The Man I Love

I remember the day we met, you hunched over the desk of a coworker, me, in the door frame, muttering something about something else not working. I figured you’d totally think I’m an idiot, not knowing what I am talking about when it comes to any kind of technology. Being in a tech job and you being hired to teach us technology, I was mortified by you listening to my mumble and surely judging me. You seemed cold, distant. Annoyed, even. But then things changed ... I remember the first dinner out together, when we were mostly bitching about work, frustrations and what not ... we agreed on so much. I figured we must have something in common because we could not give two thoughts about the lemon wedged on our water glasses. We both mindlessly (maybe me, less so, since I noticed) let them fall into the glasses. I remember when I asked you if you collected anything and you promptly said “I buy a souvenir coffee mug on every one of my trips.” I chuckled, as a “friend” because I figured silently in my head that “so do I and I always thought that was weird.” I remember when I asked you if you wanted kids and you pretty much said in no ambiguous terms that hell-crap-no. I chuckled again and thought you might not be real. But we were friends then. Two and a half years since the day we met, we decided we’d exhausted all the friendship juice we could get and we decided to date, then got engaged 5 months later, and married 5 months after that ... I thought then and I think now: we are weird in the same identical ways. If I am hard to live with for most people, so are you, but you’re so easy to live with, for me ... I remember us being locked out of my car in the middle of a blizzard on Grandfather Mountain. I remember driving for hours in the dark, at the end of a hard work day to get to our hotel in Bryce Canyon only to discover the hotel is closed for the season, although we very clearly made confirmed reservations online. I remember you feeding iguanas in Honduras and us hiking the rain forest in Hawaii - eucalyptus trees towering over us and no snakes in sight. I remember our drives across the country, East to West, and back ... Our drive across “the windy states” rushing to beat out the tornadoes chasing us. I remember the fear, and stress of moving three cats from hotel to hotel room every night till we made it to Utah. I remember all the trips, the camper - what a heaven that was! On top of the world, in The Rockies, so close to the sky and the stars we could smell and hear them - and peace. Quiet, crisp air and big sky. I remember you showing me around your favorite mountains (Montana) and me showing you around mine (Pojorata), on another continent. I remember how we discovered that we both read the mountains through our souls; how they speak to us; how we cannot live too far away from them. Ever. I love the photography archive we built together over the years. Every frame tells me a story of you being there, close by - making it that much more special. I remember you taking me to my first casino where I won $20 the second I touched the machine. I remember lots of firsts ... The first house we got together, the first car, the first piece of furniture. I remember the first B52 you ordered for me and how it became my favorite cocktail, just like yours. I remember how we lost the cats, and then how we found another one that filled the massive void the others left behind. I never knew that could be possible, but you persisted and I am glad you did. I remember how we both thought on our own what to name our cat - the very same thing - without so much as ever mentioning a thing about that to one another. In the same breath. In the same sentence. That was spooky! I remember the hard times, too, because it would not be real life without them. The losses, the pain. The jobs gone, the money we lost here and there, the scare of a (literal) broken heart (mine), the gentle walk between life and death, the daunting 12+hour surgery in a dinky (some may think!) little mountain town in Utah, the amazing empathy and care you’re capable of (your most amazing and more hidden gift!) that built me back up when that ordeal was over. The hard times - they all seemed less hard because you were there, through it all ... It still boggles my mind that 1. God made two people so similar to the point of being identical, almost, and put them at opposite ends of the Earth from one another in the first place; and 2. He somehow made it possible for us to meet and live out our lives together. My life is what it is today because you walked into that newspaper building that day and because I walked into that office. It was like I turned a sharp corner and it was all flat and easy from then on out ... I would not be who I am today without you in my life. I have never been more “me” than since I’ve met you. You complete me and let me be free ...

I love my me-ness and your you-ness when we’re together the most. I love how people think you’re ever so serious and stern but how you keep me in stitches, all the same ... Don’t dare change! Don’t dare run away! Love you more each day, if such a thing is possible, and I am grateful for all of it. Happy birthday, my love! And here’s to the next 55!

