Gratitude makes the journey better and so does kindness

Month: August 2011

Undressing Mannequins, Dead Towns and Piggy-back Rides for Sleepy Warriors

I am walking down a dusty road with Laura, my niece. It’s only 9am but the sun heat stings like crazy. A black T-shirt is a questionable choice but laundry day is a merciless one. We walk and chat. The road puffs dust at us as we make our way downtown. We talk about school, about people we both know and her plans for the future. We walk by beer gardens that buzz with voices. Whiffs of yeast are bumping into our nostrils like tiny flies. It’s a beer garden alright.

Summer-nomad Watermelons Farmers

They’re melon farmers from the southern part of Romania. Summers are dry and hot there, plus there’s open endless fields. Perfect for growing melons. And they do. Come mid-summer, the farmers turn into sellers. They travel to a city or town in a different part of Romania, they find a spot where they set camp for the summer, whether in a farmer’s market or in a certain neighborhood, and there is no going back until all the melons are sold.

Wild Kids and Baby Lizards

“There’s a baby lizard! A lizard! Mom, they hatched!” There’s screaming traveling up to my room like thunder. Loud, that is, only a kinder version of loud. So I oblige and I run downstairs bumping into my niece Maria, who’s smiling the biggest smile ever. Sasha is shaking with excitement and his little hands rake through the dirt in the container the kids set up for the baby lizards. A plastic container filled with dirt where four lizard eggs were placed two weeks ago with huge hopes that baby lizards will come out. Since I had my own childhood experience of hatching snail eggs in a glass jar I was both hopeful and encouraging of such endeavors. The day has come! Kids’ hands jump in and they are fighting over who’s going to have the first turn at holding the lizard. I am becoming equally eager to touch and possibly hold the tiny creature. There she is. the very definition of tiny and fragile is staring at us while we’re all staring at her. Him? Who cares anyway. I remember reading that some lizards are mostly female and the need for a male is similar to the need a fish has for a bicycle. So there, it’s such a trivial matter right now. Sasha has a turn. The needle-like tail is wrapped around Sasha’s index finger, tiny perfectly shaped eyes with the tiniest eyelids. Am I saying tiny a lot? That’s because the very word could use a makeover right now.
Each kid has a turn and that makes them talk at the same time in loud screechy voices. They make plans for the critter while I take a photo.

Of Roman Bones and Barking Dogs

I am sitting at a small desk in an upstairs bedroom of my sister’s house in Transylvania, the notorious Romanian province. She lives with her family in a house surrounded by blue and green hills and serenaded by armies of crickets every night. Nighttime is magic. Lights glinting all lined up far away make me think of oversized wands thrown from the sky by mad magicians. Owls hoot tirelessly and fly with their padded cottony wings over the fields to get their nightly rat and lizard fix.
The boys are asleep, dead tired after a long day. They had water fights and chased lizards around the yard. They also found some lizard eggs that are now safely placed in a large container filled with dirt on a sunny windowsill where they’ll hopefully hatch one day.

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