Memoirs

I had learned the secret of beautiful women as a child, from a grown up man and he shared it with me in return  for me  sharing a poem He said that beautiful women forget they do not bear past wounds on their chest, they move forwards past storms And they emerge clean and tall. He too shared his thought  in a poem, that i have mostly forgotten although i have pursued that kind of beauty but rather the richness of memories in all colors and flavors. sometimes memory burdens with the depths of its truths of unforgivable but forgettable acts justified or not by the quality of possible futures sometimes you crave that kind of bare chested beauty the cleaner mind, the youthful body  untouched, unmarked by scars and the weight of predictions then you bring it out when it helps you to make the decision to break with the past and if you listen there is an almost audible sound of a heart breaking. mine sounded like ice it was cracking for days and when the piece tha...

The color of friendship is chestnut, and it sounds like crumbling leaves, under the fast wheels or roller skates. I feel the feeling of friendship best during the month of September. I remember her moving to our neighborhood, maybe because our soccer games became suddenly more intense due to her athleticism alone.  We play together  with the boys, and nobody tells us no.  We make a club, where we meet and share stories and sweets. We alternate between these activities and hide and seek.   At other times we gather chestnuts on Sundays for our schools from the yard of the academy of sciences, which happens to be close to the neighborhood where we live. We cary the heavy bags on Monday to school and wonder what is the purpose.  One time she is being a little to brave and climbs the trees in the yard of the academy of economic studies - to gather more chestnuts for school and she falls, she breaks and arm. This marks the end of a season.  Then high-school ...

  White is the color of the skate rink. My father and I take the tram and we go there once or twice a week for figure skating lessons. I feel cold and clumsy and I skate carefully in the beginning as my dad is watching - from the sides. He does not know how to skate but he will try anything. And he wants me to try. I discover the joy of moving fast, almost effortlessly. I am still clumsy probably but I have figured out most of the tricky balance moves I was supposed to learn, and I like skating backwards. Mostly I like moving perpendicular to the long dimension from wall to wall , to use all the space that our team is allowed to use. We are many teams, and the whole rink space only opens wide to all of us at the end of the lessons. We swarm in a big circle, around the rink. The hockey kids skate faster and one of them always comes close, too close at some point, touching my skates as he passes ahead. I am afraid of falling and think that if I fall I should keep my hands under me, o...

  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 wi...

  I did not think that Joy was going to come to me dressed in brown but she did. She was shaped like a lake, undulating light with her smiles. She was dressed in brown, with streaks of green, and yellow. And she wore the forest for her skirt. She was warm. And we communicated through swimming for one mile a day pretty much every day for this summer. Turtles and fish entered the conversation at times. No words were ever required. 

  Red and white are the colors we wear on the 1 st of March. White is the snow that melts, red is the fresh youthful blood of spring. I have a meeting with my boss at noon, and an appointment at the doctor at 10 today. This was i thought the ranked order of importance. But the doctors decide i am not to go home. My baby is due to be born. Why now, is it not soon? Maybe they say, but the baby is in distress, and you are having contractions. We are going to to a C section because she is still breech. I am calling the husband, and he is planning to come at the end of the work day. Because he is close, and he knows that the birthing process takes long, and because he had waited for many ours outside the delivery door when our firs child was born. I am trying to explain that this will be different . He is stressed. The nurses are trying to wheel me out to the surgery room. I tell them to wait. I exchange my turn in line for surgery with another woman, and they warn me - you are next. I ...

I had promised to try not to give birth of a Friday afternoon, when the traffic is at its worst in Patras. But when the water breaks, you have no choice but to head to the hospital, leaving the lab at 3 pm. I dropped by home to get the few things that I had already packed for this big event, even if I did not expect to give birth early. I asked my friend to please dry the clothes in the washing machine, and i met her at my home too. The we all three drove to the hospital, the future parents and my friend. My protector - who is the wife of my PhD supervisor is out of the country, visiting her children in England.  She had given me in charge of an older and respected doctor, who did not show up. The young italian doctor is short haired, bright eyed and alert. I trust she knows what she is doing better than me. Which is very easy. The doctor moves around me, doing what she is supposed to be doing I guess, and being mostly  quiet. The nurse is a lot more verbal and is coaching me,...