock in the evening, and were excited to finally see and explore Florida, also called

“the pensioners’ Heaven.” Michael and Anne have lived in this “Heaven” for twenty years. After a short drive through the small, delightful Gainesville, we arrived at their big house with a nice green lawn in front and an old leafy redbud tree, a perfect place for the

squirrels to play. The house had a double garage that was not useable because it was

crowded with what Americans call “their toys,” which in our friends’ case were five

bicycles and at least 10 fishing lines - all piled up in a “perfect chaos.”

Anyway, from the garage we went into their spacious, lovely home, whose rooms

came one after the other, in a precise order: first the living room, then the dining room,

followed by three bedrooms, and two offices. This perfect arrangement reminded me of a

train, with its compartments lining up behind the locomotive with Michael’s creative

steam dancing and filling up the rooms that were already crowded with books all the way

to the ceilings. Our room in particular was full of boxes with Michael’s old published

books, but we didn’t mind at all, as the bed was all we needed.

We went to bed around 10 p.m., ready to abandon ourselves to a dreamless night,

or maybe one that could efface our two-day driving from Atlanta to Florida. Before

falling asleep, I thought of the magic moments we had spent together shopping in

Atlanta, and realized that America is a country of options. The infinity of choices

27 sometimes reached the summit of frustration. There were at least thirty types of cheese in the supermarket, so you don't know what to choose. And this extends to cereal boxes, meats, fresh fruits and vegetables; the list went on, turning into a cornucopia of choices that we had never conceived possible or imaginable. Michael and Anne told us about a

Russian friend of theirs, who came to visit them. At first, he wanted to immigrate to

America. Yet, in the end, he decided to go back home because he didn’t know what was best for him in America. Should he go for cheddar cheese or Mozzarella? Should he drive an American car or a Japanese one? All these options were mindboggling and disorienting. He felt insecure and lost. He returned to his own country, so he could untangle his own self and release it from too much freedom that the communists saw as debilitating, or more exactly like a venereal disease that needed the strongest measures of intervention. Everybody knew about the perilous and ugly head of freedom - a Medusa whose heads needed to be chopped off.

I am the exact opposite. I like to have as many opened windows as possible, as many eyes cast to the future, which is why the possibility of choosing from the infinity of choices enticed me to stay in the U.S.

***

A dichotic day: lunch and dinner. We got up around 11 a.m. We skipped breakfast, and had a brunch instead. We ate two big cold meat sandwiches filled up with yummy pickles inside that dribbled down our chins, making us reach for napkins.

In the afternoon we went to a movie, Forget Paris, an ironic comedy, dealing with marital life. The screenwriter made great use of the flashback technique with the

28 main characters appearing only at the end, since other characters talked and remembered different things about them. Of course, we enjoyed the movie the American way, eating popcorn and drinking soda during the movie.

After the movie, we went to a little party. Every Friday evening Michael and

Anne usually met their friends, mostly writers, doctors, screenwriters, and teachers to discuss the latest news (or rather gossip). We ate at a Mongolian restaurant, where the chef fixed the dinner of your choice, meat, vegetables, and whatever you put on the plate.

The restaurant, located on the shores of Lake Alice, had an exotic atmosphere accentuated by its Asian lantern lamps hanging above the low tables. Their dim lights filled our souls with excitement and giddiness. Is freedom then total giddiness? Does freedom sizzle in one’s heart like the meats and veggies fizzing on the hot grill in front of us? My answer was yes, since I felt my whole being arch like a bow – America being the cello of choices in food, music, books, politics, movies, plays, and even the picturesque views, since our friends chose the restaurant to boast based on their alligators that floated on the lake. Even alligators are free to roam around and tap the window when they wish to communicate.

We thought our friends were joking with us when they pointed to the alligators, but soon we realized that their big, threatening mouths opening and closing right by the restaurant’s panoramic windows were completing the view just like in an adventure movie. We even imagined those fierce alligators chasing us in the water, hoping to fill their stomachs with our chewy meat. Still, we were the ones who had a good steak with all sorts of vegetables after all. Every time I eat something good I think of my mother,

29

and when I see lakes and water, I think of the great fisherman, my father. I would have

given anything to have them there with us sharing our bliss. I knew they wanted me to

leave Romania and explore America to fully inhale the many scents of freedom, but I

already missed them. I was also hoping they were all right back home, since their

marriage was shaky and always on the brink of dissolution.

After a couple of days in Gainesville, Anne decided to take us to Disney World.

Michael chose to stay home and write. We were all thrilled to go. We climbed in their

nice Toyota minivan, and hit the road. Anne drove and Mircea was her copilot, as she

liked to call him, since he was so good with the map. On our way to Orlando we had the

chance to see more of Florida, the state of palms, exotic forests, myths and legends. No

wonder writers like Hemingway chose to live and write in Florida!

Around 1 o’clock in the afternoon we arrived in a little town close to Daytona,

whose name escapes me, where Anne's friends lived. They were the nicest people, just

like all the other Americans we had met. Is freedom then nice? Does it intersect with

ugliness when freedom transcends limits, personal, physical, and intellectual?

Michael and Anne offered to take us to Daytona Beach, as if they knew how much we wanted to swim in the ocean, so we finally had the chance to do it. After a short drive we reached Daytona. The sprawling beach looked like an oasis in the desert, enchanting us with its fine, white, and bright sand. We swam in the Atlantic Ocean. The water was warm; the waves were moderate. The first time I stepped into the ocean, I felt the waves foam around my small body, purifying me of all fears. An inner bath, like my

30

grandfather used to tell his wife after spending a little too much time drinking with his

buddies.

We had dinner at a restaurant on the beach, where we ate fresh fish. The smell of

the ocean, which was saltier than our Black Sea, penetrated our nostrils, mixing with the

taste of the sweet fish. And yes! Life was rather sweet for us in those moments. We just

stretched our toes in the sand. Feeling its finely grains roll down and tickle the soles of

our souls, after we had dug our feet deeper into the sand. I had Mircea cover me up in

sand and take my picture to send back home. To me, that was the ultimate freedom:

living in a sand castle – buried deep in its smoothness and coarseness – both part of life’s

grittiness. We could already picture ourselves living on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, surf board under one arm, dark sunglasses covering our Romanian faces. Forgetting and being forgotten. Tasting the salty freedom ahead.

31

Chapter 7

AMUSEMENT PARKS

Little did we know that freedom roamed around Disney World’s magical castles

and roller coasters. We decided to go to the Magic Kingdom first to experience the

ultimate thrill of life, by riding roller coasters, dragons, and other monstrous creatures.

The whole park was a miniature world of childhood, a place where the young and the old

came together to celebrate happiness and laughter. Yes, it was like a park of laughter and

forgetting to paraphrase Milan Kundera, one of my favorite writers.

Our first ride at the Big Thunder Mountain was like a thunder, awakening our

reason. It felt like a giant leap into non-being. Screaming at the top of our lungs was the ultimate freedom. This time our shrieks of fear and excitement were joyous as opposed to the angry shouts when we fought in the Romanian revolution, chanting: “Down with communism,” “Down with Ceausescu.” Cries of elation versus cries of fearful hope.

Total freedom versus the fake freedom Romania experienced after the revolution in 1989, when the communist regime was overthrown, but then the former socialists and communists took the reins of the country slowing down change. Strangling the voice of freedom. Controlling its accents and inflexions…

In our ecstatic rush to ride as many roller coasters as possible in one day, we underwent the ultimate adventure at Space Mountain. At 40 mph drive through the galaxy, the roller coaster’s crazy speed projected us into an intergalactic void, arousing our senses. We went on more than fifteen rides and experienced the twists and turns of

32 freedom like never before. We hurled our beings into voids of freedom, trying to feel its smooth edges and sharp ones the way you feel a can after removing its metal lid. We had stewed with hope and dreams for over 20 years, and now we let ourselves gorge on ladles of freedom – each ladle replete with unknown flavors that made it hard to conceive going back to our old lives. Even though freedom meant choices and debating whether to go back to our country, a more palatable choice was to live the Disney’s dream. The only way, however, to repeat the same dream of freedom was to act.

By noon tired of the many speedy rides, we settled down for the spectacular

Disney World’s parade. We saw all our favorite characters from our childhood

Cinderella, Mickey Mouse, Pluto, and so on. Not only did we enjoy the parade, but we relapsed into the pure joy of childhood, mesmerized by its special sounds, colors, and droll appearance. We were to find out later that Americans were masters of parades, knowing how to create a fun atmosphere, by using their creativity and organizing skills.

American parades are not only a display of sparkling resources and energies, but also a modus vivendi, which replaced the monotony of everyday life.

We had lunch at an American style restaurant, where we had mashed potatoes with turkey and cranberries, a typical American Thanksgiving dinner. We kept asking for more turkey and bread rolls – they both melted into our mouths in an inimitable taste of freedom. No lines to buy meat, sugar, flour, and so on, as we experienced growing up in

Romania, when the big green Ogre ruled our country with a tight fist, rationing our food, thoughts, hearts, and souls. Now we just wanted more butter on our rolls. Melting freedom and shaping it into a pretzel one day, an ice cream cone another day.

33

In the evening multicolored fireworks delighted our beings with their brightest

and happiest summersaults in the deep blue sky. The moon reflected the red, yellow,

green colors like a beach ball. The Magic Kingdom was magic indeed, as it spread its

childhood realms over us like fishermen’s nets, trapping us in fairy tales that we wished

to relive, while keeping our childhood eyes widely open.

***

The next day we went to Epcot, which stood for “The Experimental Prototype

Community of Tomorrow.” It was also called the grown ups’ Disney Land, as it actually represented the striving of mankind to make a dream come true. Epcot was also a center of “existential wonder,” a way to transcend the everyday life and routine that kills our imagination. Invention was the magic spark, brightening Epcot. Hence, everything seemed possible: there were public phones with keyboards for writing messages (Anne used one to call Michael). Then, there was an interactive TV that you could talk to and become part of the show business. Many of these inventions seemed to be fantastic and unachievable, but they actually worked and are in use today. While admiring all these major breakthroughs, we felt humbled by mankind’s desire to embrace new frontiers

(even the Star Trekian type of frontiers), and new communicational horizons. I think communication represents the defensive weapon of the future. Comprehension results from communication, and thinking is the articulation of thoughts, the affirmation of existence. (Dubito, Cogito, Ergo Sum, isn't it?)

“The Wonders of Life” was a special section in Epcot that transported us into the

inner anatomic miracle of the human body. We entered a spaceship like the Enterprise on

34

“Star Trek,” the doors closing behind us automatically. We took our seats and put the safety belts on. Then we started a quick journey into the human body. Although we were shaken in all possible directions, our instructive, fun trip was simulated, since we never left the ground.

The most fascinating section in Epcot was “The Journey into Imagination,” a three-dimensional show, where amazing things took place. We felt hundreds of mice and lions running close to our feet, while shock, hysteria, and laughter tickled our beings.

