An Enchanted Land: North America’s North-Atlantic Coast

As much as many people think Canada and the US are sisters, as much as untraveled people think we might be oh, so alike, there is a distinct difference between these countries. Looking over the pictures you snap as you drive over the border to visit our neighbor to the North, you realize immediately where the border was crossed, even if you don’t even take one picture of the border patrol officer’s booth. 

This picture taken in St. Andrew by the Sea, in New Brunswick summarizes exactly what I was after on this trip: a quiet, sleepy fishing town on the Atlantic with a view of the bay.

There is a shift in architecture between a US settlement and a Canadian one. A change of rhythm in the way seconds are counted, in the way people swag. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but once you see it, you get it. 

This was my first trip to Maine and New Brunswick. I always thought the East Coast is where both our land densities are. Small towns, strung together like a clutter of pearls, one after another, close-knit communities that flow into one another; a passer-by unable to tell when one establishment ends and the other one begins. 

But that density was lost on me on the drive from Bangor, ME to Saint John, NB. For miles and miles, all you cross are wooded and water lands. More mountains than you’d think it’s appropriate for a coastal state or province of The East, and way too many “Beware of moose crossing” signs than you ever think would be needed. As a matter of fact, in a week in these parts we saw exactly zero moose. But nonetheless, the promise is that of land and wildlife, and not of humans. 

How you know you're in Canada ...

Maine and New Brunswick are relatively scarcely populated, green states. And I mean green in the literal sense of the word. Rolling hills (or baby mountains), lakes and many rivers that cut through their bones like deep whip marks into young flesh. In July, the air is liquid and yellow, thick with bugs, mosquitoes, butter- and dragonflies; dry and melty warm like warmed up maple syrup. You think stopping the car by a river or the ocean will be breezy and fresh, and maybe it is, but not in July. In July it’s exhaustingly hot. 

The landscape is about the only thing that’s very similar between the two countries in this area. The houses are distinctively different, simply put: Americans care less about the curb appeal; junk cars and used up, beat up farm equipment are left to rot in unmowed front yards. Canadian houses have clean, clutter-free yards with manicured lawns, even in the deep country. 

There is a noisy kitsch aspect of a small American town. There is a quiet, coquette distinctiveness of a Canadian one. 

American vs Canadian home along the highway

In Maine, people are direct and to the point; spend little time on niceties. When you mention you’re not from town, they give you prompt directions and you can sense their sigh in the back of their voice as in “oh, another ignorant outta towner”. Not quite rude, but not sugary sweet nor quite welcoming either. 

Canadians don patient smiles and greet everyone with “Hello. Bonjour.” Without even telling them where you’re from, they notice your license plate and come waving from across the parking lot with “Oh, goodness! I love Maine! How long are you guys staying here?” They ask you questions about America, your trip, your plans and give you unsolicited directions of where they think you should be spending your time. It’s like the long cold winter has gotten them snowed in for so long, they are happy to see another human and happy to reconnect to the world. Americans act as if summertime is a bothersome interruption of their quiet time and are uneasy to be awoken by random drifters looking for a lobster joint. 

For years I thought the best seafood on the American continent was in Massachusetts - Boston and Cape Cod, specifically. But Maine, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island (PEI, as commonly known) have gotten Boston beat! And no, not just the lobster. All of it - clams and any manner of fish too. 

Maine lobster in Brewer, ME

These parts belong to nature first, and man second - and this is what loudly spoke to me. Maine’s Acadia National Park - an amazing juxtaposition of ocean and sea - is something you expect to see more fittingly in California, as the Sierras slide down into the Pacific, rather than on the East Coast. New Brunswick has the Bay of Fundy, with the world’s highest tides that carve amazing rock formations, slice them off the mainland, and leave them sprinkled on the beaches like a string of Greek vestiges. 