Your Special Day

Every year on the eve of your birthday, I sit here and try to gather my words. What can I possibly say to you that I have not yet said? What can be new to you, who knows me so well, as if we were brother and sister - for in a way, we are ... ?!

It’s so easy to take for granted those who have been in our lives for longer than we are counting anymore ... Since you have been part of our lives since you were a teen, almost the age of your oldest son now, that would be longer than I count anymore ... There is something of a routine that settles in after knowing someone for a while that makes us comfortable, maybe too comfortable, with each other. The familiarity, the feeling of closeness takes over and we forget to stop and actually voice our feelings for one another. 

I can only hope that you know that I am grateful for everything you’ve ever been to this family, for sharing with us your beautiful children, and for loving all of us, with the good and the bad, and the helpless, hard-to-love bits ... I hope you know this today, and every day.

I look back at all the things we’ve shared over the years - good times, and bad, adventures and accomplishments, like our moves across the world, and many losses, too, the most painful of ones being those losses of the many loved ones we shared together.  I am grateful for all of it and for the way you melded into our family and have become such an integral part of it. I am grateful for your strength and honesty, your devotion to those you love. 

On this celebratory day, I want you to think back, way-way back when I was in college and you were in high school: we would go to the beach, you, my sister, your brother, friends, classmates,  and we’d spend every night drinking Vermouth and dancing till the wee hours of the morning in open air, in the salty, breezy soft air of the Black Sea coast. And we never felt tired. And we never felt hungover and we could never get enough of the fun ... I hope you find that happiness, that energy today and feed off of it. 

Here’s to you, sir! Have a glass of cheer and I promise I will too - to your health and so many more beautiful, happy years to come! Looking forward to our next get-together later this month and to continue to make many more memories together yet ... 

He’s 11!

Oh, good Lord! You’re 11! 

I know you’re going to mock me as a cliché if I say “when did that happen?”, but seriously: when did that happen?! I guess when we were too busy getting old you were too busy sneaking around growing up. 

I remember like it was yesterday the first time I saw you. You were three months old and you were just lying on your day bed and your dad said you are already grown up and judging us. He said that the only things you could not do yet were to speak or walk. But you already knew everything, you already knew exactly how you felt about everything in the world and you could not wait for that one day when you’d finally be able to tell us. 

And, boy, was he right! You went from zero to 60 in less than 10 years, flat! You’re wiser than any kid I have ever met, smarter than most, more well-read and knowledgeable than you should have had time to be in 11 years ... 

On top of everything, you are the funniest human being I know, tied only, possibly, with your grandfather, my dad. 

Tonight, while looking through my “bag” of pictures to see how you’ve grown and while rummaging through my memories of you, I remembered all the times when you made us laugh or made us look inside ourselves and think a bit deeper ... All the times you cracked us up and all the times you wowed us with your “intelligence”, as you so astutely call it:

That time when we were in Toronto and you said I need to stop saying that I am fat and that I need to look around me to see  “people who look like balloons, and until I look like them, I am not fat ...”

That time when you told us that the American Niagara Falls are “a bit underwhelming, if you were to tell us the truth ...”

That time when you told us that “mamaliga” was evil and that you were afraid of it ... I guess something went crazy in your Romanian genetic code at some point to make you say that ... 

That time when you told us that the roseate spoonbills are pink because they feed on shrimp and crustaceans - way more than anyone else around you knew and way more than a 10 year old should know ...

That time when you told us that junk food is not a good thing, but it is, “however, delicious” ...

That time when you were wondering what Trump was doing, some time in 2021 and that you were sure he “was looking for a job, but no one was hiring ...”. That cracked you (and me) up! 

That time when you told your dad he “can never be a millionaire because he’s too old and already missed his opportunity ...”

I remember all the trips we ever took to see each other and all the visits we ever had - they were short glimpses of time, but they packed so much energy and love and gusto into each second. You made them count, sweet boy! 

