The State of Music

Tennessee is an elusive state for me. The first time I lived in North Carolina (for 12 years), I never so much as crossed the border into it. Not once. Not for 12 years. Then, my life took a detour through Utah and The West for 7 years (some people say “that was needed so that you can fix your heart”; I say it to myself “in more ways than one”), and I have been back for 8 years now and I have been to Tennessee twice. The call of the mountains, or of the music is strong this time. 

Crossing the border from NC and TN would only break your heart nowadays - the beautiful Smokies are still so very much damaged by Hurricane Helene which hit almost 2 years ago in September. The storms practically washed away the mighty Interstate 40 (that connects the West to the East Coast) into a huge ravine. And outside of one lane of traffic in each direction, most of the highway is still broken. It broke my heart. We seem to have no money to fix our own roads but find money for more destruction elsewhere ... Boggles my head! 

We went through The Volunteer State on our trip back from The West, in the fall of 2017. The magic of riding the Music Highway (the stretch of interstate 40 that connects Memphis to Nashville) has whispered to me ever since. In parts visibly poor, Tennessee is like an old country song - winding, mellow and going on forever ... 

Since dad passed in 2022, I have felt even a stronger connection to the music he loved and which he imparted with us all of his life. That music included a wide range of styles and performers, from Wilson Picket to Bob Dylan, from Elvis to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones to Willie Nelson, CCR and The Eagles. Going to Tennessee and listening to the music tales talks to you about all of it. And more. 

The Highwaymen: Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson

I found Nashville and Tennessee to be a place of many things and not one thing in particular ... We toured The Hatch Print Shop where many music legends have printed their concert posters since 1879 and we learned that Tennessee was, at the time, known for printing.

Entering The Hatch Show Print Shop, outside The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Then, we toured the Belle Meade Mansion and we learned how it was the premier 19th-century thoroughbred horse farm - if you were anyone who was into racing horses and wanted English-bread racing horses in America, you came to Belle Meade Plantation in Tennessee. Even Kentucky people would come to Belle Meade for their horses. 

The Belle Meade Plantation House

Visiting the “fake Parthenon” construction (or to say it nicely, the “Parthenon replica” in Centennial Park), you learn that the reason they built it there was that Nashville was at one point considered “The Athens of the South” given that since the early 1800s, the city established many schools like Davidson Academy, Fisk University, Meharry Medical College, and Vanderbilt University. 

The Parthenon replica in Centennial Park, Nashville, TN

Athena's statue inside the "Parthenon"

As I said - a place of many things and not one thing in particular. Except, that is, for music. 

Music is what called our names to it this time, and music is what pops in my head when I say “Tennessee”. Elvis and Grand Ole Opry, in particular. But this is one trip that widened that limited spectrum. We found a place vibrating with anything from country to swing to rock’n’roll and pop. 

Looking back to this short trip (only 3 days), it is hard to pick a favorite adventure. 

The Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame was a bucket-list pick. I remember my first country vinyl record. Dad brought it to us back in Communist Romania when I was in highschool. Where he smuggled it from during a time when Western music was all but banned and the acquisition of which was punishable with jail, I will never know. I also can’t remember whether the original artists were playing it or if they were some bands doing covers on it. But I remember playing that thing till it was good and scratched after which it gave it that old-record scratchy sound ... I remember playing Yellow Rose of Texas and Oh, Susanna about 10,000 times a day. I believe those were some of the first songs I learned all the lyrics to in English. 

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

And from then on, I have been irreparably in love with the country stories. There was no turning back ... There is no escape for a writer to not be trapped in the beauty of telling a whole-life story in just a few lyrics that might not even take a page. And that is what country music is for me ... It’s the stories that lodge this music securely into every corner of my heart. The strong, crystal-clear voices (and every single country singer has one, without exception) are second to the perfect stringing of the words. 

That old, scratched up vinyl record held the mystery of what America meant for me at the time, and to some degree this music still does. A country of people always cross with the world, who feel more than anyone can express, and live to tell the tale, despite all odds. And always, always come on top. So, I went to Nashville to try to find some of that mystery, some of that fairytale land that cooked up in my head since I was in ninth grade. 

To this day, I like the old timey, bluegrass, Americana songs. No disrespect to today’s million-dollar stars (and no disrespect to pop, either), but they poppified it too much for me. I wanna be able to pick out the banjo, and the fiddle, and the big-old bass, and the harmonica, and the accordion in the band, one droplet of sound at a time ... “It’s the dialogue between the instruments that makes the magic” dad used to say, “just listen how one talks to another and how the other one replies.” 

