No More Birthday Blogs

Since 2008, on and off, and in the past more recent years, mostly on than off, I have been writing a birthday blog for people in my family. It’s a chance for me to look back at the kind of year they all have had, and to appreciate, in a more public way, all the blessings they bring to my life. 

It’s  a chance to sing their praises and hopefully outline the special-ness of each one of them. But it was mostly meant, selfishly, to give them a gift that is so hard to give on their exact birthdays, given that we are all so spread around the entire world on two continents. 

It’s not because I love them less. It’s not because I feel they are physically any closer to me than they ever were since 2008’ish when I started doing this, but starting this year, I am retiring my birthday blogs. I think the topic has run its course, for some reason. 

My sister said “Well, there is only so much you can say about one person, right?”. And it’s not even that. I will never run out of things to say about her klutz-iness, or my nephew’s obsession with money, or my other nephew’s love of kitties and puppies and all creatures, or my husband’s love of squirrels, for example ... But, at the very least for the sake of diversification, I felt like this would be the time to change course in what I give and to make future presents just as memorable ... Call it a “milestone kind of a year” change of course, if you will. 

This is by no means a hard line in the sand. Birthday blogs might make an appearance in the future. But it’s no longer a tradition that I want to follow here, anymore. 

I have always loved to give presents. I enjoy that infinitely more than I enjoy receiving them. And with that in mind, I am constantly revising how and what I give as presents. Starting with a couple of years ago, I have been putting much more thought into gifting experiences more than just things (thanks to a dear friend who reminded me of that).

Just like the birthday blog was not a material thing per se, I am giving away time together, or things that can be experienced with others, like concert tickets or trips ... I find that much more rewarding to myself as the giver, and I find that my family smiles more and enjoys them more, too. When looking back and remembering the memories, they are the gift that perpetually will keep on giving, every time we recount it. 

You might ask “why is a present needed at all?”. But the answer to that is easy: dad always told us to take the time and celebrate special moments in special ways. He took it a bit too far (he would throw a 5-course dinner party for 20+ people every time he bought something new like a car, a fridge or when he got a new job), but he always dressed up for the occasion, stopped, and celebrated a milestone - birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, saints’ feasts (or name days), you name it. I happen to share his view on this. A present, to me, is part of that celebration. 

I hope the new gift-giving will be just as welcome, surprising, and well-awaited as the former birthday blogs were ... 

With that in mind, I wish everyone in my family, happy birthdays ahead, for many, many healthy years to come! And may we all enjoy every special moment together, as much as we enjoy making arrangements to do so ...

Thank you for the memories, old, and the ones I am anxiously awaiting to make together in the years to come ...

January 19, 2025

My favorite grandma, my second mom, my ‘maia’ loved the beach. It was her happy place and she didn’t stop going to it every year till she got really, really sick, right before she died. Romania doesn’t have palm trees though, but she lived for almost 75 years dreaming about seeing one, one day. I remember her buying fabric with palm tree patterns for summer dresses. 

When I landed in America, 27 years ago today, life or fate, or some happenstance brought me to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This is not where you dream of migrating when you dream about moving to America. You usually are told America is New York and Miami and Los Angeles, and anyone you know who moves here shoots for one of these places. Well, my story brought me to Myrtle Beach. My first home was on the beach - I thought I literally won the lottery. 

Every day, I would look at nothing but palm trees and think of ‘maia’. It kept me going, knowing she would never say ‘no’ to living on this new planet where it was so easy to take every tree for granted. 

Then (1998) and today (2025). A lifetime and the same shore at the same time. 

I had nothing but a head full of dreams and absolutely no idea how I would make them come true. Those who know my story know by now that dad had one dream for us: to make America our home. I went out into the world on his specific promise that America is the only place where our character, our education, our upbringing, our talents will not go to waste. This was our pie-in-the-sky. The possibility of failure was never factored in. That was not a chance in the world that would happen.  

Over the years, I have looked back, and realized every time that I did make those dreams come true. I was lucky enough to learn how, and I was even luckier to know people who helped me out to facilitate them. Those who did all that know who they are and they also know (I hope) that I will forever be grateful to them. 