The noisy Atlantic washing the rocky cliffs of Acadia National Park in Maine

There is no metropolis to disturb the small-town feel of places like Bangor, ME, Saint John, Fredericton or Moncton, NB. Even the capital city of Charlottetown in PEI is a lazy settlement, with beautiful old architecture, wide streets that have not yet been narrowed by overdevelopment, streets so quiet and people so calm that I am sure no one knows what a car horn sounds like. Or a police, ambulance, or firetruck siren. 

Crossing Confederation Bridge between NB and PEI - at 8 miles long, it is the world's longest bridge over frozen waters (when the waters are frozen. Not in July)

These are places where battles were once fought, mostly for territory, others for principles only - who gets to keep what piece of land that was not theirs to begin with. But the noise of battles once fought has long been quieted and what you see today is a new world, built from dreams of exiled people who lived to tell the tales. 

Originally, I planned for all of us (my sister and I and our family) to rent a house with a view of the ocean in a small fishing town on the Atlantic Coast, up there, in The North. But we ended up settling for a house in-land on the Richibucto river - in the small community by the same name- a name drawn from the Mi'kmaq word that means either “River of fire” or “River that enters the woods”. The Richibucto is a tidal river, and we passed our time sitting on our backyard dock telling the time of the day by the height of the river benches. The kids knew to drive to the ocean at high tide, when the fishing is plenty. 

There is a health and a peace that heals you when you tune into the rhythms of nature and you block out the modern appliances that tell you the time or the weather. Just watch, and listen, and feel the time passing, read the clouds to learn about the weather gathering up its forces for a quick rain or revealing the sun so close to Earth that it’s melting the air away in the July scorch. 

Plans don’t work out as you dream them up to begin with most times (we meant to put our home base in Maine, somewhere on the ocean, but it ended up being in New Brunswick, off the beaten path, on a river), and the unexpected nature of what they end up being is usually the best, because their mere surprise adds to their memorability. 

Our Richibucto homebase proved to be quite the perfect place for a quiet and peaceful retreat that had the added bonus of being close to everything that the area had to offer: the magic of the tidal bore in Moncton, where when the ocean tide moves inland and the Petitcodiac river looks as if it’s flowing backwards, east to west; the majestic Hopewell Rocks - carved minutely by the biggest tides in the world; a not-so-long day trip to PEI with the Anne’s House of the Green Gables and the birthplace of the Canadian Confederation, Charlottetown. The charming fishing town of Bouctouche, with its rich Acadian history and home of writer Antonine Maillet - author of La Sagouine (The Washerwoman), a book that tells the story of this resilient community and its character through a harsh history, is only a few minutes away. 

Hopewell Rocks in Fundy National Park - New Brunswick

Lucy Maude Montgomery's home, aka the House of the Green Gables - Prince Edward Island

The amazing, strange, unique experience of the Akadi Lumina light and music show in Bouctouche transports you to a fairy tale land that walks you through the history and tradition of the Acadians. In the wraps of night, when the deep, meaningful spirits come to life, you walk through the woods illuminated only by lights purposefully placed to tell a story and induce awe and a sense of magic. It’s a unique experience, not quite scary, but more awe-inspiring than anything else. The scenery is completed by the beat of traditional music. A show that would probably never happen in America - the unevenness of the terrain, and the tricky, occasional inaccessibility for even able-bodied folks would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. 

Think a Lynch movie, punctuated by loud, vibrant, Acadian music (which blends French-language vocal traditions with Celtic, Scottish, and Irish fiddle tunes), in the middle of the woods at night, with only occasional lighting that comes on and off in the rhythms told by the story of the journey itself. 

Everyone is asking us if we had a reprieve from the heat of the lower American states, forgetting that it is Canada that is presently burning from the wildfires of the summer. It was hot. Too hot for anyone, anywhere, but especially too hot for “The True North” as Canada deems itself. 

Restaurants either don’t have or don’t believe in using air conditioning. One of my nephews shared that “we’re Canadian, Alina. Our cold months are so long, we welcome the heat.” I s'pose I see the point. 

Mosquitoes were a different story. Greedy and mean, they were relentless. There was no amount of OFF! spray that could keep us truly safe from their ravenous appetites. 