Then, a huge boa constrictor opened his mouth right in front of us, as if ready to engulf us. After the show, I asked myself: “What is imagination?” I think it is an intellectual spark, evolving into fireworks. Imagination - innovation - invention. The connection between these words is embodied in man's capacity to project oneself into a transcendent universe, while searching for freedom.

We had a busy, rainy day at Epcot. Anne could hardly keep up with us, and told us: “Guys, we can't see all of Epcot in one day.”

“That's true, but we can try,” Mircea replied. We all laughed, and splashed through the rain.

And so we ran to and fro like crazy, ending the day with dinner at a Norwegian restaurant, where we ate seafood. The restaurant was inside an old castle with huge chandeliers, whose arms united with the tables, embracing the hungry eaters. Our dinner was pretty unconventional, too. Mircea was disgusted with the octopus that I tried to eat, without much success. Eating octopus’s legs, or tentacles, was definitely an unprecedented experience. It left me with a mushy taste in my pursed mouth. Of course,

35

Mircea laughed at me, making me deplore my eccentric gastronomic taste and my desire

to try new sensations, or what the Americans call “cool stuff.” Speaking of experiencing

new things, I remembered a joke that suited me so well that evening: “One day a

renowned European writer passes by a blind man in front of his hotel and gives him a

dollar. The next day he passes by the same man, disguised as a cripple, and he gives him

another dollar. Then, the third day he sees him again asking for money, pretending to be

deaf-mute. Filled with curiosity, the great writer asks him: “Why do you change your

appearance every day?”

“Well, Americans like changes, so I have to find something new every day,” the beggar quickly replied.

After dinner, we watched the fireworks and the laser show. It was like New Year's

Eve in the middle of summer, a first for both of us. Fireworks of all shapes and colors were launched up high into the sky, after which they disappeared in the lake in the middle of the park. The whole festivity resembled a paradise island at that moment. Paradise lost and Paradise regained...An unforgettable, night splashed with heavy, colorful brush strokes of Heavens that made us revere expansion.

“Now’s the time to let yourself guided by the whispers of the lake mixed with ashes of freedom to find your true inner being and SELF,” I said to myself, still under the heavy spell of sparkles. I don’t know why, but I felt that all Heaven’s lights were tumbling down from the sky as fireworks. Those were the angels’ only sources of light and sound - they trumpeted in our ears, wheeling away evil and discontent. And all this happened while we were smart enough to imagine, create, and play with foams of

36 laughter, ridges and ripples of water. Hence, when the last sparkles of light and fire touched the lake at the end of the fireworks show, I felt my sorrows back home with my parents, my country, and the pseudo freedom after the Romanian revolution in 1989 simply disappeared aided by the magic wand of childhood that parted the waters of discontent. I also sensed that the culture of other countries that were part of America through its immigrants guided our steps on the path to knowledge, tradition, and appreciation of the Other through music, laughter, and a new language we were lucky to speak with British and Romanian accents that made Americans bestow attention upon us, when they curiously asked us about our whereabouts.

***

Mircea is fond of space journeys, so next day Anne decided to take us to Kennedy

Space Center. The Americans initiated the first flight to the moon, which assured them an important place in the golden book of mankind. We got on a bus that took us to the famous space shuttles and rockets that had flown around our solar system, making us feel part of that space adventure. However, I think Mircea could give a better technical description of our last trip, which I can't. I am not a practical, down to earth person like he is, and that's why I am lucky to have him. He is my perfect counterpart - rational, exact, scientific, whereas I am idealistic and imaginative. I am constantly refuting reality, hand gliding on the fringes of fiction.

37

Chapter 8

EXPLORATIONS

We returned to Gainesville, after having spent three days in the adventurous, fun land of Disney World. We were still in a trance and could not forget how we peeled laughter and squeezed joyous screams when riding roller coasters. We also felt we had discovered laughter for the first time in our lives. More than that, being in Disney World made us go back to the innocence of childhood by defying the ultimate reality, the universal sorrows of the world through laughter and forgetting. We were like characters in Milan Kundera's novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, using Disney World as a shield against communism that still strangled our dear country. Back home people didn't know how to laugh anymore, as if they had forgotten to open their clenched jaws and let the sounds come out. They only made grimaces. The uncertain political situation, the disastrous economy, and the general poverty made the burden as heavy as an oversized backpack, slouching their bodies into pitiful contortionist poses. I was so glad I could make a choice and laughter was first on my list. I knew I had to keep smiling and laughing, as a way to fight against perishing.

The next day after a good night rest, we went shopping. Anne bought a pair of

Nike shoes. I got a new watch - mine had broken. The ironic thing is that my father is a

watchmaker and my watch let me down. That's inconceivable for me! Actually, I am so

dependent on the notion of time that I think I was born with a watch on my hand. Time,

for me, is like a fugitive. The difficulty of mastering time is an interior one. A fear of the

38

void. An abyss, opening its big mouth in front of the contemporary man, who, in order to

find the key to happiness, has to discover a method to master his interior and exterior time. Man and Time, Time and Man. A relentless and ceaseless competition between the perishable and the eternal, between spirit and matter. I guess we can pretty much master exterior time - the embodiment of the materialistic human being. I also think that most

Americans live in an exterior time. The material represents the absolute supremacy in a society, in which men can fit in only if they have enough money, and that’s why the latter is necessary for popularity, respect, and authority. It’s like a vicious circle.

Well, I guess I let myself wander through the infinite tunnel of time and space too much, instead of telling you that my new watch was golden with a blue frame, and it even showed the date, which was a good thing, since I always lose track of time. Oh, yes, it was also water-resistant.

***

From shopping we leaped to nature. We visited Cedar Key, an archaic,

picturesque place with a touch of eccentricity, for a lot of painters and sculptors live

there. The population of this small town was scarce because of the hurricanes that hit this

side of Florida like a chiming clock. The beach was small. The Gulf of Mexico was

muddy and brown that day. Wood storks, ospreys, white egrets, white and brown

pelicans, egrets, and many others circled the sky like acrobatic airplanes, making us

wonder if we landed in the birds’ heaven. Needless to say, we felt like in a Hitchcock’s movie – excitement and fear mixing inextricably, while we tried to make sense of this abundance of birds. Were they flying high above us with their wings stretched in hidden

39

messages that we had to decipher, or were they just made us squint in the sun in awe and

reverence of this place? Did we feel the lull before the storm? We were not the only ones

waiting, holding our breaths just to make sure we didn’t interrupt the harmony of this

birding paradise: fishermen were waiting for the big catch, elderly people were enjoying

the sun that warmed their bodies, and customers were waiting for their fish served in

restaurants suspended in time – above the Gulf of Mexico.

We ate at a restaurant that looked like a tree house or a cabin supported by wooden pillars. Various pictures of big fish decorated the walls, turning it into a fisherman’s cove. We ate out on the wooden, worn out deck from where we scrutinized the gulf.

“It’s such a beautiful, calm day,” I said.

“Yes, indeed,” our friend Michael agreed. “But we wouldn’t want to be here when a big hurricane strikes,” he added. “Watching a hurricane sweep the shores of our fragile lives is like experiencing the original flood. People are totally helpless and the only thing they can do is watch the reckless forces of nature, fearing for their lives and their homes that are completely destroyed sometimes,” Michael elaborated.

“Indeed, it can be pretty sad, which is why I think that Cedar Key beach is more like a shrine. People are coming and going… They only want to soak in the sun and the gulf’s warm waters,” said Mircea, his dimples as big as olives on his well-shaven cheeks.

“You’re right,” Michael said. “We’re all pilgrims on earth. The contemporary man is more and more the universal man, who chooses a place to live, changing his

40

identity, his way of living, without having second thoughts about it. He wants to be a

survivor.” He said, ending our conversation, too, for we finished our meal.

Needless to say, Michael’s words resonated with me that day, when I started to feel like a pilgrim, who transgressed all territorial and imaginary borders of life.

We got back to Gainesville around 7 p.m. and had dinner with our wonderful

hosts and friends and some of their friends.

***

Time was running out. After a month spent in the U.S., Mircea and I decided to

extend our stay. Every night before going to bed, we discussed whether to go back to

Romania, where Mircea had an engineering job waiting for him, or to stay here in the

U.S., where we had so many opportunities ahead. We chose to go to New York, hoping

to get a job there. We were also thinking of the type of life we could enjoy in America,

not to mention the total freedom of expression. Our stay was a dilemma for Mircea, but I

was convinced that we had to do something to change our lives. Besides, I was not afraid

of changes, for I could choose my life’s course, the same way I tried to find the exit from

a maze when I was a little girl playing in the park.

***

We left Gainesville August 10, 1995, with an insatiable desire to stay in the U.S. I

liked this country of choices and opportunities - the torch of freedom that illuminated the

universal path and burned high in the hand of the Statue of Liberty, bringing light to

people of all nationalities and to the whole world.

41

Michael and Anne took us to the airport. It was a painful departure, but we tried to make jokes and pretend that we didn't care about the coming hardships. Our friends had been so good to us all the time we stayed with them, and even when we left they gave us some money to help with our plans of making America our home. Anne’s face and eyebrows revealed her concerned expression about our decision to stay, but, hey, what could 20-year-old kids like us do other than fake it? Well, just the opposite, of course, which is why we affirmed loud and clearly that we knew what we were doing. Before our plane arrived, however, Anne did not fall for our bluffing, so she told us: “Guys, I'm worried about you! Take good care of yourselves.”

“We will,” I assured her, while exchanging hugs and kisses. Tears ran down our cheeks. We wiped them off fast, and strutted forward chests high - like warriors. When I look back at our first month as tourists in America, I realize that our decision to immigrate was a dauntless act on our part backed off by hot air and a lot of youthful silliness. Besides, the challenge and adventure propelled us towards New York, the center of freedom, where we were planning to flutter our wings in search of our nests.

We wanted to feel America’s pulse on our own, so we returned to New York, where we stayed with our friend Carol, our first American friend, who had waited for us at the airport, when we first arrived in the U.S. She was an American, greeting two

Romanian friends. She was the American waver. I remember her wave so well! It had something to do with conducting an orchestra. This time, however, Carol wasn't very happy to have us. Her apartment was small, and she was very busy, too, living a typical hectic New Yorker’s life – divided between running to work, cursing the city with its

42 clogged arteries of traffic, rudeness, and expensive living, and coming back home late in the evening.

“We don’t want to be a burden to you, Carol,” I told her.

“Oh, don’t you worry, we’ll manage somehow,” she said, propping her head between her hands, as if to prevent it from rolling down.

“Thank you very much for your hospitality,” Mircea said. “Also we’ll be gone most of the day, so that we don’t disturb you.”

“Don’t be silly! It’s no big deal,” she said. “Although I do hope you find another place to stay pretty soon.”

“I’m sure we will!” Mircea replied with a shrug.

We knew she meant what she told us about finding another place, as every before going to work she would make a big fuss. She cursed loud enough for her neighbors to hear her, not to mention us who slept on her sofa in the living room. She also kept dropping things on the floor, which made us feel unwanted there, but, in the end she became a true and dear friend to us.