This immigrant girl didn’t know how to put gas in a car, or how to write a check, much less how to get and pay for a mortgage or a car loan. I didn’t know how to pay taxes or how to navigate the complex and disorderly, a-logical dark alleys of health insurance companies. I learned everything from scratch, at the age of 23: how to get and keep a job with no credentials or history in one of the most competitive places on the planet, how to survive an abusive marriage, how to keep a household, how to make friends who had no cultural common ground with me, and so much more ... 

When I look back and think of the past 27 years, I literally shiver. It’s more than half my life! Where has it all gone and who am I today?! 

People have asked me over the years if I ever regretted coming here - if I ever got scared when I landed here, amongst strangers, in a foreign land, and wanted to run back. Are you freakin’ kidding me? Look where I landed! Palm trees, pools, and the roaring Atlantic Ocean in my backyard. I was 23! Do you think any 23 year old would say no to that? I knew I had to work hard to make all that my own (and I learned over the years that the beach is really not my jam), but I wanted nothing but to make this land my true home. 

America held such promise in 1998! Back then, I never even thought about the politics in America because its reputation preceded it. I knew politics-wise, America’s got it figured out. They would always offer the best place to live anywhere in the world, I was sure of it. From my small Romanian town, it was heaven on earth and things just “worked” here because everyone is responsible and everyone pulls together. Someone reaching out a hand to give you help to move here, in this blessed land was the type of fortune that movies are made of. That’s how you know what a dreamer I was ... 

I was a literature and music buff and America offered a never-ending playground for both. 

I came to walk in Jim Morrison’s steps on Venice Beach, California, and breathe in the chilly, piney breezes of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks magnificent Douglas firs in the Pacific Northwest. For me, New York and Los Angeles presented no pull. But I wanted more than anything to live in the desert of Arizona or the mountains of Montana. I wanted to live in and to understand the complicated South which I grew to love after reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Gone With the Wind, among other things.

I came here to drive on Route 66 and chase Elvis’s Tennessee-born music; I came here to be “on the road again” like Willie Nelson promised and take the vastness of this land in, to learn it like the back of my hand; I came here to see if the stories told by Mark Twain and the criticism of Henry James towards Americans bear any truth. I came here to see Hemingway’s hangouts, homes and learn where his kitties spent their days. I came here to hear the blues in Chicago and the zydeco in New Orleans. I came to make the land of original blue jeans and bandanas (some of my favorite pieces of clothing growing up) my own. 

More than anything in the world, I came here for freedom. True, unbridled freedom, the kind of which no nation under the sun promised to know how to make. As I found out later through knowing the work and activism of Martin Luther King, Jr. "the goal of America is freedom." I thought that and to some extent still do, to my core. I figured then as I figure it now, 27 years later, America't got what I am after, and I have what she needs to give her, too. How could it go wrong?!

In the past 27 years, I did all these and so much more. In the process of slowly making America my home, I have learned that there are few things in the world as decadently delicious as hushpuppies, or fresh backyard bar-b-que. I also learned that the worst thing you can ever put in your mouth is without a doubt a peanut butter sandwich. Now, this one is one of the things that America got wrong. 

It was not until recently that I doubted the freedom part, but that is now the saddest realization yet. As Bill Clinton was saying in an interview "no victory is ever eternal" (or something similar).

Happiness is a basket full of crispy fresh hushpuppies at Sea Captain's House

I lived in Myrtle Beach only for about 10 months after I came over. Life and my new family moved me around to North Carolina, to Utah and back to North Carolina. While I was living close still, I used to go to Myrtle Beach every year after 1998 on my “off the boat” anniversary, which is today - January 19. After moving away for some time and during the pandemic the tradition went stale, but I felt the strong pull to start it again today. 

We went to some new places that I had never visited before (who would have known that after visiting my first American home for almost 12 years after I came here, every year, there would be any “new” places to see?), and I recreated the journey from my first home to my old beach and further to my office back when I made it here, and to one of my favorite places for food - a little old place called Sea Captain’s House that is still there and still offers delicious food and quirky Southern hospitality. Walking around my old neighborhood felt so familiar and welcoming. Like time never washed over anything ... Just like the waves washing on the same shore - the wave, always different, the shore permanent and steadfast ... 

In front of my former home. Look at all the those palm trees.