I have been to museums where they display statues, and cars, and trains, and paintings, and natural landscapes, and food, and drinks, even. I have never been nor would I have imagined that you can display music in-between 4 walls. But that is the Country Music Museum and the Johnny Cash Museum too ... Every physical display is only secondary to a central music-playing device (a TV, a radio, a computer) ... You walk the history lane of country music, from the early 19th century musicians who passed away in anonymity, playing on barn thresholds and deep, wide, wrap-around Southern porches and you end up with today’s younger artists.

We found out that the  “newly-inducted” artists in the Country Music Hall of Fame does not necessarily mean contemporary ones: I could not quite believe that June Carter Cash was inducted in the Hall of Fame only last year (2025), while her famous husband, Johnny, has been there since 1980, and she played music publicly a lot longer (by almost 20 years) than he did! The Country Music Hall of Fame is a little behind, I thought. 

Listening to this music reminded me why I wanted to be an American so bad. It’s the juice of what’s good in America - the grit, the strong feelings, the passions, the unrequited love and trouble with the law, and its survival despite the odds, the journeys coast to coast, the fearlessness against every challenge...

One thing that will stay with me both from the Country Music Museum and the Johnny Cash one (within walking distance from one another) is, in addition to the music playing constantly at every step, you could read so many of their hand-written letters. Like I said - country music is nothing if not stories first. And you can read those letters and you can see where it all started from. With Johnny, for instance, giving his daughters advice and them journaling about how hard and painful it was to be in the shadow of famous parents. 

If you are ever wondering what town you're in wandering the streets of Nashville, murals like this will remind you ...

After about a half day taking in and paying respect to the many artists in Country music (walking into the round room of the country music hall of fame members has a church-like, reverence quietness about it; it exudes awe and quiet respect) , we headed towards the Honky Tonk District, which I didn’t even know existed until shortly before we arrived to Nashville. It’s a funky mix of live music, “cheese”, Southern kitsch and an opportunity to gawk at drinking people having fun, having left all inhibitions at home, till your eyeballs hurt. 

The circular room of the Hall of Fame Museum

Taking in a new (to me) city, savoring its food and just strolling seemingly focusless, through its streets is my favorite kind of sightseeing ... Spending half of a day on the Honky Tonk highway, where every single establishment is an open bar with a live band, you realize you have indeed arrived in the capital of music. It reminded me of when I visited New Orleans for the first time in 2004: every bar, every pub, every restaurant and every street corner had a live performer. That was gone later, after Katrina and in the winter ... But on this trip, it felt like all that moved to Nashville ... 

The start of the Honk Tonk Highway, outside the Johnny Cash Museum

We had lunch at Lainey Wilson’s Bell Bottoms Up Restaurant & Bar, listening to new local talent playing on the stage, where the light fixtures above your head at the table are real cowboy hats. I had to stop there - I wore nothing but my dad’s old bell-bottom jeans from the 60s all through my college years, and I am sure those pants are still at my mom’s house in the attic somewhere... It had to be done. 

After walking around for a while and listening to live music thrown out from every window, passing by places like the Jon Bon Jovi’s Bar, Nudie’s Honky Tonk (highly recommend seeing the Nudie mobile exhibit at the Country Music Museum; talk about something truly American - wow!), Friends in Low Places Honky Tonk, we stopped for a drink at The Honky Tonk Central, with its three stories all with a different-style band (from country to hard rock). If you wanted to line dance with a pickin’ band, you stopped on the first floor. We climbed all the way to third to listen to rock cover songs and take in the entire district from the balcony. 

View from the third floor of the Honky Tonk Central

Detail of the Nudie Mobile

We had dinner just outside the Honky Tonk Highway, at The Diner - a Nashville staple in the SoBro (South of Broadway) District, a 24/7, 6 story restaurant. Again, we climbed to the top floor to take in the city view, as the sun was setting and everything seemed pink and tired. 

View from the sixth floor of The Diner Restaurant in the SoBro District

People are so nice in Nashville. I guess it’s sort of expected, if you’re in The South, right? But the city has a weird, cheesy, touristy, Las Vegas-like vibe to it too ... An interesting mix. 

I was just a hundreth of an inch close to walking away with two pairs of these. The place is contagious for boots!

On our second full day there, we visited the Belle Meade Mansion and then Centennial Park with the Parthenon replica. It is indeed just a replica, but it is very impressive. On the bottom floor, there is a historic timeline of its full construction which I found fascinating. You can mock it for America being again a copy-cat (Venice-like canals or The Trevi Fountain in Vegas, anyone?!), but there was planning, and thought, and research, and lots of money, and years to accomplish what you look at today. I think, all in all, worth seeing. 