***

We didn't have time to lose. “You snooze, you lose,” was one of the first

American sayings we learned, which still never ceases to amuse us. In our case, we had to put Sunday to work, too, so to speak. We beamed with pride at our ability to find the

Romanian Orthodox Church in the yellow pages, and we rushed out to make it to the morning service. We took the train from Broadway, where Carol lived, to downtown

Manhattan. Mircea knew what train to take, finding his way around, as if he had lived in

43

New York all his life. I just followed him along, jumping from red, white, and blue lines

that took us to our destination. In between switching trains, I told Mircea: “I don't know

what I would do without your awesome sense of direction.”

It was a beautiful day, and the sun was following us with its warm rays like a

puppy. We were both dressed up. I wore my good green dress with colorful motifs that

looked like a big peacock’s tail. Mircea had his blue summer pants on and a white, short

sleeve cotton shirt. Although we tried to look forward to receiving God’s words and just

praying, Mircea and I both knew that going to church was more like an SOS to God and

our Romanian fellows, who might be able to help us find a job, or a place to live.

With the church being so centrally located, I felt it was the axis mundi of the

exiled Romanians, who lost a center and regained another one here in the U.S. We

arrived at the Romanian Church around 9:30 a.m., among the first ones in the church.

Before entering the sacred space, we felt a little bit lost, exactly like the first time we

went to a movie theater with our friends in Florida, when we didn’t know what room to

enter to see our movie, since there were about 10 movies in one theater. Now, just like

then, we were a little bit uncertain, whether we were in the right place, since the church

looked like a regular building on the outside, only distinguishing itself from the profane,

noisy, messy, but chirping and lively Manhattan, by the cross on top. Of course, once we entered the church, our fears had dissipated due to the familiarity of the saint pictures on the walls that surrounded us – a perfect reminder of our church back home.

44

“Gee, were we homesick already?” I asked myself. I liked how the paintings on the walls and the corners they covered bore the seals of our Romanian culture, anchored into a new American one.

Hardly had we had time to light up a candle and pray when the service started. I felt my heart startle at the voice of the priest. He brought back memories of a communist

God, or I should say a God that the communists annihilated through their atheism. During the times I grew up, I always heard stories about people not being able to practice their religion, especially the Baptists, Penticostals, and other religions different from the

Orthodox, the main religion back home, and the Catholics, but I never felt any restrictions as a child. I simply walked into the church with the spire towers, looming over my home town like a giraffe, since all the other buildings in our town were mainly single stories, and prayed. I hated the preaching, because the priest was mumbling up words, chanting, and singing. Thus, my solace and refuge were talking to God when nobody was around. I would kneel on the oversized step in front of the pulpit, adorned with images of saints, floating through white clouds set against the most blue sky I’ve seen in my life, and just pray, chat, entreat, and praise God with childish words that evolved over time into more complex thoughts and prayers that were less centered upon my immediate wishes and needs.

Now at the age of 22, I thought God and I communicated pretty well, and I followed his lead. Yet, listening to the priest who actually had a good sermon and was not just babbling incoherent praises to God like the one back home, I was a little bit disoriented. In the middle of the ceremony, I cried and sobbed when the priest reminded

45 us about the young Romanian heroes who fought in the Romanian revolution and died for liberty and democracy. I fought in the revolution, too. I went out in the streets in my hometown Lugoj. I shouted anticommunist slogans and cried with happiness at being able to express myself after so many years of subterranean existence. In those moments, nothing else mattered. It was like throwing a twig on the fire; you could watch it burn really fast. Later on, people transformed the flickering light into a big fire, supplying it with logs, and turning it into a big revolutionary flame. I had been in the streets for three days together with my father, and all that time I was serene and upbeat, sniffing freedom and inhaling it like an asthmatic person reaching for the inhaler. I didn't care about my life at all, convinced that I was fighting for true freedom and democracy until those ideals were to be smeared later on by Iliescu, an ex-communist, who got elected as president after Ceausescu got captured and shot.

I simply relived the revolution, going back to December 1989. All the icons had bloodshot eyes. All the saints were talking at the same time. It was like a whirlpool of voices that grew deeper and deeper. And then the priest touched my head with Christ's cup. Our martyrs' blood added to His blood. It was an ocean of blood. Sacrifice... Hope...

Deception...I felt an inner vibration. It was the viscera's race, a marathon of emotions and ego throbbing, which ended when my friend Mircea nudged me.

At the end of the ceremony the priest analyzed the concept of prayer.

“Prayer,” he said, “is a laboratory between Heaven and Earth. It's the pillar of our existence, the redemption of humanity.”

46

After hearing the priest’s reflections on prayer, I remembered what our

Romanian philosopher Petre Tutea said: “The man who doesn’t pray is like a dying animal.” Yes, I think this is true. Humanity is heading towards extinction unless people pray.

After the ceremony, we met some Romanians. They were very nice to us and did their best to help us. The priest had already told them that we had decided to remain in the U.S., so they should help us overcome the hardships we would encounter as new immigrants to this country. While the priest explained to them what our needs were, I thought to myself: “Wouldn't it be nice if we all had a single passport with the words

‘Citizen of the world’ on? Thus, the microcosm would become a macrocosm, and maybe this would be a good way for us to get closer to the hub of the universe. People all over the world could actually grow roots into the rich land of a single state: ‘ABUNDENTIA

SPIRITUALIA,’ where they could live in harmony, love, prosperity, and peace.”

In the afternoon we went to Central Park, the kingdom of flowers, vegetation, gaiety, and a continuous buzz that was music to our ears. People came there to relax both physically and spiritually, and to forget the misery of everyday life. We noticed,

Shakespeare's garden was an all time favorite. People strolled through the well- manicured garden bursting with color and fragrance from flowers mentioned in his plays, such as roses, violets, daisies, and so on. Yet, what delighted me was Shakespeare’s theatre, where people could enjoy a full performance, such as The Tempest, Midsummer's

Night Dream, and others. After letting myself be transported through imaginary lands, I realized that through all my readings that expanded my mind and vision about the world,

47

the communists were never able to squash my imagination – the greatest freedom we, as

human beings, possess.

We had walked so much, exploring Central Park that sitting down on the bench

felt like a soothing massage for our tired feet. A big baseball park was right in front, so

we watched Americans play baseball - an alien sport to us. Nonetheless, we tried hard to

understand the game, but all we got was that baseball was a team sport, a substitution

game, since they changed places on the field, running from one base to another.

“It’s a freedom game,” Mircea exclaimed, as running from one base to another seemed to free the next player to do his part.

“Huh! I see what you say,” I replied, picturing our run from one base to another:

New York, Atlanta, Gainesville, and back to first base New York. Freedom felt like touching base. Home run, running home, running away from home, and back to home run.

48

Chapter 9

LIBRARIES AND BOOKSTORES

Whenever I felt lost, or in search of answers, I would walk to our small library in

Lugoj, after crossing the Iron Bridge and the Timis River. My walk from home was

soothing in itself, away from the world’s cacophonies. By the time I entered the library

located on the corner of a big intersection across from a small park with a few broken

down swings and slides, on the same side with the Orthodox Church and behind the

Catholic Church, I felt tranquility descend upon me. Often times I just stood in the

library’s hallway and felt liberated of all fears and uncertainties, knowing that soon I

would find wisdom in between pages of new and old books that I pulled out from the

library’s dusty shelves. Besides the library, the river also brought flows of freedom that

gave me the courage to search for happiness under my beloved river’s bedrocks.

As a child my favorite pastime was swimming in the Timis River, which crossed our small town, dividing it into two almost perfect halves the same way a pill cutter cuts a pill in half. I particularly enjoyed swimming against the current, as if getting ready to take life heads on, and prepare for the challenges that were to come. The water was brownish-green, much different than the ocean. The bottom was sandy in parts, but had sharp stones in others that had hurt my bare feet, since the wonderful water sandals were not available just like so many other things were not around to make our lives easier, such as computers, food processors, or even the common automobile that was too expensive for my parents to afford in the late 80s.

49

I used a typewriter to type important documents only, as I wrote my short stories and my homework primarily by hand. My mom used a sharp knife to chop vegetables and sometimes fingers, due to her proclivity to cut herself quite frequently. Regarding the car, we relied on our good legs to go around Lugoj, because not too many people, including my parents afforded to own a car and pay a quarter of their salaries (the equivalent of about $10 a month) on gas.

My dad and I used to play water volleyball with a yellow, red, and blue ball for long periods of time until our feet hurt from treading the water. After that we would sit on the grassy beach and play backgammon. We also liked to play a guessing game, looking at the clouds in the sky and trying to find the object they looked like. In those moments I felt that the blue sky, the Timis River winding around town, and downtown formed a triangle of love that would follow me for years to come like the wafting smell of our famous cabbage rolls cooking.

When I wasn’t swimming, I liked to walk downtown, which was only five minutes away from the apartment where we lived on the third floor of a four-story walk- up. I would go by the river, taking the tree-lined boardwalk all the way downtown, while watching playful fish jump out of the water, as if to take a deep breath, and then go back to their underwater universe, which had probably more depth than ours.

Once downtown, I would first stop by the biggest bookstore, where I liked to look at all the new books or any reprints that came out that week. Although my favorite bookstore was probably just the miniature replica of the smallest U.S. bookstore, I felt the happiest in there - reading romances, philosophy, and classic novels gave me the strength

50 to fight against the oppressive communism regime dominating Romania during the 80s until it was finally overthrown in December 1989.

The stifling times that I lived through during communism reminded me of the lack of freedom of expression and speech, as well as the fear of being different, since we all had to wear uniforms at schools and follow the rigorous schedule imposed by our teachers who used to beat us if we did not do our homework with the same long rubber baton that police officers used. And then there was the fear of darkness, because our communist rulers had regular electricity shut offs to save the energy; fear of hunger, because most of the foods, such as meat, milk, flour, and sugar were rationalized, and fear of persecution and the unknown, as one’s family could be thrown in jail for speaking against communist, or for just being perceived as a threat against our communist leader

Ceausescu.

Even the bookstore was a reflection of the communist order, or maybe I should call it Chaos. The bookstore had about four main rows full of books and a big counter in the back, where all the new releases were placed in plastic white bags. The new release was always packaged together with another worthless book that you had to buy, if you wanted the ‘hot stuff’. Sometimes I even had to tip the clerk to make sure that they kept my favorite book, for they were selling like hot cakes.

From the bookstore, I liked to cross the Iron Bridge, as we called it, since there was another bridge crossing the Timis River, called the Concrete Bridge, and go shopping. The stores were pretty much filled with useless communist merchandise, such as the navy school uniforms, the ugly shoes that never seemed to fit well, being either

51

half a size too small or too big, which is why my mom would automatically buy the bigger size just to make sure that I wouldn’t outgrow my shoes too quickly, and other miscellaneous items that were just floating in the background.

