guest post: mother's eyes Tweet

I was hanging the clothes out to dry, with a glass of red wine and plenty of sunshine, when I traveled far far away, back in time some half a century.

On April 23rd (tomorrow, as I write), the Orthodox calendar celebrates St George (Gheorghe, in Romanian). My teacher—splendid choice for a job title—, God rest his soul, had this name, Gheorghe Negrutz. To pleasantly surprise him I decided, with all my nine years of age, to take a huge bunch of flowers to him. At home we had daffodils and hyacinths, a few tulips and three cats, only scared by the dog barking from his chain, jailed away from the action in the yard. It wasn't enough.

I began my journey to school and discovered, on the way, the graveyards: Catholic, Reformed, Orthodox, Baptist, Pentecostal... all in the same big yard and... all covered in tulips! Not one of them escaped me. With my arms full, more like I imagine a Dutch girl, I landed in class. On the desk of St George there were already waiting small gifts from my pals' parents... but no other tulip.

Soon it arrived, the time I was longing for with all my nine years: seeing his reaction. Trembling with excitement, I soaked in the sublime second: my teacher embraced the tulips and kissed them, asking who had brought them. Overcome with both emotion and the importance of the moment, I stood up under the envious eyes of my contemporaries and received his kiss on my forehead.

A year passed, and the story repeated identically. I went back home from school overly happy, walking under trees in bloom and warming rays of sun, enjoying my spring afternoon in the arms of Mother Nature. Not long after me, though, who arrived at our gate? The teacher, St. George himself, riding his bike away from the heart of the village to see the amazing garden from where I had given him so many tulips.

There is no word, no expression, no mood to describe what I went through in a flash. My mother was a total stranger to the events that made me important among my pals but, most so, in his eyes. Oblivious, the smiling teacher kissed my mother's hand and kindly asked her to show him her magnificent flower garden, the tulip area especially.

The worst you can imagine and endure passed from my mother to me. She understood something was wrong, though she didn't know the story and there was no way I was going to tell her that on St. George's day the graveyard is a sea of tulips. I literally vanished into thin air. I don't know how the meeting ended but, as usual, my grandpa sorted everything out.

For a full week at least, I spent my nights at my grandparents, until one day my mother's eyes let me know that the incident had been forgotten.


My mom, Magdalena has had one too many chances to see me display the same entrepreneurial spirit across the years. It is more precious, thus, to hear this anecdote for the first time ever and learn that my mother's eyes were smiling inwardly in past hours of need, seeing that the genes were incorrigible.

While on holiday on a remote Philippines island, I gave the blog over to family and friends.