As I look back to our trip and let the slideshow of memories scroll in my head, the images come and fade away before my mind’s eyes: the lush gardens of  Bouctouche, walks on the beach with my sister, walks downtown Moncton, alongside the Petitcodiac river, street dinners with the freshest seafood on the planet, bald eagles swiftly gliding above our heads as we sit lazily in bright red Adirondack chairs watching the river go by, at our cabin, the crystal-clear bells (polished and finished in a Charleston, SC bell foundry) striking the third hour at The Dunstan’s Basilica, stirring for just a brief moment the sleepy town of Charlottetown on PEI, kind Canadian people that bend over backwards (from our cabin’s hosts to every wait staff in every restaurant to shop attendants in every shop), the angry Atlantic waves washing off the shores of the Acadian National park, the sweet taste of melt-in-your mouth. 

Bouctouche, NB - The gardens at the Arboretum

Dunstan's Basilica in Charlottetown, PE

Our backyard on the Richibucto River, NB

A purple carpet - New Brunswick and PEI were in full lupin season. It was a feast for the eyes - here, in St. John, NB

Time might put a blurry mist on the memories as it passes, but once I will intentionally lift off the blanket of time, these images will always be there for me to go back to and relive - a short but meaningful summer break with my family, when America  turned 250 and Canada turned 159 in the same week and we discovered together a land mostly unturned. 

"River of fire": Sunset from our back porch on the Richibucto River. A view for a lifetime.

From Innocence to Now ...

My dear boy, 

I still remember the blog I wrote the day you were born, the day I became an aunt (https://wander-world.blogspot.com/2008/04/from-heart.html). I wrote it almost in one breath, that very day. I did not prepare for it, I did not dream about what I would write, I just did it. All my love, and awe, and wonder, and gratitude, and fears, they just came right out and poured onto the page. You were an empty page, but so full of possibilities. 

In contrast, I have been thinking long and hard about what I would say for your 18th (holy cow!) birthday - whether to you, or in a blog, or journal entry. Now, 18 years later, you are so far from the blank page you started on. You are becoming quite an accomplished little story. 

Some of the things I want to say are the usual, retrospective things, like the obvious: you have grown much, accomplished much, matured, changed, and found yourself in the process, through kicking, screaming, good times, and bad. You know the story. 

It is truly a daunting realization that you have pretty much grown up on this blog. From the moment you were born till now, you have been documented religiously somewhere on the internet, including here. It’s amazing to see how something as novel (to me, at the time I started writing here) as a blog has now lasted more than you’ve been alive. 

We each have and are a unique story. Just like the river carves its own way from the mountain to the ocean, you have carved your own singular path. Sometimes despite our wishes, sometimes in total outbursts of surprises on your part, sometimes totally guided by those around you, but always in your own original way, you have been able to find yourself and mold yourself into the young man you are today. 

Because this is such a milestone, the beginning of your adulthood, in fact, I have also been wondering how we are leaving this world to you. I’ll be honest, when I first look at the world we’re leaving behind for you, I find that we’ve let you down, in too many ways to count.

With a maturity beyond your years, you pointed that very thing out to us a year or so ago: we have left you a mess, at first glance, indeed, as you said.  Wars, and crooked politicians in every realm and in virtually every country, desperation about job cuts and losses, the need for education not a very well-argued asset (when the world seems to be measured in money, and  most rich people of the world are college drop-outs, what can you learn from that?!), a dirtier, more unsafe planet than what we found when we were your age, and so much more decrepitude ... 

But as you’ll find out on your own: where there is bad, there is also plenty of good. Our generation, I think, also did leave behind plenty of good too, things that I hope your generation will build upon, perfect and increase in value. 

We left you the most technological advancements ever produced in 50 years’ time, in the history of humanity; because of this technology, you can now learn things faster, travel faster, buy what you want faster, see your impact to anything you contribute to faster, and so on. 