In the middle of town we had two churches, the Catholic and the Orthodox

Church. Even though I was born and raised as an Orthodox, I always stopped by the

Catholic Church and stayed there for the service, mostly because it had nicer murals and paintings on the wall, and benches where I could sit down. The sermon was more enjoyable, too, and more directly related to the Bible, instead of all the Orthodox incoherent chanting and singing.

Behind the Catholic Church there were the Court House and the Town Hall, of no interest to me, except that I had to pass by them to reach the library, located on the other side of the street from them. I was about 6 years old when I first set foot into the library.

My mom took me there to find a book that I had to read for school, and ever since then I felt that the library was my sacred refuge, where I could get lost walking among long rows with books arranged in alphabetical order. Sometimes the books were misplaced by mischievous kids like me. That was our way of making fun of the fat dark-haired librarian, who always sat in her chair motionless with a sour expression on her face, looking like a disgruntled walrus. I hated her in the beginning for not helping me, because it always took me more than an hour to find the book that I needed, but later on in my teen years we actually became friends. Over the next 12 years I would always see her there, propped up in her chair, as if part of the long shelves filled with books. Over the years, I also made the transition from the children’s section, located on the left side of

52

the library to the adult’s section, located on the right, which made me feel that I

graduated from childhood to adolescence.

And yet, no matter how much I enjoyed the town bookstore and library, the

market was the most intriguing places of all. It was always alive with farmers selling their

fresh vegetables, live poultry, cheese, and meats, buyers bargaining for the best price, and

kids like me hanging around knowing that we would meet some of our friends there. The

market was Lugoj’s central place of gathering, most of the times more populated than the

church or even the theatre. Besides meeting our buddies and hanging out, the most

exciting part of the market were the people from former Yugoslavia, who came to sell

their chocolate, chewing gums, and, of course, the cool Levi’s.

I could walk most of the city in about 45 minutes, ending each time by the

ubiquitous Timis River, as our apartment faced the river on one side and the park on the

other side. The shape, the color, and the form of my beloved river seemed to differ from

one part of town to another, which is why I enjoyed watching the river swell it waters in

front of me or simply winding down silently, as I strolled past it to return home from my

explorations around town.

Swimming and writing are the quintessence of my being, for plunging into the

cool, refreshing water of a river or the ocean is like exploring the depths of one’s soul,

while trying to keep afloat and breathe regularly.

***

A few thousand miles away from home, I felt lost. Naturally, I thought The New

York Public Library would be the best place to find answers to our immigration forms,

53

steps, procedures, and so on. The library simply embraced us with its grandiose spirit.

Gawking at everything around us, we found ourselves wandering through its wonderful

labyrinths. I was reading The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco at that time, and visiting

that great library, made me connect it with Eco's definition of the book: “the book is a

labyrinth, in which the more we get into it, the harder it is to find our way out.” To me, a

book is a “being,” the universal spirit. A “being,” one chooses after careful analysis.

Unlike people who let us down sometimes, or even betray us, a book echoes its words

inside our hearts, releasing our souls into the ultimate fantasy. In short, a book is

incapable of betrayal.

We read some things about American legislation. We stayed there for about three

hours till the library closed. After that we chose to stay on the marble stairs in front of it,

together with other people, consumers of books, hot dogs, and other goodies. We were both silent. Words could only offend the busy metropolis, pulsating with life right in front of us. Mircea was the one to break the silence. He asked: “Did you notice that the library is guarded by two lions?”

“Yes, I did. Lots of symbolism here, huh?” I asked Mircea. “The lion, as the King

of the jungle, watching over the queen of culture,” I continued, encouraged by his

attention.

***

The church, the library, and Central Park were our favorite wandering places. Part

of our spiritual itinerary, the church was our most precious heritage. Another week

passed. We went to church on Sunday, and from there to Central Park - our place of

54 exploration. That day we enjoyed walking through a beautiful garden which vibrated with life and happiness. Unfortunately that resplendent garden could not alleviate the sadness of human existence. I say so, because we witnessed a conversation between an artist and two homeless people. We inferred from their conversation that they chose that type of life because they preferred the freedom of the street. In Romania you don't see many homeless people, but there are very many orphans who wander in the streets, smoke, and don't go to school. They are the universal lost children, the same way America has its soul searchers and wanderers.

In a way, we felt sorry for those homeless people, but if we stopped to think for a moment, we didn't have a place of our own, either. We were rambling through Manhattan in search of solutions. We needed a job to survive in America and had to apply for immigration, if we decided to stay. I was more willing to sacrifice the hard work I had done in Romania than my friend Mircea, who likes to stick to one thing, instead of trying different ways to succeed. I guess, he doesn’t like complications, so he simply strips life of its winding paths, looking for mathematical answers: straight and unequivocal.

We had stayed in Manhattan for three weeks, and we didn’t spare a single day in trying to make the right decision. One day Mircea asked me: “Why do you want to stay here? We have nobody in this country. And besides, we both worked so hard in Romania to get a higher education and better jobs. Should we disregard everything we’ve worked so hard for?”

“Yup,” I responded. “I feel that something is missing from my life. I’m not satisfied with a monotonous existence, and I want some challenge.”

55

“I don't see your point, if there is one,” Mircea replied, tugging at his belt.

Just by looking at the metallic flicker in his blue eyes, I could tell he was more eager to reach out to his old life back home that was like a steady boat, whereas I treated life more like a lollipop. After getting tired of sucking the candy, I threw it away, and reached for a sweeter one.

56

Chapter 10

MY FIRST JOB

I found a job just skimming through the well-known and most popular Romanian newspaper, “Magazinul Romanesc.” I picked up the phone and called the number in the paper. Nobody was home, so I left a message in English. In about ten minutes I received a phone call back. We discussed a little bit about the job and my qualifications, after which Adrian Tanase, my future employer, asked me if I wanted to work for him, taking care of elderly people. I was at a loss, for I hadn’t expected to get a job so soon. I told him that I needed to talk to my friend about it; accepting the job meant moving to

California.

Changing the set in only three weeks! I felt it was challenging enough. I just didn't know how Mircea would take it, since he was job hunting, too that morning. I was restless. I tried to read a book, but I couldn't concentrate on it. My mind wandered through scenarios and dilemmas, as if I didn't have enough worries already. My heart thumped with joy and terror, as I felt my freedom of choice trap me in its webs. Can freedom be spider webs of choices that trap us inside them? Can we untangle freedom’s webs, or do we just get more tangled in the choices we make? Is failure part of freedom?

Although I didn’t know much about cooking and cleaning, I was confident I would do well in my new job, as failure has never been a word in my vocabulary. When I didn’t succeed, I liked to say holding my chin up that I would make it next time. I refused to feel sorry for myself, or make up excuses. The best part of my future job was free

57 room and board, which we really could use, especially since Carol had hosted us long enough and was ready to reclaim her apartment, which we totally understood.

Mircea finally returned from his interview in New Jersey, so I threw myself on him like an anxious lioness to tell him the news. He listened to my breathless account, after which he said: “It seems like I don't have much choice in the matter! I guess I have to stay in the U.S. It's like a spell.”

“Oh, great! But do you think I can manage this type of job? I mean, cooking taking care of people is like Martial arts…”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to tell the difference between peas and beans in the kitchen, so that will be a good start,” Mircea replied with a wink and kissed me short on the lips.

I laughed. With him, I didn’t feel quite alone in this vast country of freedom dreams – fulfilled and unfulfilled. Yet, not having my parents with me, made it harder to transition and find my own voice, while setting up my new existential stakes deep in the

American soil. From stories we’ve heard, parents usually immigrate first, and then bring their children over. In our case, we had no one to depend upon but ourselves. Mircea sensed both my elation and uncertainty, so he continued to boost my morale. We had been together for five years, and we never had a big fight. One of my colleagues at the

University told us once: “Man, you two are boring! You don't fight. You don't smoke, or drink. I don't know what you do!”

We just smiled ironically at him, without bothering to answer back. We felt he belonged to the group of people who missed the real significance of life, choosing to

58

misinterpret freedom by doing do the most eccentric things and by experiencing some

cool sensations. They like to ride on a wild roller coaster all the time, not only for fun,

but to live on the tattered edges of freedom.

***

In the evening we told our friend Carol about the job offer in California. She was

dumbfounded in the beginning, but then she told us: “Well, guys, I see that you manage really well. I wish you luck, and I want you to know that I really enjoyed your company.”

To our great surprise, she even gave us some presents: two nice pens with golden

nibs. We thanked her and hugged her before leaving for Sacramento, California.

“Guys, I don't know you anymore,” said Carol half seriously, half jokingly.

“Everybody will die in a big earthquake over there. I don't know why anyone would live

in California. I understand, but...”

“Don't you worry, Carol,” I interrupted her. “We'll be all right. They already had a

big earthquake in California, so it won't hit us anymore.”

“You’ll all die over there!” she continued.

Fortunately, we didn't see it that way. Optimism was one of our strongest traits,

after all. We liked to joke with each other often and even project and predict the tough

times ahead, knowing in our hearts that it will take us a few years to march on the

sinuous paths of freedom before we could see our dreams come true.

***

Our last day in New York. After three weeks, we were sorry to leave, because we

had become familiar with it. We felt the throb of this metropolis; our hearts beat together

59 with thousands of other hearts of all colors, nationalities, and races. To us, New York was like a giant heart that beat in the same time with the heart of the universe. It was the big organ that pulsated mankind's blood. The crowded streets of the metropolis with its tall skyscrapers were the hope carrying arteries, heading with the speed of the yellow cabs towards the vital center of life. Moreover, to me, New York's vital center was the Public

Library, where we walked its marble stairs for the last time before saying good bye to

New York and Carol, our first American friend.

We only stayed there for an hour, after which we went out to eat. We said good- bye to Manhattan, as well.

***

We flew to San Francisco. Once we arrived, we felt the ocean breeze. It was getting dark enough for the long, lit up bridges to protrude through fog that tip-toed around the Bay on ballerina’s feet.

“September fog!” we both exclaimed.

“It’s a Dickensian fog!” I mused, hoping the moral structures of California weren't foggy.

We took the Greyhound bus to Sacramento, where Adrian Tanase and his daughter Mary were waiting for us. We didn't know what they looked like and vice versa.

Yet, it was quite easy to identify each other, even amusing. Mircea and I were standing by the phone, when a tall, lanky man approached us. I nudged Mircea and told him triumphantly: “I bet he’s our Romanian!”

60

His small, black eyes that looked like olives were bright and eager. He was the kind of man talking with his eyes, face, arms, and entire body – gesticulating to the

Heavens. The long legs walked in front of his body, as if in eternal hurry to catch the next flight, train, or bus. After finding us, Adrian’s eyes beamed with recognition, so he stopped fretting. Mary, his daughter, was waiting for us in the car. She greeted us, as we approached to put our luggage in the back- two canvas bags with long black zippers containing our short version lives.

“Hello, how are you? I’m Mary.”

