Silver

 Silver is the color of resistance, at least for me. I was baptized in a silver and copper cauldron in the house where i was born. A 150 year old house standing strong, the house where my grandmother and her sister grew up for the most part. The house their grandfather had bought from his father, who could not figure out how to divide a 3 room house to his 9 children. The house that their grandfather had expanded to 6 rooms, and where 6 families used to live during a certain period of communist times. They were all sharing one bathroom, which apparently what the communist regimen demanded from the rich bourgeois family that owned 6 rooms - to share their riches that is. The house that we were now sharing, two families with kids, plus my grandmother and her sister. We were all there and not in church, maybe because Bucharest was too cold in winter, or more likely because at least one of the family members could not be seen in church, or would loose a job that involved a position with the communist party. Whatever the reason, the baptism happened, everybody dressed up with their best, and the cauldron shone silvery bright at the center of the largest room of the house. 

Fast forward 8 years puts me in second grade, one of the families has run away from the country, and they have sent me a gift - a simple silver cross and necklace. My grandmother gives it to me, puts it around my neck, and i treasure it. I wear it all the time, in the house, in town, while playing soccer in the street, in church and to school. Where it gets confiscated. But i get it back at the end of the day. I take it home, ask my grandmother to put it back on. It gets confiscated. I get it back at the end of next day. I go home, and my grandmother puts it back on. I wear in under my clothes, it is small, almost invisible, and nobody should see it under my layers of clothes this winter. I am hopping that my teacher will close an eye to my transgression, which is really mostly invisible in the grand scheme of things, more of a symbol than anything, and i dream of crossing borders, and freedom. Does it look bright and like a silvery light?