We’ve left you the ability to express yourself for who you are; when we were growing up, we were not allowed to be who we were, we were censured and punished for our thoughts - you, luckily, know nothing of that. Identity awareness is something our generation fought hard for and you, I think, benefit from it largely - never take that for granted. Identity awareness and recognition is by no means done, either, but I believe it’s here to stay now, if your generation makes sure of that. 

Despite all the talk of divisiveness due to social media which was also ours to claim, we’ve left you a more connected world than ever - globalization (not necessarily a bad word) shows that no single action remains where it started and it now reverberates across the world. As you find yourself in the middle of an international family, you understand this better than anyone: we’re all connected, across the meridians and every action we take has effects everywhere in the world. This awareness has become common knowledge during my lifetime and we leave it with you to build only good things on it. 

We left you with many examples of entrepreneurship that allow you to dream and use the best of your skills to truly accomplish anything. You’re limited only by your imagination, and that, in your case, is limitless. Our generation busted the limitations of a degree and of traditional careers to encourage every person to succeed and survive from any business they dream up. We have been disruptors, in larger numbers than any time perhaps in history, and for what that’s worth this allows you to always think outside the patterns. 

Maybe we didn’t finish what we started in any of these areas. But the seeds of good potential are there. 

So, as much as I apologize for the mess we’re leaving, I am also hoping that the much good that we have also done is workable, and you can add to it and make it better. Make it perfect. I trust that you will at least try. 

As a family, we have given you everything - love, support, understanding, freedom to be who you are, and a healthy dose of cynicism which we hope prepares you for a prickly world out there. We hope. We tried to encourage more than scold, love more than accuse, and advise more than order you around. We showed you by example where your roots are and how you ended up who you are, but we were careful not to clip your wings, for they alone will carry you forward in the path you alone will choose. We hope we did good by you and that you find balance between all that we all contributed with and what you want. 

I am also remembering on this special day how hard it has been for you to find yourself and be the amazing human you are today despite all the odds thrown at you during your lifetime. You were the generation of the pandemic, and there were no rules on how to go through your most formative years (preteens and teens) without being with your friends, in person, for years. We, as your adult family, had no map for how to navigate that.

You were the generation of political fights, where lifetime friends and partners became bitter enemies and opponents, including the countries in which we both reside. You were the generation mind-driven by algorithms and bad actors. Again, we had no instructional manual for how to protect you from that. But you adapted and figured it out. If anything, we learned through you and from you how to navigate this new world. 

For you to figure out on your own how to build yourself through all this, is remarkable. You’re a hustler and a doer. You never accept “can’t” or “won’t” and you figure things out - and that is all you. You’re a disruptor in your own right - nevermind us trying to hold you to a pattern, you follow your instincts and despite all our denials or doubts you prove us that an alternative approach is not always bad ... We’ve learned from you as much as you’ve learned from us. 

I hope you feel the fire under your feet and you feel emboldened by what’s to come. Just know that today you not only get to be fully you, but today the world is ready to look at you as an important contributor to tomorrow - not quite an adult, but no longer a child either. The world will start listening. The voice you have been building is ready to be heard. 

Empathy is one of your true secret powers. I have seen through these years what a difference you’ve made in other people’s lives. You taught all of us what resilience and ambition mean. You have the biggest heart I know - the way you cared during your most difficult years for a dying friend brought me to my knees! How you somehow, from somewhere found the strength to be there for him, holding his hand, I do not know. 

The affection you so generously give to everyone around you is infectious: the glorious hugs and kisses you share freely with all of us, taking your mom out for meals and being her sidekick in making art or running, your generosity and big-heartedness is incredible and all natural, unforced, and untrained. 

The world is ready for you and your many gifts, and I hope you continue, as you gently let go of your childhood years, just like a new swimmer gently lets go of the side of the pool and starts floating on their own, to make bigger and bigger waves and build the life we all want for you, the life that I always wanted for you, starting on that fateful April morning when you were born, 18 years ago today. 

Just like on that first day, I am now hopeful, happy, excited, and waiting with baited breath on what you have in store for us. The future is yours to make! 