“Nice to meet you. We’re glad you found us in the bus station. We thought we were lost for a moment,” said Mircea with his characteristic smile that covered the rest of his face and made his mouth the affable center of his being – dimples as deep as gorges.

“O.K., now it's over,” said Adrian in a hurry, which amused me a little, for I distinguished a strong resemblance between him and my grandfather, both of them quick- tempered. Adrian also seemed focused on constantly moving – life, a timed race that could slither away in a second, and hence snapping at it, was norm. By watching Adrian,

I could reconstitute my grandfather’s image, the difference being that I got a different insight into his bad temper. My grandpa used to shout at me when he got mad, especially after I had stomped and scrunched the cucumbers, tomatoes, and bell peppers in his well- tended garden.

“We'll be home in a minute,” Mary assured us with the calmness of a pilot, the opposite of her father's agitation.

61

Once we arrived, we were introduced to Adriana, Adrian's wife. They had

predestined, matching names. Adriana was her husband’s opposite, too. She didn’t twirl

around the house like her husband. She was the perfect housewife - organized and clean.

At least that was my first impression, which wasn't completely accurate, as I was to

notice later on.

After a short conversation, they served us dinner. We talked about ourselves,

plans, and they did the same. They probed into our lives in Romania and our new lives in

America. They also shared their stories with us, so we felt like being included in their

family, and relaxed a little bit. They came to America more than 10 years ago after

suffering from political and religious persecution for being Baptists, and had done well for themselves in California, the balmy state that had washed away their worries and hatred for the communists back home.

During dinner, I studied the living room and the kitchen – both in perfect order.

The kitchen was like a pharmacy. It had two big white tiled tables, both geometrically symmetrical. Actually, the whole house had a hidden symmetry. I realized this only later on, when I compared the architecture of their house with the one of our neighbors next door. What struck me the most was the fact that the kitchen was part of the living room and the dining room, forming a perfect communion with the latter. I was accustomed to separate kitchens, like the ones we had in Romania, which formed a closed rectangle, whereas here the kitchen was an open cooking field - a territory of delicate spices, free of secrets.

62

Following dinner, our hosts and employers took us to our medium-sized bedroom, which, at first glance, looked quite small because of the King-sized bed right in the middle of it. We had two big closets and that was mostly it, but we were so glad to have a place to stay. It was a lovely house, and our Romanian employers were friendly and welcoming, so we felt fortunate and thanked God for having directed our steps and watched over us.

Before I went to bed, I analyzed our funny encounter with Adrian at the bus station. We didn't know one another, but the minute we saw him come towards us, we knew he was Romanian, for his physical appearance, his shyness, and uncertainty were betraying him, in spite of the fact that he had lived in America for ten years. He was still an immigrant, who had undergone a unique experience - leaving his country made him more conscious of his origins. Immigrants identify themselves with the new culture they live in, but they will always preserve the status quo of their roots. Immigrants are like transplanted trees, which miss the other soil; they‘re like aliens who come to Earth and feel lost without their flying-saucers, flying-pans, flying-brooms, or whatever flying devices they might use – oscillating between worlds like pendulums.

***

It was the beginning of September, but the heat pervaded every pore of our beings. The sun poured out heat at 9 o'clock in the morning, which made California’s weather enigmatic to us. Little did we know that the weather stayed warm for so long.

We shrugged, and went out in the garden. Embraced California’s warm sunrays, and let

63

ourselves be embraced by their soft caresses on our faces, hands, and bodies. Our

moment of indulgence was not long, though, because Adriana invited us to breakfast.

“How did sleep?” Adrian asked us with a broad smile on his face.

“Like newborn babies,” I answered.

Everything was nicely set on the table. We were ready to chomp down the bagels, fluffy omelets, and the crispy bacon, which we’ve never had before, when Adrian told us: “You know, we’re Baptists, and we pray before every meal. Would you like to pray with us?”

“Of course,” Mircea answered promptly.

Adrian's prayer moved us. His sincere words of gratitude and devotion were as intense as a burning flame. The flame of life. The chance at Heaven. Eternity, as Adrian repeated himself: “You’re probably too young to worry about death, but as far as I’m

concerned I don't want to lose eternity. I want to go to Heaven.”

The piety of this unsophisticated man, who used words like eternity made me

grapple with its subtle meanings, even though in my youthful ignorance, I thought that I

knew what eternity meant from studying philosophy, as wells as reading great authors

like Goethe, Dostoevsky, and so forth. In reality, here I was confronted by a religious

man. I am religious, too, but I realized that Adrian's religious fervor spread its webs in

time and reached out to question the idea of eternity. What struck me the most was that

eternity for him was not an abstract, metaphysical concept - it was simply reduced to

Heaven and forever peace. To me, eternity is a realm of continuous happiness, of beauty,

64 and everybody’s fantasy. It's that special place where people get heavenly wings to escape their labyrinthine, emblematic lives.

Another remarkable thing about the Tanases was their stubbornness to stick to their religion, which during Ceausescu's regime was totally forbidden. They told us the story of their lives and how they ended up in America. They had suffered a great deal because of their Baptist religion, and of their unshaken belief in a superhuman force, embodied by God. Moreover, when they chose not to give up their strong religious creeds, they ended up in jail, where they had been beaten and persecuted.

Adrian talked all the time during breakfast. In fact, all his misfortunes were reasons for him to point out how much he had endured because of his love for God. He also told us that we should repent our sins and become Baptists. I felt insulted by his certainty that we hadn't known God the way he had, especially because I always thought of man as a sacred laboratory, containing the Divine embryo within himself, thus leading to self-exploration.

Anyway, our first day was just routine. We became acquainted with the house and its masters. And although we didn’t always agree with Adrian's ideas, we were thankful to live in such a nice house and be treated well. The Tanases told us that they wanted to help us, providing room and board for us, until we solved our immigration problem. Once we received our legal documents, they promised to hire us as caregivers, especially me.

65

Chapter 11

CALIFORNIA

We had already become familiar with the house and our future employers.

A few days passed until I started working on the immigration forms, our new passports to freedom. Besides living in the freest country in the world, we were determined to achieve something in life and to make the most out of our transient journeys on this earth, since we felt we could cling to life as long as we prove ourselves worthy of it.

In between working on the immigration forms, I took some time to write in my diary that I kept during our first three months in America. I stopped writing after filling up pages of sameness, and decided to end my diary with the following sentence:

“Repetition replaces novelty. A diary of repetition makes no sense to me.”

Still, while I was writing my last pages, phrases, sentences, I realized how much the diary had meant to me, bringing me relief and joy. By writing my impressions and thoughts, I had experienced exorcism because all my negative, desultory feelings had gone away. Writing in those moments was the key that opened the black chest drawer of my subconscious mind, setting me free of all the interior tornadoes that were stalking my mind and heart. It was like a magic force, which acted upon my intimate springs. My eyes had the power to perceive, my mind recorded the events, and my hand wrote the rhapsody of creation. I sure slept well that night.

***

66

I started to do some housework, so that I could learn my way around. As I was mopping the floor that morning, I thought to myself: “What does a man do for liberty?

Everything, I guess.” As far as I could notice, there were people in America who went crazy because of too much liberty, and that's why I believed that we needed to hold the reins of our youthful ignorance, while trotting towards dreams that floated all around us whose strings - just like a balloon’s - we needed to hold tight on. If we failed to do that, we risked losing grip on reality, as if engulfed by madness - a complex game of lights and shadows that we all become part of volens-nolens.

***

We went to the supermarket that evening to do some shopping. I was still fascinated by the variety of products and by all the choices. I had to admit that America is the supermarket of dreams and wishes, a gigantic Baskin and Robbins ice cream cone that comes in over 30 flavors.

***

A few more months passed before we actually started working. Although we had expected to encounter plenty of challenges coming our way, the most difficult part was our experiencing a whirlpool of sensations, from fear, skepticism, and frustration to an exaggerated optimism that burned inside our young, uninitiated souls. Did I mention agony? Well, Mircea was thrown into a big dilemma ... He couldn't help thinking of his engineering job waiting for him back home. He was always telling me about it in a regretful and reproachful way, since I insisted on staying and making America our

67

hammock of freedom. Swinging from palm trees - lower body mired in Romania's old-

fashioned mentality- upper body inhaling freedom's inebriating scents.

Every night before going to bed, we counted our blessings and said our prayers,

but, for some reason, things spiraled downwards. Our emotions swung on the trapeze of

freedom, which, at times, turned into severe constriction. Freedom was elusive – popping

in front of our eyes like a big bubble gum balloon, since we had to give up some of our

ideals and dreams in order to become free and be able to legally live in this country. For

now, in our early 20s, we felt like two unsheltered birds that left behind a nest firmly

attached to their existential tree in Romania. I remember watching a movie called

The Christmas Tree, in which the main heroine, a nun, evoked the tree as being her best

friend, a truthful witness in time, but most of all her existential center. At the end of the

movie, her tree becomes a national object of admiration, lit up for Christmas in

Rockefeller Plaza, New York. The heroine partakes in everyone’s excitement and joy at

the sight of the majestic lights that illuminate mankind's wandering soul.

I think we all try to find the missing links in our lives by cross-referencing our

eternal tree, whose roots get entangled with the intimate springs of our being. Of course,

looking and finding the links might take many years, while experiences reverberate in our

souls and resurface later like a surfer who breaks through the waves to stay balanced. For

instance, at the age of 22, I realized why as a child, I liked to run in a circle all the time: I

was creating my perfect round universe. I was trying to confirm the rootiness – a word meant to show the depth of the roots - of my little tree.

68

Besides running, I also remember how much I enjoyed playing hide-and-seek. Of

course, every child loves that, but I showed a special delight in hiding. Hiding and not

being found gave me complete confidence in the world around me. Also my dark hiding

spot did not scare me at all; just the opposite - it gave me security and protection.

Speaking of darkness, I cannot forget how my friends and I used to go to the basement of

our apartment building. I was always the first one to enter the basement, feeling my steps

through darkness, slicing it with confidence and bravado. The minute we all reached

downstairs, one of my friends would make an “Uuuh” sound to scare me, but I would tell

them: “Come on, you’re boys, and you pee in your pants because of a dark basement!”

“It isn't just a damn basement,” replied my secret admirer, Cristian, a tall, lanky guy with blue, watery eyes. “You know what the neighbors say. They found a thief in here last winter, and now we want to catch him and turn him in to the Police.”

Yes, we were looking to capture the thief everyone was talking about; we even sent him messages, imagining all kinds of brave, dangerous situations awaiting us. But, of course, remembering this incident from my childhood was just the element of surprise ready to emerge from the dark cellar of my unconscious mind to the reality of present times, 1995.

Now in America, I stopped groping in the dark, for I held a burning torch in my hand that could lead me to total freedom; it was time for me to act bravely and disregard hardships encountered along the way. Consequently, every night before going to bed, I would display all the positive facts in front of Mircea, trying to be cool. There were also moments when I could not find any positive things, and then it was Mircea’s turn to save

69 me from desolation by whispering silly but soothing words into my ears. His words, smooth cream on broken skin not only comforted me, but made me climb out of my melancholy and shake it off like a dog trying to get rid of flees. In short, we both felt lonely drifters in a big country: no parents, no siblings, no friends. Yet, we were brave.