We booked an ocean-front room when we got here. I woke up this morning yearning for a gorgeous sunrise. But it was so overcast I did not even see one ray of sunshine. It was so windy that all the birds were flying backwards. I thought to myself: what an interesting coincidence that the weather, and the general mood of the beach matches the world of today, January 19, 2025: not a ray of hope is left for so many of us today, on this day; and just like the birds going backwards, some of us want to go back for better times, some of us are taking all of us back from ignorance. But we’re all looking back, for one reason or another.

When they pushed me out of my home country and into America, they told me that this is the land of opportunity; that there is nothing you cannot achieve here if you set your mind to it and work hard. The one thing they didn’t mention is that the land of all opportunity also includes the opportunity to fail. The opportunity to lose sense of who you are and what right and wrong is and how to tell the difference. 

I didn’t fail, or at least I didn’t fail me, but at times this country that held so much promise and that I cherished, has failed me. 

But if I were given the opportunity to come here again, knowing what I know now, I would do it again in a heart-beat! Even if one day, I can say that I came to witness the fall of the greatest empire of my generation, that, too, is a (strange) privilege and a chance of a lifetime. So, I would do it again. 

I used to sit like the picture shows on my patio and look at the ocean in front of our condo, thinking that at the other end of all that water are the people I love but that I am here, in this safe boat and if I steer it right, I could make my own and their lives better, fuller, more meaningful.

Nowadays, I don’t feel like I’m on that safe boat anymore. I feel like not just me, the whole country is on The Titanic. The people who see the iceberg have no power, nor authority to steer the boat away and avoid hitting it. The people who have the authority and the power cannot see the iceberg and are heading straight for it, and they are so ignorant or controlling they are not listening to the people on the same boat to go around it. 

In the end, I feel like we’re all headed for peril. But only one half will know why and that it could have been avoided. The other half will blame the iceberg. 

As we were walking out of Barefoot Landing in North Myrtle Beach, the speakers were shouting as a sad reminder: "Bye, bye, Miss American pie ...".

To Kickoff the New Year

After an intense and mostly bad year in 2024 (about which I spoke enough in my previous entry - https://wander-world.blogspot.com/2024/12/no-you-are-not-welcome-2024.html), I am truly hoping for a much better year ahead! I feel like a sinner who is done doing their penance: nuff is enough, already! May the sunshine come back now. Looking forward to 2025 like you look forward to your first real meal after 40 days of fasting.  

There are, of course, no guarantees in life. Only hopes. 

Lots of folks I know are making new year’s resolutions or (in a more “modern” fashion), declaring their “word of the year” by which they will live, allegedly. I make no such promises to myself or the world, for the simple reason that I am scared of jinxing anything ... I try to let life at least think it can surprise me and it has not failed me yet. 

But one thing I do want to plan better for in the new year and that is I would like to plan for more writing. Last year, everything that happened, all the repeated punches in the gut, one after another, constantly, left me quite drained. This year, no matter what, even from the bottom of the barrel that some huge burden might bury me into, I am at least promising to make a better effort to write about it all. If for nothing else, for me and my memories alone. 

As I said many times before - there are great things to learn from travel and lots of character to build. Our latest trip to The Old Country was no exception.  I am rambling on some of the more memorable moments. 

Traveling on Christmas is not such a breeze anymore. I traveled on the day of Thanksgiving about 15 years back and there was virtually 10% (if that) of the passengers in the airport that you would normally see on a Thursday. Not so much this year on Christmas Day. The airports were packed (and this is a year when Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah fell on the same day), with people in tow with what seemed to be a kindergarten of kids and toddlers. Almost at every corner, you’d see kids outnumber the adults. 

We ran into a “new rule” (I feel a little like Bill Maher, for those who know what I am referring to) this year, that requires that you weigh your carry-on and your “personal item” together at check-in and they should not be more than a 12 kilos (26lbs) combined. This is not about weighing the checked luggage that you are sending under the plane, this is the items that you plan to take on the plane with you. If they exceed this weight, you have to check one of them in and send it under the plane. After 26 years of air travel, this was news to me. After checking into it more, we found out that this rule only applies to Air France and that every airline is different. Some airlines have a dimension requirement, but not a weight requirement, some of them have a different weight than 12 kilos, some of them weigh only the carry-on (which should not exceed 8 kilos like in the case of Austrian Airlines). Most of them don’t really enforce any of them. But Air France does. I guess Unions are strong establishments and France is known for them not joking around. 