Happy birthday, sweet boy! And never forget: you will forever be my sweet boy. No amount of years will change that! I love you from the bottom of my heart, and beyond. 

Be well! Be safe! Be you! 

The Quiet Days of Christmas

Romanians know how to do it right. We celebrate three days for Easter and Christmas and about 6 of them for New Year’s. If it were up to us, we would spend 364 days in parties, drinking and carousing, and maybe one day in repentance. And no work at all. If it were up to us. 

I have now lived in America for 27 years, but in my heart, I celebrate every holiday with the same spirit I grew up celebrating. So, regardless of what the American tradition calls for, Christmas is 3 days in my world. And isn’t it better to be able to say that you get not one but three days of doing nothing?! 

I have always looked back to Christmases past when I have this “down time” and in some fashion I want to recreate, even if it’s just in my mind, the old days. Call it old-age melancholy, or missing those that are not around anymore, call it facing your mortality, whatever you want to call it, I have thought more about Christmases past, especially those we grew up in, my sister and I, than ever before this year. 

And our Christmases were so randomly different during my 23 years growing up in Romania, that there is so much remembrance to draw from. We were lucky (I felt lucky when other kids might have felt cursed) to spend Christmases with different families. My mom’s parents did Christmas one way, and my parents a different way, and our relatives in the mountains celebrated in such an essentially different way than us city people that it made you wonder if we were celebrating the same holiday at all. 

When we were little-little (think about before I went to school), we lived with mom’s parents. Grandma would take us to this park close to downtown to see the huge, 20+ ft wooden Santa put together by the city and surrounded by all sorts of kiddy rides. Nothing too dangerous because those machines would not be able to be erected just ad-hoc for a week or so around the holidays. They were small carousel-y type things. We were never allowed to be in the machines, as we could God forbid catch a cold. But it was good to walk in the cold of the evening (you had to go after nightfall, to see all the pretty lights glowing), and see all the people excited about their kids riding the rides, cheeks aflame with the winter chill. Then, we would go home and sometimes, would find our presents already under the tree, if this were Christmas Eve. In Romania we open the presents (and make the tree) on Christmas Eve. 

We would then sit down to have Christmas Eve dinner - a lesser affair than the Christmas Day meal the following day, but still loaded with plenty of delicious, traditional foods. On Christmas Day, the close family members who also included my parents at that time, would get together and eat. Outside us kids, I don’t remember gift exchanges between adults being a thing in my childhood at all. It was all about the food and being together under one roof. 

Christmas was a culmination of many weeks of work back then. For weeks before Christmas, all that people would talk about was where to get the best meat for sausages, the best flour for cozonac, the Romanian traditional holiday loaf, where to find the walnut for the loaf, where to buy a new table cloth or napkins. Back in Communist times, the stores were empty, and the main food groups (meat, flour, sugar, oil, even bread) were rationed, so people started stocking up early. That fever of preparedness was all part of “the season”, part of the tradition. 

Cooking for Christmas would start about a week before Christmas Eve, with grandma kneading and raising the dough for the cozonac. This was by far the most laborious affair of the event. She would make enough loaves to give to everyone in the family which always puzzled me because everyone I knew made their own. But she was ever so proud of hers. You can look this up - anyone who has ever attempted making this beast of a loaf would tell you that it is really hard to master and have it come out right. Whenever grandma failed (by her standards, because by mine, her cozonac was always the absolute best), she blamed the flour. Grandma would clear out a whole day to cook nothing but the cozonac. She would hardly feed us on cozonac day. We had to scramble up a meal on our own with leftovers we would find in the fridge, which was not much because the fridge had to be empty for the Christmas cooking to come. 

In the following days, she’d make all the other foods - the sarmale (cabbage and grape-leaf rolls), several kinds of roasted meats, appetizers of all sorts and of course, she would fry the pork sausages in the pan. One of the days before Christmas was also dedicated to a major house cleaning. That was the one day grandpa would ever get involved, because he had to take all the rugs out to shake them and “winterize” them, as grandma said - meaning rubbing them with fresh snow and ice to clean them out and give them a fresh look. This was back in the day when Romania actually did get white Decembers. Not anymore. 