We held hands often as if glued to the peaks and valleys of ours palms, but most importantly we encouraged each other in building our dreams, and lifting them up over the moon.

70

Chapter 12

WORKING AND REMINISCING

After a few months of waiting for our immigration paperwork, we started working for our Romanian friends who operated a residential care home for the elderly, licensed for six. The beginning was a little challenging for us, not because the work was difficult, but because we turned into subalterns. I particularly felt trapped in what I called a menial job. I felt that in order to gain our freedom in America, I had to give up my other dreams of being a writer, teacher, or whatever I wanted to be. I was used to being part of a vibrant intellectual milieu back home, as a student majoring in English, and now I felt succumbing to lower standards that did not match my education and lofty goals and ideals I set up for myself. Yet, as I was to discover later, ideals don’t get us very far, whereas the lessons learned by practice and experience do. That went hand in hand with the joke we all heard so many times in school: “theory is theory, but practice is what kills us.” The translation of the funny joke: rote learning cannot replace practice. Now, as a caregiver I felt I needed to apply theories learned in linguistics, literature, and philosophy classes in a more practical manner, but the problem was that I didn’t want pragmatism to destroy my fortresses of comfort that I had created through books – true barriers against the repressive communist regime.

However, in a few days, I changed my attitude after the first resident moved in. A short woman with brown hair and moist, deer-like brown eyes, Marta was frail, but the intelligent look on her face compensated for that. She had been an English teacher for

71 fifty years. Reading was her passion. I was thus pleased to connect my demeaning job to an intellectual dimension that projected me into another galaxy of printed ideas.

Additionally, reading helped me forget about the diaper reality looming above me like a menacing cloud, since I was already warned that changing diapers and wiping butts was part of my job description. I guess that was the bundle joy of freedom - in capitalism the newcomers had to do the dirty work, which we figured out early.

My main duties revolved around taking care of Marta, cooking, cleaning, washing all the windows and screens, tending the garden, which was mostly Mircea’s duty, and so on. Cleaning the house was not too difficult, but cooking three different meals a day, when I had no idea how to cook one meal was a different story. I only knew how to cook vegetable soup and potato stew with carrots that Mircea used to eat a lot back home when

I visited him and did my primitive cooking. Now thrown into the lion’s hungry mouths, so to speak, I had to mix up flour, meats, vegetables in edible meals, but the thought of cooking from scratch and adding the right ingredients made me sweat. Drips of sweat stained my T-shirts and I heard myself breathe hard from the exertion of mixing, chopping, concocting recipes in an effort to be as creative as our friend Michael, who often explained to us that just as a chef knows how to mix up the right ingredients to his culinary creations, so does a writer has to be careful about is word choices. I believe

Maya Angelou said something similar about the relaxing art of cooking that is centered on good, sensible choices just like writing. Ingredients… choices…and lots of sweating.

Cooking was thus my new hobby, an ironic twist that life threw my way to reprimand me for not learning how to cook from my mom. I remember that whenever my mother

72 wanted to teach me how to cook, I would tell her: “Cooking is too trivial for me. I'd rather read and delight my spirit. I'll learn how to cook when I need to.”

The propitious moment to cook has come quicker than I had expected, so I needed to stop fussing around and just stir up the pots, banging spoons, tasting, and paying attention to Adriana who was particular about my cooking. She wanted me to do exactly as she did, as if I were a monkey or something, imitating her, just like a copy imitates the original painting. Whenever I didn't do something right or did it clumsily, she would shout at me: “Gosh, you just can't do anything right; you’re like a savage who has grown up in the woods!”

I felt terrible in those moments, wanting to fight back, but I had to swallow my words and pride, if I wanted to keep my job.

***

We worked hard the first couple of months, and my relationship with Adriana was a never-ending war. I learned more about cooking, cleaning, but she could still find something wrong in my new found dexterity. My consolation was that Marta liked us. I could also exchange some literary opinions with her, since she was reading all day long, which made me aware of the advantage of old age - plenty of time to read and delight one’s spirit.

Meanwhile, the Tanases underwent some changes, since Mary, Adrian and

Adriana's daughter, married Stefan, a gentle, fair-complexioned man with deep blue eyes.

He was fairly shy at the beginning, but later he became the master of the house and of the business. Adrian and Adriana were to move to their new house in a month. Boy! Was I

73 counting the days! It was an enormous relief for me, for I could stop feeling like a cooking pot under pressure all the time. From then on, I could just take the lid off the pot and release all the steam. Was freedom a big pressure cooking pot releasing steam into the minds and souls of the freedom searchers? Can freedom be an escape for the steam trapped inside us? Can we find freedom within oppression by releasing the steam valve?

Freedom to me was like God. It inhabited our inner beings and we had to know their location on the maps of our souls with a compass first, and then without one.

***

Mary and Stefan's love story was quite candid and simple. They met each other at a wedding and became friends. Not long after the wedding, Stefan, who was an outgoing guy, came over to Sacramento to meet Mary's parents. He came on a Sunday in October.

The sky was thin blue with puffy, white clouds, dancing graciously around the sun that looked more like a yellowish warm spot, or a hot, mouth-watering cake.

The Tanases, Mircea and I were all bustling around, cleaning and cooking for the bridegroom to be Stefan Neacsu. Everything had to be perfect according to Adriana, who fussed around like a busy bee. Of course, Mary was the most excited one, but all her fears were subdued, as soon as the possessor of her heart came to visit her and her family. I was glad that all the agitation was over, when, late in the afternoon, we all had a good

Romanian lunch, chicken dumpling soup and mashed potatoes with chicken legs wrapped in bacon.

“And how long did you have to wait in Romania till you got your green card,

Stefan?” Adrian asked him, raising his hairy arms up in the air, as if to arrest everybody’s

74 attention. His speech was more like a fast rap song, with a lot of discontinuities, but that only showed his eagerness to communicate.

“I had to wait for six years and it was very hard, since I couldn’t make any plans for the future. I feel sorry that I couldn’t finish Medical School over there. I was just waiting for my paperwork to come through, and, of course, I missed my parents and my two sisters, who live in Washington State.”

“Did you go into the army in Romania?” Adrian kept on firing his questions at him.

“Yes, I did. I didn’t like it, but I learned a lot of things and made good friends there.”

The conversation went on for hours, but I stopped following it, since I traveled back in time and remembered how Mircea and I met and felt sucked in by the strong suction cups of romantic memories. We met at a ball held in our high school dorms cafeteria, while I was a senior in high school. We danced in the same circle, so to speak, and when the first blues came on, he invited me to dance. He was the only one wearing a tie in the dancing group I was in. He wore a red shirt with a black tie, and blue jeans. I was wearing a short khaki skirt with a white shirt and high-heel shoes, of course, since I was only five feet tall then just like now.

We started to dance, after which we introduced ourselves. At first, I didn't know that he would be my other half from that moment on, for I didn't feel an electrifying sensation going through my body and giving me the love shivers I had heard so much about. I was quite pleased because he was a student at the University, and because he was

75 really polite and decent. We danced all that evening, swirling in a forever love. He kissed me on my cheek at the end of each dance, which I found to be a very pleasant touch. We also went out for a walk around the school watching the stars wink and twinkle at us. We didn’t walk very much, for it was a cold, windy October evening – trees bending and crackling their branches. Anyway, while we were outside Mircea was really considerate to me, which helped him pass the test. I never liked the guys who tried to kiss me on my lips, or touch me in certain ways the first time I met them.

Mircea was gentle and soft-spoken. He asked me questions, and I did the same, as we were trying to know each other better. When the ball was over, we parted without setting any date. I was puzzled, but Mircea liked mysteries, which I would find out the following week on Monday when he paid me a surprise visit. He showed up at my dorm room together with his friend Sorin, who soon became involved with my roommate,

Ophelia. We were both speechless, but we sure liked their surprise.

We went out for a walk, and the only thing I remember about that evening was that we walked all around my high school, kissing over and over again. It was the first time I kissed like that – long, fiery, and prolonged. At first, my stomach went roaring, but afterwards I began to like it. Kissing at 17 was a mixture of innocence and sensuality.

Our tongues entangled in a bridge of saliva. Our lips dissolved in a single and irresistible kiss. It was like in a dream, making us unaware of any barriers just like two scuba divers, exploring the depth of the ocean. It was a perfectly harmonious moment, too, without the usual embarrassment at the end, when you can’t hold the dream, or even retain its essence. Besides, whenever you experience something for the first time, you feel that the

76

situation is irretrievable and that you don't have any terms of comparison; you are simply

left barehanded.

***

Unlike us who dated for seven years before getting married, Mary and Stefan had a three-month courtship, after which they got married.

77

Chapter 13

PAST AND PRESENT MEMORIES

Another elderly lady came to live with us, so I had to take care of two ladies, which wasn't that much different or harder than caring for one person. Mary and Stefan lived there with us, instead of Mary’s parents who bought a house in Orangevale and moved there. Before they left, I was glad we had a chance to talk to them.

“Thank you very much for teaching me how to cook and for everything you’ve done for us,” I told Adriana, who was watching me behind her glasses.

“Oh, you’re welcome. It was my pleasure. Also I would like to apologize for

giving you a bad time sometimes,” she continued.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” I said. “The important thing is that we worked things out and did our best.”

“That’s right!” Adrian intervened. “And we never have to bear grudges for foolish things that we do all the time intentionally and unintentionally.”

I guess we all felt good to clear things out and say a friendly good-bye followed

by warm-hearted hugs, leaving all life’s ironies behind us. In high school I used to be

quite sarcastic, especially to guys. I would ask them if they read Dostoevsky, my favorite

author, or Kafka. Most of the time they asked me who the Hell were those? Their

responses prompted me to look down on them, as if they were some monstrous,

metamorphosed, uncultivated bugs descending from Kafka’s short story. Irony was

always my shield in my relationship with guys, but this changed when I met Mircea. He

78 made me see people in a brighter perspective, which helped me reduce my venomous remarks towards people who didn't meet my expectations. I felt I needed to make this parenthesis because I tended to treat Adrian and Adriana ironically, but I realized it wouldn't help us at all, especially in the situation we were in. Receiving a pretty good salary, plus free room and board made me understand how much we needed that job, which we almost lost due to my pride, vanity, and lack of cooperation.

***

We had been working for Mary and Stefan for about two months, and we thought that everything was all right, till one day when Stefan told us that he didn't need us anymore. He said I still couldn’t cook very well and I had no aesthetic sense.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked him amazed.

“You remember when you served Marta her cake?”

“Yeah….”

“Well, you cut it so irregularly that it looked like a flying saucer on her plate,”

Stefan told me with a straight face.

I reached and grasped for words, but they were stuck in my throat. I felt humiliated and rejected, which hurt more than my lack of aesthetic sense, as Stefan put it.