We crowned our stay with the best, most rewarding experience of all: a night at The Grand Ole Opry (the new one, almost outside of town, and not the old, historic one which is now known as the Ryman Auditorium, downtown), where we were treated to a live show from the artists that created the soundtrack for the movie Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?. Can you believe that movie is now 25 years old? 

The Ryman Auditorium (today), the original Grand Ole Opry House

Talk about a bucket-list moment. Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Emmylou Harris, The Whites, The Fairfield Four, Chris Thomas King, Tim Blake Nelson, Billy Strings, T. Bone Burnett put together a show like no other that I have ever seen. I have seen many music biopics picturing acts from the 50’s and 60’s and it was much like that - the stage was never empty, and one act followed another at stupefying speed, with almost no break. An announcer would present them and on the stage they headed, guitars and other instruments around their necks and in their hands. One amazing rendition after another. I thought I died and went to heaven - I knew every lyric. 

Everyone who is is anyone was on that stage

The energy and the passion they put into every song, everyone, from the little girls from The Alaskan Sunnyside Sisters to the old men of The Fairfield Four gave us the spectacle of our lifetime. I have been to many shows, a lot of them I lived to go to all of my life, but never in my 50 years have I seen an entire auditorium smiling and truly, genuinely happy, altogether, all at the same time. Not a frown, not a hateful word, not a petty spat. Everyone sang along and clapped, and stomped their feet and left happy. Especially in today’s world, to see this, to feel it through your bones, it was magical. 

And I blame it all, of course, on this music. This old timey music with relatable stories (the only thing this music requires to relate to is just to be human, although I am pretty sure it could even move my cat) connects people. Makes you happy to be alive, and heck, it even makes you happy to be dead one day, too, when the songs tell you about this fairy land you hope to go one day where “... the little streams of alcohol come trickling down the rocks”. 

That concert cured my troubled soul which has had a hard time settling in the past few years for good and proper. It brought me home - to a stronger home than the physical one - a spiritual and heart-felt one - the only one, the soulful one, the only one that truly matters ... 

And it restored my bridges to what I still (despite all evidence to the contrary lately) love about America. It mended what has been hurting for 10 years now, and it gave me hope. 

Driving out of Nashville, the echos of the voices of Billy Strings, Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski were still playing softly in my head ... “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are blue ...” 

Leaving The City of Music (for me) in the rearview mirror and rolling through my head the slide show of all the many artists we visited at the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum, all the recognizable names I stumbled into on the Honky Tonk Highway, made me also think of my dad and how much, oh how painfully much, I would have loved to share this with him. 

I remember him being puzzled one day because I was telling him a dress he wanted to buy for mom was “funky” looking. He said in perfect English: “Funky? What is funky? You mean honky. Honky tonk women? O-bla-di. O-bla-da.” My dad might have not known English, but he knew his music. And I am glad for this short excursion to treasure more of it myself, right from where it all started. 

One of the several garden interiors at our hotel: The Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center - just 5 minutes from The Grand Ole Opry

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 ...".

La 70 de Ani - o Retrospectivă

Sascut, județul Bacău, 21 septembrie 1953. O zi de toamnă, probabil blândă și senină în care albastrul nepătat al cerului urma să se reverse în ochii tăi care abia se deschideau către lume. 

Maia a zis că te-ai născut după o nuntă la care venise din Timișoara, unde locuiați atunci, doar pentru un weekend. Dar viața nu te-ntreabă când vrei să vii - așa cum nu te întreabă când vrei să pleci. Soarta a vrut să fii născută în Moldova, vatra străbunilor tăi, chiar dacă părinții trăiau la celălalt colț de țară la acea vreme. 

Erau frământări mari în lume, în 1953 - Stalin abia murise, războiul din Coreea se termina și americanii plecau acasă cu coada între picioare. Așa cum o vor face de repetate ori de atunci înainte. Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej era prim-ministrul Republicii Populare Române și încă nu se transformase în oraș. 1953 pare cu o veșnicie în urmă. Dar sunt de fapt doar 70 de ani!

E mult? E puțin? Mie mi se pare cât o clipă! 

Mă strădui sa găsesc cuvinte potrivite pentru așa o ocazie de imensă! Și mărturisesc că mi-e greu. Cum sa sumezi doar în câteva cuvinte omul care ți-a dat viață și fără de care nu ai fi existat? Dar încerc sa merg înapoi pe drumul memoriei și să pun pe hârtie (virtuală) câteva gânduri despre cea mai importantă femeie din viața mea! 

