The green grass of home is a saying that means a lot to me. First of all, nostalgia for childhood and old times.
Life pushes us into the most unexpected places and often tears us away from where we grew up and spent our childhood. The further I get away from my childhood time, the more I think and consider that time as heaven. I didn't live in puff and bliss but that doesn't stop me from considering that period of life as the most beautiful...
The different pace of life, childhood innocence, the fact that my parents were young and... alive!
I feel lucky and happy to be able to visit, at least once a year, the place where I grew up, somewhere in a village on the outskirts of a town in the northeast of Romania. There are almost 500 km that separate me from where I live now, and the lack of time, the many obligations, and this distance prevent me from getting there more often. But when that long-awaited time comes, we hit the road.
The house where I grew up and lived with my grandmother no longer exists. It was a small house, made for a single person because my grandfather died in the war in 1940 and my grandmother didn't want to remarry. Instead of a small house, there is now a big house, which corresponds to this time and the needs of a big family.
Fortunately, the house here, the little house, didn't disappear with Grandma's disappearance. My brother rebuilt the house and still lives there. This is the great good fortune that I can still go to the place where I grew up. Most of the time, in similar cases, once the old house is no longer lived in it is sold, and all the bridges of those who were there are broken.
Every time we go there we are awaited with love and... curiosity. The youngest brother's child only knew us from his parents' stories and now waited for us with a mixture of longing, curiosity, and shyness.
Green, Green, Grass Of Home
The green grass of home is a metaphor and refers to memories and nostalgia, but in my case, it is also a reality. I lived my childhood surrounded by greenery, I had that chance.
Every morning I looked at these images, this landscape. As a child, I didn't give it much importance, it seemed natural to see what I saw. Much later, when my parents moved to Bucharest, the biggest city in Romania, I missed the open space in front of my eyes...
Now, I see only houses, apartment blocks, and cars in the city where I live, far too many cars. I often think of the green grass that was home, home meaning childhood!
About rain
I remember having mixed feelings about the rain. I hated the rain and didn't understand why my grandmother, like everyone else in the village, rejoiced every time it rained. Rain was for me the killer the joy of playing with other children, in fields and forests.
In my childhood time, it rained a lot and often, not like now when rain has become so rare. Maybe it was also a perception of an angry child not being able to play. On rainy days I used to sit on some kind of terrace, alone or with a friend, and get bored watching it rain.
At the same time, I liked the rain. I was a melancholic and dreamy child and the rainy weather was the best to sit with my thoughts and dreams.
Now I could adapt a famous saying: "Where are the winters of yesteryear?" with "Where are the rains of yesteryear?"
My Mother
Primarily for my mother, this is the reason for these trips to my brother and mother's house. They decided, after my mother retired, to move into my grandmother's house, in this remote little village.
My brother has three children who loved their grandmother very much.
Always together at the table, with joy and love.
My brother is 17 years younger than me. He was born and had his childhood and adolescence only in the city. Unlike me, who spent my childhood in the village and then moved to the city, it was the other way around, he chose to live in the country.
It was a perfect choice, both for him and for our mother, who still lived for nearly twenty years in the place where she was born.
My mother's name was Maria. I wanted to write her a song but I can't, I don't know. I turn to someone who knows and who I like a lot. John Lennon wrote this song for his mother, Julia.
The future?
Children are always the future. I hope my nephews will keep this place.
I hope the youngest, Justin, will love this place as much as I did.
I hope my granddaughter, my son's daughter, will come years from now to see where her grandfather grew up.
Memories from six years ago, when I saw my mother for the last time.