I felt like running out the front door and never look back. I wanted to rough it on our own, but be far away from the care home and its owners, so Mircea and I found another

Romanian couple who wanted us to work for them. We accepted their job offer and started to pack our bags, when Mary and Stefan came into our room and asked us to continue working for them.

79

“We’ll teach you more about cooking and serving the food in an attractive

manner,” said Mary with an assuring voice.

“Besides we’re confident we’ll get along better and that your work will improve,” Stefan also chimed in.

Although Mary and Stefan had their point, I wished I could turn down their offer and just quit. The reality, however, was different. We needed a job and a place to call home in a country where we were mere strangers. We knew we had to work hard to earn a living, since we lived in a wealthy country with many poor people. Consequently, I had to swallow my pride and my intellectual pretensions to keep my job. At the beginning, I couldn't find anything positive about my work, because I simply hated it. Later on, however, I realized that giving love and care to elderly people was a noble cause. I also learned a lot from my “demeaning” job, as I liked to call it. Cooking, cleaning, and nursing people whose lives were darkened by the shadow of a predictable end were just a few of the things I could do for them to make their lives brighter. I also fathomed that life teaches us something every day, and if we want to learn something, we should keep the windows of our soul wide open.

***

The first months were especially difficult because we didn't take too many days off. Only after four months did we receive some days off every other week. After a year, we received two days off per week, which really made us feel better and gave us the opportunity to explore the beauties of California. Whenever we received favors like getting more days off and bonuses for our good job, we felt appreciated and enjoyed the

80

fact that we had earned them by hard work. So, if I were to define the essence of man, I

would say that the human being is a domestic animal, which can perform the tricks you

want, when you pat him on the back and show him your gratitude. A bone may be a good

reward for a dog, but it has to be something more sophisticated for a human being. A more sophisticated bone, perhaps? No, it's praise, that’s all.

***

The beginning of our American journey was also difficult because I was homesick. I missed my family, most of all. Every time I went to bed, I thought of my

parents, who had divorced one month after I left my home town, Lugoj. Their constant

fights had carved a bottomless gorge between them, eroding any trace of love and

respect. My heart ached at the thought that their divorce was the end of their tumultuous

relationship, in which my mother wanted to be more powerful than my father in their tug

of war. She liked to be in charge, and I think there were times when my father, who was a

short man with black hair and clear, blue eyes, felt that the only way to dominate my mother was by taking his fate in his hands and drowning his sorrows at the bars. He drank and then he drank some more. To him, ‘shop till you drop’ was replaced by ‘drink till you drop.’

Although my father was a kind-hearted man, when he drank too much wine and other hard liquor, he could become as furious as a taurus charging the aggressive matador

- in this case my mom. He started drinking as a teenager, and was never able to give it up other than for short periods of time, after which he would crave it again and had to water his intestines, as he liked to joke about things. I remember one of my Literary Doctrines

81 teachers at the University shared with us a provocative quotation about people who are fond of the bottle.

“People who drink have a thirst for the infinite,” she told us seriously.

I was almost inclined to give my father credit for wanting to quench his thirst for the infinite, but I had to give up this idea, since he never experienced deep philosophical or existential crises. He had a sharp mind and a good understanding of things around him, but his profession as a watchmaker did not make him wonder at the miracles of this

Universe. Yet, he delved into the minute mechanism of the watches he repaired with patience and dedication. Besides, my father had always been good and generous to me.

He always wanted to see me happy, but by making my mother unhappy, he didn't realize that he was slapping me. He had beaten my mother several times in a frenzy that made me wonder about his sanity. He never touched me, but whenever he came home drunk, he always picked on my mother on the account that she hadn't cooked for him, or that she hadn’t waited for him when he came home late in the night.

In spite of the fact that my parents had had so many turbulent moments in their marriage, they didn't divorce as soon as our neighbors would have expected. My mother always felt pity for my father. Moreover, after a big fight his soul melted with kindness and remorse towards her. In trying to win her over, my father had a funny way of curling up his upper lip, as if he were a cooing dove, whispering love words into my mother’s ear. For more than 20 years, their relationship had been a constant battlefield, with no winners. It was just a mutual surrender, leading to anticipation. My mother would be

82 upset after the fight, whereas my father would be the gentle knight trying to save her from distress by bringing back a smile to her face.

On the one hand, I was always outraged and disillusioned with my mother’s decision to forgive my father over and over again with the same relentless stubbornness of a video game player who refuses to quit until reaching the next level. On the other hand, I was deeply touched by my mother’s forgiving heart, which pointed towards their everlasting, enduring love. One thing was for sure: our neighbors had a lot of things to talk about - gossiping about my parents and other neighbors at our little apartment complex gave them a reason to survive, since most of them were retired old ladies who didn't have too many lofty ideals. Anyway, they could never understand why my mother was still married to my father. My parents’ melodrama, however, was a complete enigma to them. I guess they didn't have to read mysteries anymore – my parents’ choice to continue with a stressful and unfulfilling marriage gave them the chance to look for clues.

Unfortunately, I don’t think my parents had the clues themselves, and I definitely did not want to be part of their charade, which is why I had often advised my mother to divorce my father, despite my great love for him. I felt the two of them could be happier without each other, and live a more peaceful and meaningful life.

Although my mother filed for divorce after a big fight, she always chose to forgive my father and postpone the divorce, thinking that their marriage could be ironed out with lots of starch like the creases of a badly wrinkled shirt. My solution to the stress at home: choosing to leave my home town Lugoj right after 8th grade and go to

Timisoara, a big Westernized University town close to Hungary and Arad, another big

83

and more modernized city. I had to pass a tough exam, and got admitted to Philology

high school in Timisoara, also called the “city of roses.” I wanted to study English and

Literature. Therefore, driven away by my parents’ ceaseless fights and the incandescent desire to devour books and penetrate the lexical and grammatical problems of foreign languages, I set off for Timisoara, a strong cultural and spiritual city.

84

Chapter 14

FREEDOM ROCKS

I remember my first day in Timisoara, my newly adopted city with Bega River running through it just like my beloved Lugoj. I felt confident. Yet, I still sensed a certain remoteness from the familiar sight of “the place where nothing happened,” as I used to call my little town, Lugoj.

My high school was just ten minutes away from the railway station, making my trip easier. I can also recall the big white walls, surrounding the high school like a protective shield from the ignorance and insensitivity of the outsiders. My first day as a freshman was pretty dull. I tried to make friends, but it seemed that everybody knew each other. Still, we were all perfect strangers, staring at one another in a childish perplexity.

Nevertheless, I met one of my classmates; she had the same name as mine. She was a tall girl, with brown hair and big, blue, vivid eyes. I have never seen such big, inquisitive eyes before, which made me want to strike a conversation with her. She was also very pretty, although her face was full of red rashes resembling some red dots on a fancy dress. She also seemed quite shy, but I enjoyed talking to her.

The classroom was big and impersonal. I liked all the pictures of famous

Romanian and international writers on the walls, and felt inspired by their inquisitive and intelligent eyes. I was to find out later on that that was a special classroom, the Literature laboratory. It sounded funny to me, at first, but before long I found out that the literature

85 lab deserved its name like the chemistry lab, or the physics one, since we were little manufacturers of ideas and ideals.

Most of my classmates lived in Timisoara, except a few of us, who came from neighboring towns and villages. It didn’t make any difference to me, but my classmates treated us as outsiders and provincials. I had to live in the school dormitory together with my other classmates. Most of them were from small villages, which made them feel even more estranged and self-conscious than I did.

I particularly remember one of my classmates, who was to become my best friend through high school. Her name was Camellia. I will never forget how we first met. It was a hot September day. I was wearing pink shorts with a white top. Since I was new in the school’s dormitory, I decided to take a walk around the school and the dorms. I liked the front yard very much, which was surrounded by roses, dandelions, forget-me-nots, and even snap-dragons that I liked to snap just like when I was a child. Then there was cement; everywhere you looked, you could see a little something made out of cement.

There was a fountain that I particularly liked because I found it to be an intimate, cozy place, almost like a fairy tale. I was to find out later on that it was the lover’s nest, and, indeed it was a magical fountain, surrounded by a little round pavilion, where I had my first date and my first kiss.

So, as I was strolling in the yard, feeling the warm rays of the sun on my neck, I also felt two staring, inquisitive eyes following me. I didn’t want to turn around immediately, but I was curious to see if a boy was staring at me. Looking behind me, I

86

almost burst out laughing because I saw a tall brunette girl, well-built, almost a little bit plump, with dark green eyes, looking at me as if she knew me.

“Gee, that’s strange,” I said to myself, changing my direction, and going towards my new prying acquaintance. When she saw me coming towards her, she reddened to the tip of her ears, and almost ran away, but I cried after her: “Hey, don’t run! It’s all right. I just want to meet you. My name is Carmen.”

She was still embarrassed, but she turned around fast, and came straight to me with a timid look on her face - almost frightened.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Camellia, and this is my first day on the campus. I feel kinda of lost, don’t you?”

“A little bit, but we’ll feel like home in no time,” I told her, trying to make her feel more at ease, especially after that funny little incident we had.

“Yes, I think you’re right, but I’m from Remetea, a small village near Lugoj, and

I feel kinda of bad that I don’t live in Timisoara, being one of them.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. I’m a provincial, too. I’m from Lugoj, and quite proud of it. Besides, every sucker lives in Timisoara, so what the heck!”

She started laughing heartily, looking at me with incredible admiration.

“Well, it seems that we’ll get to be good friends,” Camellia said, as if begging for my friendship.

“Oh, I’d love to,” I retorted.

After we introduced ourselves, we played cards on the green benches in the front yard, overlooking the big sport court and the massive yellow high school building. I beat

87

her, which she didn’t mind. From that day on we became inseparable friends and

roommates, too with most of our classmates calling us “the two provincial girls.”

Camellia and I were almost like Stan and Bran, but we didn’t care about their malicious

remarks. Later on, most of our classmates liked us, but it was the initial shock that made

them reject us. In just a few months I had also become the best student in my class, and

my friend Camellia was doing very well, too.

“Oh, they’re just two heavy metal girls without a guitar; they also sweat too much

about studying,“ our classmates used to say about us. However, in the end they changed

their opinion, realizing that we had definite goals in our minds, to study, and we also

knew how to have fun.

There were also other classmates, who were angry because of the music we

listened to, rock and heavy metal. We even gave concerts in the classroom, using the

broom as our guitar and the teacher’s desk as our stage. Listening to rock music in

Romania in the late 80s was a way to defy communism. Protesting against the communist

regime was a daunting act, but rock made it easier for us to get rid of anger, frustration,

and disillusionment.

***

Departing home was not only a rebellious gesture against my family, but also against communism, which I also viewed as quarrelsome and alienating as my parents’ never-ending fights. I would soon find peace in my new town Timisoara far from my parents’ fighting and close to the Rock music that was my true solace in the 80s.