Ai fost cu mine toată viața mea, de la prima răsuflare și până azi. Și în zi de celebrare mi-aduc aminte de toate zilele frumoase și de cele mai puțin frumoase pe care le-am împărtășit. Pentru că viața nu e făcută doar din fericire. Amar și tristețe există pentru a ne aminti cât de sfinte și binecuvântate sunt zilele senine! Așa e rostul lumii ... decis de o putere mai mare decât noi. 

Serbările de sfârșit de an când îmi făceai coronița pentru premiul întâi. Zilele toride de vară când mergeam la mare și mă forțai să stau la plajă ca “să prind culoare”. Serile reci și întunecate de iarnă, când eram prin clasa întâi și mă învățai să împletesc: “un ochi pe față, unul pe dos.” 

Lecțiile de viață pe care mi le dădeai de obicei în bucătărie unde petreceai cea mai mare parte din timpul în care nu erai la servici. Mai ales mi-aduc aminte când mi-ai dat să curăț primul meu morcov, când locuiam la Târgu Frumos. Țin minte cum m-ai avertizat că sigur o să mă tai și că trebuie să fiu atentă. Eu, încăpățânată cum sunt, am zis că nu mă tai, lasă-mă să curăț eu. Și bineînțeles că m-am tăiat. Dar am învățat cum să țin un cuțit de atunci. Și așa ai fost mereu: alături de mine, veghind, îndrumând, dar dându-mi libertatea să încerc viața în felul meu. 

Mi-aduc aminte multele excursii pe care le-am făcut împreună, când am mers împreună la Durău când am terminat clasa a 10-a în care ai mers doar din întâmplare, fără a planui dinainte. Apoi toate excursiile în America atunci când ai venit să vezi viața pe care mi-am făcut-o aici: Myrtle Beach, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Monument Valley, Parcul Arcurilor din Utah, Barajul de la Hoover Dam, Salt Lake City, cutreierând cramele și degustând vinuri în Carolina de Nord și Virginia ... Când ai venit la Summerfield și l-ai crescut pe Gypsy dintr-o mână de pisic. Gypsy pe care de fapt tu l-ai și “botezat”. Când ai venit în Utah și m-ai vegheat la spital, după operația de inimă.  Amintiri de neuitat care mi se par ca s-au întâmplat ieri ... 

Astăzi, de ziua ta, când vremurile ți se par triste, când marea dragoste a vieții tale te veghează de sus, și nu din dreapta ta, îți aduc aminte că ești înconjurată de dragostea noastră. Nu putem aduce niciodată trecutul în prezent și nu-l putem duplica în viitor. Tot ce putem face este să privim înainte, și să încercăm să creăm în continuare amintiri frumoase împreună. 

Maia ne spunea ca te-ai nascut dansând, a doua zi după o nuntă. Așa aș vrea să te vedem mereu: dansând și zâmbind și bucurandu-te de muzică, de familie, de viață ...  

Mom, te iubim mai mult decât o pot spune în cuvinte. Când mă uit la cei 70 de ani (48 dintre ei din amintire, și restul din poveștile altora) sunt uimită de câte au trecut peste tine și prin câte ai trecut, fizic, psihic, și emoțional. Cât de mult te-ai schimbat și totuși cât de mult ai rămas aceeași femeie frumoasă, puternică, și de bază care ai fost mereu - un exemplu de tenacitate, ambiție, inteligență, circumspecție, și onestitate. 

Sper din tot sufletul că astăzi să te uiți în urmă și să nu plângi după toată fericirea care a fost odată și care poate ți se pare astăzi estompată, ci să te bucuri că ești alături de cei care te iubesc, și să zâmbești la gîndul posibilităților vieții care vor veni ... 

Ce a fost nu mai poate fi, dar astăzi deschizi o nouă decadă, un nou capitol, și îți dorim să-l umpli cu speranță, sănătate, și lumină ... 

Acuma când la multele atribute ți se adaugă și înțelepciunea, sper să o folosești pentru a-ți găsi în continuare făgașul tău spre zile bune, ca să ne bucuri mulți, mulți ani de acum înainte cu prezența ta minunată, precum o floare de câmp supraviețuiește extraordinar furtunilor și rămâne mereu verticală,  învingătoare și parcă mai proaspătă, în câmpul dur și aspru al vieții.  

Te iubim și vrem sa te știm puternică așa cum ai fost mereu ... Uită-te în adâncul inimii tale și găsește comoara de neprețuit care ești ... și care ne ești tuturor ... 

La mulți ani! 

16 aprilie 2010 - ziua cea mai fericită din viața mea, ziua nunții.
Te iubesc!