My Box of Random Memories

I opened the box carefully. I have not seen its contents since May of 1989 after my Daddy’s passing.  The round Pobeda watch with a blue dial and a brown leather band was the first object I picked up. It was Dad’s watch. He was wearing it the day they threw him off the refinery crane into a pit of metal shavings. I think uncle Ion had replaced the leather band because it looked too new. I was surprised that there was no scratch or evidence of the severe fall that cracked Dad’s skull but this delicate glass did not even have a visible scrape. The winding mechanism still runs; I am not sure if it keeps good time. 

There is a small wooden spoon I painted in the tenth grade with the head of a typical peasant girl dressed in Romanian ethnic scarf. I saved it in memory of my grandmother whom I used to watch prepare food for our family with such a simple wooden spoon decorated with chiseled burns onto the handle.

I pulled out an intricately hand-made leather wallet. I opened the folds and the smell of leather wafted like a fine perfume.  Dad gave it to my husband as a wedding present 40 years ago; it looks as it did the day my Dad purchased it. Bill never wore it because it was too big, it did not fit American dollars but I saved it. There are no slots for credit cards; back then, credit cards were unheard of. We conducted business with cash, personal checks, and traveler’s checks. Farmers used the old system of barter. People strapped for cash paid for the doctor’s visit with chicken or a dozen fresh eggs.

Dad used to order hand-made fine wool suits for his son-in-law but a gentleman farmer did not need such fancy clothes. We always gave them away to a Chinese friend who wore the same size. Dad never knew and he continued to order one new suit each year. I am sure, it cost him a pretty penny. I did not have the heart to tell him to stop; it made him happy to keep my ex well-suited. Dad’s cousin was a cobbler who made fine leather shoes to order. They were beautiful but very uncomfortable. Bill never wore those either. We gave those away too but we did tell Dad the truth about the shoes.

A delicate ladies watch, well-worn, was my gold watch I bought when I first started to work in the U.S. I am not sure why I bought a real gold Swiss watch for the grand sum of $150, my weekly pay. I wanted something that would last a long time, which it did, but also something valuable that no communist would ever confiscate just because they were in power. I was told Wyler Swiss watches  are no longer made.

At the bottom of the box is an album which Mom assembled when Dad passed away. I opened a few pages and I realized that they are all photos from his funeral. So painful to look at his casket, the mourners, the flowers, his frozen face in death, barely recognizable after the long suffering in a hospital that gave him no food or fluid infusions for three weeks prior to his death.  Aunt Marcella fed him droppers of liquid and kept him alive until he lost so much weight that his organs began to fail.

Aunt Marcella, now 92 years old, is still alive and, following a successful broken hip repair surgery, has been moved to a nursing home that caters to the elderly with special medical needs who have no immediate relatives. Such places did not exist under communism, families took care of the elderly. But families have split up all over the world now.

A sterling broach, now tarnished black, is my 1977 wedding present from Dad. He bought it in the Omnia department store in our home town for 900 lei, literally more than his entire month’s salary. He had seen me admire it in the window every time we strolled past the department store on weekends. It was such an extravagant gift! I cleaned it and the delicately woven silver looked brand new again. Tiny amethysts cabochons decorated the round surface. It must have been made in China because it was the only trading partner for fine jewelry during the communist era.

A silver fish pendant, covered in delicate cloisonné scales, was a gift which Mom brought back when she traveled to the home country in the mid-nineties. There is an old silver violin and a frog pin I collected from the early 1980s. They have oxidized as well, not having been touched in decades.

A beaded flower necklace I painstakingly strung bead by bead added color to the Memory Box. I was so homesick and lonely in 1978, I picked up the hobby from a craft book. An experimental artist at heart, I could not afford to paint or draw, materials were hard to find in the backwoods where we lived and probably expensive, way out of reach for our $200 per month income. But beads, a needle, scissors, and fishing nylon thread were cheap. And my eyes were sharp as an eagle’s back then. One solitaire gold earring, still shining, was stuck in the red velvet lining in the corner. I wondered who lost the other one.

A black-beaded and quite heavy evening bag, with its brass snaps and chain turned green from the passage of time, was not missing any of the intricate design opaque beads. Daddy gave it to me before my high school prom to match the red woven polyester dress. I have worn this black bag many times since to parties and held it close to my heart and wrist. It was something tangible from the Old World that I missed so much. And Daddy worked really hard to buy me this special gift.

The brass key to the Memory Box is still held by a red and white silk tassel. The beautiful mother of pearl inlay swirled delicate cranes. The box came all the way from Korea in our friend’s luggage who was assigned there on military duty.  He had expensive taste and knew how to pick lasting gifts. The dark wood and lacquer stood the test of time quite well despite the humidity in the South.  

What will happen to this box one day, who will throw its contents away and replace them with her cherished memories?

A Freak Start to an Amazing Trip

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

The plane was rocked violently on the tarmac at Dulles by a freak storm. The ten passengers and crew that had managed to board were wide-eyed, praying that the shaking of the Boeing 767 would stop soon and the boarding would resume. My husband was still in the terminal with the rest of the passengers. Lightning and wind gusts were so intense that boarding had been temporarily suspended.