Airports are nasty, nasty businesses, if you asked me, and I am speaking just like a regular person, and not as my usual germophobe self.  Google Translate translates the very expressive Romanian word of “spurcăciune” as “defilement” but this does not even begin to scratch the surface of what we really mean by it in Romanian. In Romanian, it means a mix of nastiness, dirt, despicability, thoughtlessness, and just pure grossness all wrapped into one and it defines the human condition of polluting everything it touches. My late English teacher used to say that people “go out into the world, say to have a picnic, and leave behind their spurcăciune just to let the world know they’ve been there”. This is what airports are: just layer upon layer of human spurcăciune times infinite! 

The amount of traffic they handle around the clock makes it impossible for any true cleaning to occur. How can anyone ever disinfect all the traces left by boots filled with pee from the bathrooms lying on the chairs? Or the coke spilled on seats, floors, counters, and tables? How can anyone truly undo all the stickiness, the nastiness in the bathrooms? We sat at this bar where all the beer taps were rusted through, visibly, with beer leaking from every one of the taps, even when they were not in use. There is no cleaning and disinfecting that. In Paris, the cleaning lady was using the same squeegee for the sink counters as for the floors. You’re welcome! 

I am always either patiently awaiting the kick-off of the next disease after every trip through an airport, or sending special prayers to The Heavens for protecting me from stomach bugs, respiratory bugs, and skin diseases ... I give myself about a week of quarantine after every trip before I declare that I have been spared. I build my immunity system during these trips, I swear it! 

The airplane announcements are stand-up comedy bits sometimes. And not just because they intend for them to be this way in some cases, but when a foreign person is trying to convey in English some strict rules, words and meanings get confused. And confusing. Again, on Air France, we hear things like: “You may never smoke, not even in the toilets. Refusal to comply will result in persecution (sic). Using the power plugs is prohibited during take off, landing, announcements or any time requested by the crew.” In other words: you’re screwed either way, so don’t even try. The last bit just about covers the entire experience, don’t you think?! 

I have done the trip back home for what feels like a million times. I know people who have immigrated to The States (or Canada) who never go back, or go back every 20 years or so. Not me. Not in my family. We have always been close and dad and the whole family made sure we stayed that way even after I stubbornly turned my back on them (physically) more than 26 years ago. I went to Romania three times last year. It was a hard year for us, so I had to be there for this and that. 

Every time, it is a bit of an old experience but I try to always look at it with new eyes, because just like there is no such thing as the same sunset, every experience is different and unique in its own right ... I miss my family when I am away. I miss the people who make sure my head stays the right size all the time. It’s not modern anymore to beat yourself up for things (if it ever were), but this is what being in my family is like: always trying to defend myself, always trying to justify, always trying to remove the guilt. I won’t say it’s welcome or pleasant, but it is what I am used to. 

I love everyone back home, and I am a true believer that blood is thicker than water; I would never turn anyone with the same blood as me away; everyone in my family (parents, sister, extended family) has each contributed very much to who I am today. Their love and their unique roles in my life are familiar and are “home” to me. So, at the threshold between years, it was a familiar place to be. A familiar and cozy place to put an end to a wretched year and open the door to new possibilities in the new one. 

I have not spent the winter holidays with my family since 1997. I was nervous I might not know how that’s done anymore. But what you have grown up into is not that easily forgotten. The enormous amounts of food, the insane cooking, cleaning, and the full house were all there like the old times I remember.

The many flavors of the Romanian Christmas (this is just the appetizer spread)

The TV entertainment for New Years' Eve has changed over the years, and I must say for the worse: I was used to a lot more comedy and nowadays it’s a lot more music that is not all that great (just like in the US). But the all-nighter parties on New Years are still there if you have the stamina for it. 

There is no New Year's Eve party without some sort of meat in aspic. This is my turkey "jell-o" which came out perfect, according to mom and my aunt

 

Every Romanian New Year's meal must have fish and "steak". We call "steak" everything that resembles beef steak in America but can be made from any meat - here pork, chicken and turkey "steak". We also must eat 12 grapes at midnight (not pictured here), for good luck. 