On Christmas Day - we all got together, kids, parents and mom’s parents, to eat for most of the day. It was an all-day affair, we would get together at grandma’s house (where we  kids lived) and the parents would come from out of town (where they lived) in the morning. We’d set the table up and start the feast around 12 and eat on till the evening. My grandparents only had my parents to visit and then on the second and third day of Christmas my grandma would take us kids to see her sisters. Grandpa always stayed home. 

Later on, when I was in middle school now, we moved in with my parents who also had moved back in town. The rituals were very similar: dad was in charge of buying all the food and coming up with the drinks and also the presents. Again, I don’t remember much along the lines of an adult gift-giving tradition. Kids got presents but I can’t even remember if they were wrapped. 

I remember I was the first one in my family that came up with gifts for everyone for Christmas and I was in college and making my own money. I got one thing for each person and there was no such thing as gift wrap paper, so I wrapped the presents in newspaper. And there was no tape either, so you’d have to wrap them tight without it. But that was way later. 

My favorite part of my parents’ Christmas preparation was the sausage making night. This was about a week before Christmas, because you’d need time to leave the sausages hung outside in the cold air to dry them out before cooking them on Christmas. I always helped mom and dad, usually very late at night, after everyone else was in bed. After the parents had finished that day’s chores, they’d make the sausages: dad would grind up the meats and add the seasoning, mom would clean out the intestines for the casings, and I would help dad form the sausages - he used a manual-crank  meat grinder with the blade taken out to push the meat out into this funnel-shaped contraption that fitted the grinder and through which the intestines could be filled. My job was to twist the sausages at equal intervals, to make them all the same. It was a messy business and you smelled like pork fat and garlic for a week after that. But the best hand lotion I’ve ever used, too. Mom always wanted this to be the last chore of the day because it was so messy she had to spend several hours cleaning out the kitchen for the next day’s cooking. 

In the many days after this, both my parents spent hours on end in the kitchen cooking all sorts of goodies. While grandma’s cooking stuck to a few dishes that were traditional, my parents made a lot of “modern” dishes in addition to those passed on from their parents. Dad was the chef in charge of the menu list and the drinks and mom was the sous chef with us kids mostly helping and in charge of cleaning the house. We also made the tree every Christmas Eve. 

Dad and I both started Christmas prep the same way: with a list of what's on the menu. Here is the beginning of the last list he ever got to make (right) in early November 2022, as he was thinking ahead for the season. I can tell the signs of his stroke in his hand-writing. It is shaky. By the time he was done with it, closer to Christmas, it looked more like mine (left). Never-ending. 

But after the running around, preparations, cleaning, stocking up was over and Christmas Eve would ring midnight, an eerie, peaceful, almost ominous peace would envelop everything - the house, the world around us, everything ... It was time to enjoy everything we worked so hard for and let the miracle of the holiday leave us in wonder. 

Carolers came to the door on Christmas Eve and in the city, they would get money. 

Like everyone else, my parents also celebrated all three days of Christmas which were all mirror images of each other at different homes. On Christmas Eve we would have our first “preview” meal of Christmas. Then, on Christmas Day my mom’s mom and dad’s sister would come over and we’d all be together as a family. On the second day of Christmas, we’d go to dad’s parents’ house. My dad’s sister was sometimes there again too and we’d eat the same foods only cooked by dad’s mom. On the third day we would go to one of my aunt’s homes or to a friend of my parents’ house for a repeat of the same goodies. The get-togethers were always the same: a very elaborate sit-down brunch-lunch-dinner lasting most of the day, with many courses spread out over 5-7 hours. We sat around the table and talked about the events of the year, school, new jobs, other family members, and very rarely about politics. 