When you came to visit me in The Rockies when you were just a year and a half old and chased the kitties around the house; or when you came to North Carolina and you dipped into the ocean for the first time in your life; or when we went to Mont Tremblant one summer during the one very rare hot day of the year in Canada and we went souvenir shopping and you got Windy - the stuffed elephant to add to your growing collection of ‘stuffed friends’; or when I visited you once and we went for a walk and you dropped your candy and said “it’s OK. I’ll leave it there for the ants.” 

And I can keep going. I am so lucky to have a front-row seat at this beautiful play that is your life. So lucky you are my nephew and so happy to love you and watch you grow, mature and turn into the beautiful person you’ll continue to become. 

You may be growing out of being a baby anymore, but in my eyes you’re always be a wide-eyed child, full of curiosity and ingenuity; full of life and surprises. I hope you never lose that, no matter how many years you add to your age. 

Thank you, sweet Kev, for sharing yourself so truthfully with all of us! You are a treat!  

Happiest of birthdays today, and love you to eternity and further beyond ... 

A Winter Walk

There is something of the reverence and deep silence of a gothic cathedral - a walk in the winter. Nature, usually so lively, so loud, turns off the music, and all other noise. Nothing but the sound of your shoes beating the pavement, maybe a random leaf finally giving up and shedding from a high branch. Defeated by the shy whisper of a February, sharp, but timid breeze. 

For three weekends, we have been kept inside by unseasonably (for North Carolina) cold, rainy, snowy or frozen weather. This weekend we ventured out because it was the first one with no precipitation. But it was cold. Man, it was cold. But our bodies needed it. And our minds needed it more. 

Even the puppies out for walks were speechless. Their owners, sleepy heads hurrying through (you could read cabin fever all over their puffy eyes), were blowing hot air into their high collars and rushing along. "Let's get this over with" written all over their faces. Not many people out. Nor creatures. 

The usual liveliness of nature in the warmer season - the swishing of the bushes, the fish leaping from the creek besides us, the birds chasing in the thicket - none of this was there. It was just us, the crisp air, fingers almost frozen inside gloves, and focusing on the nature around us to find something, anything, to shoot. Trees, dead grasses, the murky creek asleep, frozen in time. 

But life was there ... if you listened. If you looked. There were squirrels chasing each other, birds silent, but awake and puffed up to keep warm. It felt like the cold weather froze the birds' song. The sky was cloudless and the sun blinding. With no leaves, not much shade was there. The sun was there, but it gave no heat. 

When the sun hit the water just so, at some point, it must have woken up a family of frogs because for a brief minute they started singing so loud - their shrieks sounded mad, but they could have also been just saying thanks for a few rays of light. If you closed your eyes and you forgot the frostbite in your fingers, you'd think it's summertime - the frogs, so desperate! And then it got quiet again. Like a tomb. Just silent. 

And then, the king. This beautiful (I think) hawk, just sitting there. Observing. Not more than maybe 20 feet from us, on a fallen tree. Majestic and lofty. Taking in the grounds like it were his kingdom. Demanding respect. Towering. 

For a few minutes, he stood there, gracing us with a couple of head tilts for a couple of shots. Then, he drifted away in the woods, quiet and barely there ... Like a ghost ... 

It would have been so easy to miss him. He made no noise. He was not moving. He was the color of the dead trees around him - brown and gray: we could have totally missed him. And yet, if you listen, if you watch, if you look to understand - life is always there. 

Our trail guardian: a red-shouldered hawk (I think)

Tree gaping at the cold world, by Sanford Creek

Sanford Creek - Wake Forest, NC

There were so many diseased and fallen trees. This one was full of burls and incredibly tall.

Sanford Creek Greenway - Wake Forest, NC

The dead grasses draping on these fallen roots looked like a soft blanket, arranged just so

A spell of light ... the promise of warmth ... 

In cold and warm - life wins ... 

More trail companions - mostly quiet and elusive, but there nevertheless ...