88

I enjoyed going to Discos at least one day a week. Camellia and I loved to dance to the loud, adrenaline rushing music, throwing ourselves on the floor, tearing our pants around the knees, and wearing ourselves out, so that we could forget the incarcerating forces of communism. While singing and dancing, our tumultuous teenagers’ souls glorified and worshipped the music with the fervor of a religiously fanatic group. Discos were an oasis of hope to us. In our naiveté, we wished to get rid of communism with the power of the Western music, that not only liberated us from the fear of not knowing what would happen to us or our parents the next day, but it was also cathartic. Yet, rock concerts were rare, so we had to jump over hurdles to get there by all means.

I cannot forget my first concert. Compact was the name of the band that came to town. Camellia and I decided to go without thinking too much of anything other than beating the 10 o’clock curfew, as we had to be in our rooms before 10 p.m. Nobody could learn of our escapade, so we dressed up in our worst and most torn Blue Jeans, and left the school dorms scurrying out like two scared mice.

Although excited beyond words, we could not fully enjoy the moment - talking about it would spoil it. Besides, we had the impression that the people riding with us on the tramway from our high school to the Olympia Hall, where the concert took place, knew what we were up to. We thought someone might turn us in to the principle of the school, or even to Ceausescu himself, Romania’s president at the time, and we would end up being condemned for treason. Moreover, Camellia, who always made a big deal out of nothing, started to fret - even tried to back out:

89

“Carmen, I’m a kinda freaked out about this whole thing. How about if we sell

our tickets and go back to the dorms?”

“The Hell we are! We’ve been waiting for this concert for so long, and I’m not

gonna ruin it, just because all of a sudden you’re shaking in your boots (she was actually

wearing boots) and wanna to go back. Come on, we can do it! We’re big girls!”

“Yes, I know that, but what if we can’t get in tonight? You know they always lock

up the dorms, and the doorman will report our asses to the supervising teacher, if he were

to catch us.”

“Oh, give me a break,” I replied, feeling myself a little bit antsy about the whole thing.

“Yeah, I know that you always have more guts than me, but I think we’re going too far this time,” she continued.

“Don’t you worry… it’s going to be great. We’ll be all right!”

Once inside the Olympia Hall, we forgot about the doorman and the tall walls

around our high school. This place was packed with rockers in torn Jeans, leather pants

and jackets, and heavy chains around their necks. The sight was pretty scary for two girls

like us, since they all looked like they had just ascended from Hell. However, the music,

the atmosphere, the bright, colorful lights put us at ease quickly. We also realized that all that apparent decadence was just the best way to protest against the hellish communism, which strangled our beings harder than all the chains in the world.

At the end of the concert we were exhausted from singing, shouting, and throwing

ourselves on the floor, in an attempt to imitate the performers on the stage, but we were

90 high. Our spirits were elevated with the hope that one day we would become a free, democratic country just like America.

It was already 10 o’clock in the evening when the concert was over, so we hurried to catch the tram. All of a sudden we came down to earth, feeling its hard, dark, and ominous crust. As if God were against us, it took the tram half an hour to come, so we jumped on it as fast as we could. Around 11 o’clock we arrived at school - as expected - the big front gate to the inner courtyard leading to the dorms was locked. We peered in.

The doorman wasn’t even there; we were doomed. We had heard from other classmates that sometimes the doorman got drunk and slept on the job, but in our childish naiveté, we couldn’t believe that it would happen exactly that night. Our roommates were to open the interior door that led to our bedrooms, but they couldn’t do anything about the outside gate, for they were locked inside the dorms themselves.

“Oh, my Gosh! I told you we shouldn’t have gone,” my friend started to lament, pulling up her heavily gelled dark hair - looking like a scarecrow.

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop whining!” I replied, heart racing and ears drumming with the loud Rock music. “Let’s see! I think we only have one option here.”

“What’s that?” Camellia asked me with bulging frog-like eyes.

“We’ll have to jump over the fence!” I said.

“Have you lost your marbles?” she asked me. “Do you know how tall this fence is? We’ll never be able to jump over this 8-foot wall. This fucking place looks more like a prison, or a fortress than a school,” she continued.

91

“I know, but that’s our only option, especially if we go on the other side of the

school. The fence seems to be a little bit smaller there.”

Realizing that this was our only chance to get in, Camellia followed me.

However, as we went around the school, we understood that we’d never be able to jump over that high stucco fence, unless we found someone to help us. As you can imagine, there was nobody in the street at that late hour in the night, so we started to pace around the fence, which looked more imposing than the Great Wall of China. In about half an hour, we saw a tall, stodgy guy approach us with big steps. We knew he could save us,

but in a way, we were afraid to ask for his help, especially because we had heard so many

scary stories about guys who raped young women, and were not even punished by the

authorities. We didn’t know, whether we should hide from him, or come forward from

the shadow of the chestnut trees to ask for his help. Always bolder than my friend, I

plucked up my courage, and jumped in front of that big guy, scaring the Hell out of him.

“Excuse me, do you think you could give us a hand? We can’t get in the dorms.

The doorman is sleeping, or is not here to open the door for us. So could help us jump

over this fence?” I asked him breathlessly, not knowing what he would say.

“Who’s going first?” he asked us in a monotonous voice, as if he were used to

helping people jump over fences on a daily basis.

“Let her go first,” said Camellia immediately.

“Okay.”

He took me in his arms, as if I were a feather, and raised me high over his head,

so that I could grab the top of the fence and sit on the edge of it.

92

“Are you all right?” he asked me in the same flat, squeaky voice.

“Yes, thank you very much,” I said.

“You’re next,” he pointed. It took him a while to help Camellia up, since she was almost as thickset as he was, but in just a minute Camellia was on top of the fence.

“Thank you very much,” we both said in a voice.

“You’re welcome,” he said, disappearing as quickly, as if he were just a shadow of the night.

“Now we have to jump,” I said.

“Gosh, we might break our necks.”

“Yes, but we might freeze our butts on this fucking wall. So go for it!”

“You go first,” she said.

“All right,” I said, leaping with my eyes closed, as if jumping with the parachute from a plane.

“Are you all right?” she asked me, as she saw that I wasn’t moving from the ground.

“Yes, I’m alive,” I said, jumping up on my feet. Before I was up, my friend was next to me, laughing.

“Why the hack are you laughing?” I asked her.

“Oh, we’re both nuts… that’s why.”

“Yes, we are,” I agreed, and we both started to laugh loudly.

93

We managed to get in, for the girls left the back dorm door open for us. By the time we reached our room, we were exhausted. Most of our friends were asleep anyway, so we took our tobacco smelling clothes off and hit the sack.

The next day we were pleasantly surprised that no one, besides our roommates, knew anything about our escapade, so inside our hearts we felt that we had tricked the teachers, the doorman, the school, communism, and the whole world. When we went to school that morning we were all giggly and restless, but we didn’t dare mention about our nocturnal adventure to anyone in the class. It could have ruined our whole lives, so freedom of speech wasn’t rocking yet, mainly because fighting against the oppressive communist regime felt like enunciating words while being gagged. The communists wanted to reduce our voices and imagination, as it threatened their ability to subdue us into the perfect multi-developed citizens, as they like to say in those times. These “ideal” citizens were expected to be good at everything, and not specialize in anything in particular. For instance, at school we were supposed to be very good at all subjects, even though our major was English, literature, and philosophy.

My solution against this mutilation of speech: thought and reasoning - reading and writing. I remember this reading voice quite distinctly, as my favorite pastime in the summer vacation was to go to the downtown bookstore in Lugoj - only five minutes away from the four-story walk-up apartment where I lived with my parents - no brothers or sisters. I liked to go by the river. I took the tree-lined boardwalk all the way downtown, and watched playful fish jump out of the water and dive back right in. I sometimes felt

94 like diving when I wrote. I needed air. I needed to breathe. I needed to clear my mind.

Writing - diving board - excitement.

In the beginning, the scribbling flowed in freely and gave me the wildest plots and characters to manipulate, contort, twist, and extend in an attempt to efface the grim marks of the communist regime that raised its ugly head at every corner of the streets I walked on, at school, parties, and pretty much everywhere else. My writing was different in high school. I abandoned my old, infantile stories about criminals, animals, and little kids who had strived to turn the world upside down, and focused on characters who were intellectuals - teachers, doctors, attorneys, and so on. The communist regime viewed "the intellectuals," as they were called, with disdain and a certain fear - they were powerful enough to be perceived as a threat to Romania's political stability.

“We need to glorify our workers, our peasants, and miners,” the editor of The

Horizon, the largest cultural magazine in Timisoara told me with a dramatic twist of his thick moustache. I remember his words clearly because he was supposed to publish one of my short stories that won a literary award in my county and allowed me to participate in the largest creative camp run by well-renowned writers. As you’ve probably guessed, my story never got published, mainly because of my youthful stubbornness to stick to my principles when asked to get rid of my intellectual characters, and turn workers and miners into main protagonists. My Mom, Corina, was particularly disappointed. She pushed me to participate in selective literary circles to become a better writer and get published.

"You're always so stubborn," she told me.

95

She felt that I should make a compromise for the sake of seeing my short story in

print, but I firmly refused. On the one hand, my refusal was childish, but on the other

hand, it gave me a certain hidden satisfaction that I managed to fight against communism

by using my powerful and indelible writer’s voice. As Ceausescu, Romania's president,

wanted to subdue our people, I felt like shouting at the top of my lungs that the

communist party and regime could not censor my thoughts indefinitely, and that I was

free.

Yet, in my moments of clear thinking, uncluttered by an unrealistic childish

exuberance, I knew that my freedom was almost non-existent. I could not travel abroad,

publish what I wanted, speak freely against communism without the fear that my parents

could be detained, even though I was a minor, or change the world overnight with my

writing. I was even limited in what I could read in order to maintain an “uncorrupted

mind,” according to the communist regime, that required its citizens to “behave” at all

times. Still, reading was an important cornerstone in my fight against the communist

regime dominating Romania during the 80s, until it was finally overthrown in December

1989, for it gave me another avenue to transcend the brutal reality, and step into the realm of noble ideas, such as freedom, unconditional love, forgiveness, and so on, expressed by some of my favorite authors - Dostoevsky, Kafka, Milan Kundera, G.G. Marquez, to

name just a few.

The stifling times that I lived through during communism had visibly marked me,

due to the lack of freedom of expression and speech. For instance, I hated that we all had

to wear uniforms at school and follow the rigorous schedule imposed by our teachers.

96

Now this wasn’t so bad, if it weren’t for the corporeal punishments that my classmates

and I received from our teachers when we didn’t do our homework or misbehaved. The

punishments ranged from scratching on the face, slapping, hitting our palms with black

rubber batons – our Math teacher’s favorite punishment when we forgot an important math formula, to getting thrown out of the classroom and not being allowed to finish the

school year.

“Things would have to get better,” I constantly muttered to myself, afraid to even

think certain liberating thoughts, although writing had helped me plunge into the cool,

refreshing water of my meandering, tranquil river, Timis.