Back home, in-between the many feedings, my sister and I disappeared for hours into books. They were quiet and lazy days. Back then, most of the energy was spent figuring out where the next meal will come from and what it would be (the foods were always the same but we mixed them up during the three-day feasting season). Around Christmas, we had food for days, so no more need to cook; so, instead, we turned off and were couch potatoes. 

We had no fireplace, no yard, so we spent the time in our condos, being together, listening to stories, taking in teachings from those older than us ... It was the time to put on the brakes of a(n) (always) crazy, busy, insecure year and actually enjoy each other. 

It was Christmas in another dimension when we were much older (highschool and college for me) and we were old enough to go to the mountains by ourselves and live with our relatives there. Our mountain people have always had a family farm where everything you eat you grow, harvest and kill yourself. The oldest of their children, a boy, always went up the mountain and cut his own tree which is a totally different kind of tree than the one (still a natural one) that my family would buy in the city. The two don’t compare. They almost are not the same thing. We didn’t have lots of decorations in the mountains, like we did in the city, but I remember us putting pine cones and apples on the branches. 

They also killed their own pig - an event worthy of its own book. We helped with the “cleaning of the pig”, by singing off the hairs on the pig’s skin with the flame from a candle, and cutting it off the fat back with a super sharp knife, for fresh pork rinds which they would use to flavor all the foods at Christmas and beyond.

I remember how the whole Christmas pretty much revolved around this pig killing and prepping and making foods for Christmas (mostly smoked meats) from it. We ate every single thing from the animal, even the blood, and whatever we could not consume would go into the freezer for the rest of the year. The whole family was involved. The parents, the three kids, the grandparents, and my sister and I. Everything happened outside, in the yard, except for the actual cooking, in the mountain air which was always as cold as a mountain stream on ice. 

We spent most of the time during the day outside, in our winter coats, barely moving from too many layers, with the hands red and the skin chapped and bleeding from the wind burn and the coarse salts we used to prepare and cure the meat. 

Inside, the stove always had a roaring fire, ready for the mom, the grandma, and the daughter to start cooking some of the many dishes, all of them pork based. The dad and the boys were busy making the fire outside, in the smoker, where most of the cured meats would go for a couple of days. One of the two sons would take turns during the night to go out back and ensure the fire was not out in the smoker. 

The dishes we made were simple and not as numerous for the mountain Christmas - just some cozonac, sarmale, mamaliga (which is a type of Romanian polenta) and lots and lots of smoked meats - everything was fresh and so fatty! We would eat in the late morning for a couple of hours, on Christmas Day. Although we still had sit-down meals, they were not as lengthy as the ones in the city. In the mountains, you constantly had something to do, you could not linger about - mostly, many animals to feed, or wood to split for heating up every room and heating up the food. We did take naps sometimes, and when we were older we kids would go “in the village” to a club or someone’s house for a dance. 

On the second and third day of Christmas, my friends’ parents would load us all up in their SUV and we’d go deep in the woods, bracing the cold and the unplowed dirt roads to see my friend’s father’s family. They lived completely off the grid, in the middle of nowhere. One year, we got stuck in the snow on one of these roads, and one of the sons had to walk through the deep-deep snow to the next village several miles to ask for help. It took hours for a tow truck to appear (on the second day of Christmas when everyone is off!) and pull us from the snowy ditch. As we waited, it got dark and the sky was filled with stars. There was no light around us outside the moon. We started hearing wolves howling in the distance and just about wet ourselves! We had pictures in our head of how we’re going to surely die - either from frost bite, or eaten alive by wolves on the second day of Christmas! The stories are plenty and I hope to God they will make their way into a book one day, if not for anyone, they might be helpful or amusing for my nephews. They were good and real times. 

In addition to money, the mountain carolers got colaci (Romanian braided bagel-shaped pastries), apples and walnuts. To this day, there is no holiday for me if we don’t have some kind of fresh, hearty dough in the house, although I don’t bake myself. Everything was either home-made or hand-picked by all of us. The care, the attention, the ahead-of-time-ness made it so special for some much longer than just the one day. 