Every trip back is different. Some of them are for obligations and logistics alone. Some are for catching up with friends. Lately, they have been about doctors’ appointments and making sure mom and the house are in safe hands. This trip was about family. About togetherness and about holding each other up during the momentous event of changing the year mark from 2024 to 2025. We welcomed the last year of the first quarter of this century. Momentous indeed, more than usual, I would say. 

Romanian holidays put American ones to shame. If you gather all of the American holidays together, you would not come up with the amount of work and cooking you do for the Romanian Christmas and New Years alone. The grocery trips, the days you spent in the kitchen with your mom and aunt screaming recipes across the table while you happily ignore them as you are now grown and have learned a trick or two in your day will all be memorable. We have a 3-day Christmas (not one) and a 3-day New Years celebration. And then we have the Epiphany and St. John the Baptist’s feast, too, at the beginning of January ... When we wish people “Happy Holidays” we ain’t kiddin’. ‘Cause it’s not just one. 

My sister received the carollers for Christmas and made the Christmas tree as she came there sooner, we received the well-wishing singers for New Years and we took the tree down before we left. These simple tasks, ancient-old are small reminders that the world is still spinning, despite humanity’s best worst efforts to the contrary. 

Wrapped up in the muck and tragedy of every day that the past couple of years handed to us, we might have forgotten the ancient customs that defined who we are. This trip was a nice reminder that these customs are sewn into us like the flesh and blood that makes us - never to be removed. It was a familiarity that our now Westernized selves might have kept dormant for a while. Sure, we do celebrate “Romanian style” to some extent when we are in North America (the beauty of being an immigrant here, for now, is that you do bring with you who you are), but it is not the same as when you are in your home-town and everyone around you celebrates the same way. There, you are no longer a minority. Although the actions and specifics might be the same, the experience, what you feel with your heart, is totally different ... 

Food is food everywhere. Drinks are drinks. But the atmosphere of Romanian-ism can only be experienced in the country. A deeper meaning can only be felt with those close to your heart. 

My home-town, and I am guessing all the cities in Romania, dresses up its downtown and main promenade area for the holidays. There are holiday lights, holiday decor, a huge tree, amusement park rides set up smack dab in the middle of the town. We have this huge museum called The Palace of Culture and everything in town revolves around that. The special decor is set up all around The Palace. There are outdoor concerts, street vendors, fresh food cooked in every booth, it’s like holidays had spilled into the streets and it’s a huge block party of entertainment where the whole city is invited. We did not have all this growing up. This is new. An import from The West, no doubt. This year was the first year when I experienced all this. It was new to me and a new experience. 

I love visiting places I call “home” with the eyes of a world traveler - this way, everything looks new and you are surprised by it all ... 

We spent most of our time eating and catching up with family. We spent exactly 4 hours max doing things we wanted to do, like visiting the Holiday Village in Iasi (the downtown “done-up” area), riding the ad-hoc Ferris Wheel that the city throws up downtown, and going to a restaurant for a nice meal. The rest of the vacation, all 10 days of it, were either in an airport, or with family. 

Aerial view of the Iasi downtown Holiday Village

Christmas street food focuses on pork products: lots of sausages and cured, smoked meats, all cooked in lard

Huge vats of mulled wine in the Holiday Village

We came back exhausted, cold, and feeling older (by a year). The memories we made are all worth it. Another holiday season with our mom and other aging relatives, another holiday with all of us under one roof is in the books ... In some ways, this was all familiar, and in many others, it was all new. 

Sure, I wish I could spend 10 days in many other parts of the world that are on my bucket list and that I have no plans to visit yet but which are teasing my heart something awful. But this was good too, and necessary. Not sure if so much for us but for the people who are aging fast, who are part of who we are and who might not be here in one or two or three years. Paris, and Rome, and Antartica can wait, as they are not going anywhere. We hope. For now, we have Iasi 2024-2025 and we’re filled to the brim with its fullness. 

Happy New Year, everyone! I really mean it: may it be happier and more giving than any year you’ve all had! Make it a good one!

"Merry Christmas from the family!"