The seven and a half hour flight to Zurich finally took off two and a half hours late amid scary dark clouds and soul-rattling sudden altitude drops. Fortunately, as we reached a cruising altitude of 39,000 feet, everything calmed down and we settled into a routine of getting up, stretching, bathroom trips, and watching movies for seven and half hours. I can’t sleep on planes; all my limbs go numb rather quickly.

Once we arrived in Switzerland, we were greeted by a huge, modern, and empty airport unlike any airport in the U.S. Bored, with no Wi-Fi or book to read, I started looking for interesting things around me. I was not disappointed. The vending machines were selling Cannabis Ice Tea for 3 Swiss francs a large can.

I bought a Swiss Army knife which would prove quite useful in the next two weeks and a couple of magnets for cousin Dragu which set me back almost $50 because the dollar was so weak against the Swiss franc and the credit card company had to get their lion’s share of exchange charges for generously allowing me to do business with them.  

A huge chocolate bar was calling my name. Who goes to or passes through Switzerland without buying the biggest chunk of chocolate one can find, an act of sheer visual greed since nobody can bite into the gargantuan bar without the help of a good knife.

We finally arrived in Bucharest the next day, almost 21 hours after we started our half way around the globe trek. But the entire flight time was only nine hours and 10 minutes. The Otopeni Airport seemed shinier – the international terminal had been completed since I was there three years ago.

We were elated that our luggage had made it and all suitcases arrived with us. A shower and clean clothes would become a reality soon. We headed to the Avis counter to claim our mid-sized car, a black, sporty, and spotless Ford Mondeo running on Diesel. We would find out soon enough that both gasoline and Diesel cost over $6 per gallon but the nice bonus was that attendants pumped the gas, a service that is lost in most states today. On the bright side, three years ago, Diesel was over $10 a gallon, and bio Diesel was $11 per gallon, so $6 seemed like a bargain.

For Romanian roads and the few designated parking spots, this Ford Mondeo was quite a large car, but it was just big enough to accommodate our luggage in the trunk, out of sight of potential thieves.

To mitigate for the lack of legal parking, intrepid Romanians double- and triple-park on sidewalks everywhere. I’ve never had to dodge traffic and cars on sidewalks in the U.S. but in Europe, it is common. Because many drivers carelessly blocked the exit of private garages, some owners posted signs that they would slash tires of anyone who obstructed their car exit and they meant it.

The engine purred nicely but it shut off every time we stopped in traffic. This feature paid homage to the environmentalist wackos who want to save the planet from a non-existent anthropogenic global warming, while endangering the lives of drivers who must press the accelerator hard before the engine roars again to life and the car can move. The sport transmission feature certainly helped when climbing the Carpathian Mountains and when managing hair pin curves.

The drive to Ploiesti flashed before my eyes long-ago forgotten memories of places, names, bridges, creeks, and fruit and vegetable stands lining up the main highway. Beautiful potted plants were decorating the fruit-laden trays. The May cherries were ripening just in time. The road was better paved and traffic police was seldom in sight. The GPS kept alerting us of electronic speed traps instead. James would tell us in a punctilious and robotic British accent to slow down. But nobody minds the speed limit as traffic rules are just laughable suggestions that no drivers take seriously.

We arrived at Ana’s house in the town of Ploiesti 50 km later, after getting lost numerous times, with the GPS telling us to go on non-existent roads, dead-ends, and closed roundabouts. With few traffic lights, we were in roundabout hell until we managed to learn the secret yield system, the meaning of hand gestures, and verbal cursing clues. The whole town was a construction site as the city planners had decided to dig up at the same time all the tram tracks and replace them with newer, more modern ones, paid for with EU funds.

Light rail, trams, trolleys, and buses are certainly encouraged and imposed in most towns by the lack of parking for individual vehicles. And pay garages are not adequate in size. Any way elitists can remove people from their cars and put them into public transportation like sardines, money is no object, while they personally jet around the world to locales ordinary humans can only dream of. Their private planes, yachts, and huge homes apparently can leave a huge carbon footprint – do as they say not as they do.

The town was dustier, dirtier, and more polluted than I remembered it. We drove by Brazi Refinery were my Dad used to work, now called Petrom. It was surrounded by green fields and the air appeared much cleaner than the air in town.

Ana’s three-story villa was even cozier; her daughter had made some wonderful changes to the décor. Our room was slightly hot so we opened the windows to the city noise and smells, loud gypsy music piped from speakers across the street, the trolley buses running all night, the incessant barking of dogs, and the cock-a-doodle of a time-confused and pesky rooster.

We slept fitfully that night but were glad to be horizontal, even on a mattress whose coils were stabbing us in the back every time we moved. But the price was right; our accommodations were free and came with unconditional love of my Romanian family and Ana’s spectacular cooking.

A huge herd of stray dogs, at least thirty “maidanezi” as the Romanians call them, were having a major street fight right below our window around 3 a.m.  I was home again, welcomed by the warm embrace of my family but missing tranquility and our home in Virginia.

To Be Continued