I truly believe this rushed, modern world we live in nowadays abbreviated the holiday to a one-day affair. The Christmas I remember and that I am stubborn enough to still celebrate deserves to be lingered upon ... 

If you've been paying attention, the one thing all of these traditions had in common was the food. When I came to America, everyone warned me about Thanksgiving having lots of foods. But to me, it was an embarrassment to call it “a lot of food”. Our feasts were, like a daily Thanksgiving times 3. And then multiply that by 3 days, not just one puny dinner! 

Today, when we don’t travel for Christmas, even if it’s just the two of us, I cook. A lot. I cook so much in fact, that I end up throwing some away at the end because it’s impossible to consume it, even in 3 days, being that it’s just the two of us for meals. Nowadays, I make some Romanian staples: sarmale, my husband makes the cozonac because I am not a baker, sausages, some sort of a ground meat product like meatballs or meatloaf, a couple of other appetizer dishes. Without these, I cannot say it’s Christmas. I also give a nod to my new adoptive country and I do incorporate some American foods, as well - like ham, mashed potatoes, something green (like collards or green beans) ... And we stock up on drinks! At my parents’ house, the drink of choice was wine during these times. Especially the one dad made himself, first on farms he worked on, then in his own house. In the mountains, the drinks revolved around moonshine - the cold asked for something to warm you up. If they had wine, it was always hot, boiled, with some sorts of herbs and woodsy berries in it.  

Nowadays, my husband and I do sit down for our Christmas meals (as opposed to eating in the living room on the couch)  during all the three days (because yes, we do celebrate three days of Christmas in my house), but we mostly graze ... We don’t have set hours for set meals, but we eat when we wake up and when we feel nibbly during the day. We open presents on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We talk to family online, because everyone is far away. We seldom get together with friends, because everyone is busy with their own families. 

Another thing that I relive this time of the year is the quiet around these days - just sitting around with absolutely no plans, other than letting your hard-labored-over goodies digest. It feels decadent and wasteful but so delicious, too! I know lots of people probably pity us for just “being alone” but I welcome it. Life is noisy. Worries abound. Work is busy. So much of life eats at our time, that this time of the year, staring down at days with no plans is a gift in itself.

Life, and especially our Western world, needs so much more quietness and reflection - and Christmas is a great excuse for this. We all become bears during this time of the year: gorge on food, then hibernate. 

Technology did help with the writing and the publishing of this piece, but outside of this, I am so glad we inject our lives with so much more human, touchable, organically real and un-messed with things - no AI and no apps needed to be in touch with your humanity and human-ness. 

These few days when we’re forced by the calendar to think differently are still so important to me, to pause, reflect, and enjoy the simple things that are never too far away: like feeling the raw meat of an animal that sacrificed for your nurturing  in your hands when you knead it into a meatloaf, like cleaning a raw shrimp, and spending many hours cleaning mushrooms under the cold running water, wondering what kind of muck those little hats had to push through to come to being, like waiting with bated breath for the oven to be done with its things only to be able to judge whether what comes of it is edible or just passable ... 

Around Christmas, I feel like I am consciously jumping off the mouse wheel and meaningfully taking a break. And my body feels better (albeit more sore and at times uncomfortably full, but decidedly more alive), and my mind thinks more clearly, and my thoughts are clearer and able to plan for what’s ahead - as far as we can see what is ahead. 

But the here and now, the proximity of each other and the real-ness of what’s on the table, the memories that I am still lucky to hold in my head quite vividly, this is what makes up the lazy days of Christmas for me and towards which my gratitude goes. 

Whether you celebrate the birth of Jesus, or the Rededication of the Sacred Temple, or renewal and rebirth, or ancestor remembrance, or just the end of a year ... I hope you take the time to reflect, turn inwards, find yourself truely, think back before you leap ahead. If you’re lucky like me, maybe you remember your childhood memories. And if you are really lucky, maybe you get to recreate them ... 

Happy Holidays, everyone!