This one, around 3 years old:
kid: Mummy, I think that girl from kindergarten is in love with me.
mum: Is she? What do you think falling in love means?
kid: I’m not sure… but it has something to do with smiling a lot.
On my way to uni today, in front of me, was a terribly drunk man. I decided to walk faster so the stench wouldn’t make me throw up. However, when I was right beside him, he looked at me and said in the most heart-breaking voice possible, with tears in his eyes:
“I SWEAR! I WILL NEVER LOVE AGAIN!”
So this summer I got to have my very own patient. An old lady with hypertension and some circulatory problems. Anyhow, me and a friend, also a colleague, did everything on her. Injections, blood samples, staying with her during different procedures and always remembering her to use the eye drops for her cataract.
So spending quite some time with her I got to know her a little.
Every morning I would arrive at 7.45 am and she would already have her makeup and smile on. She got a haircut and kept complaining for the whole week about how badly it looked.
What made me get so emotionally attached to her was the fact that every day she would tell us some funny story about something that has happened to her and I figured she must’ve been quite attractive and cheerful during her earlier years. She would tell us how great doctors we are going to be and that she would love to have 2 daughters like us. When she left the hospital she made us promise we will invite her to our wedding and she promised to sing for us, for free. She had a good voice, coming from a musical family while her daughter is an opera singer and her son a percussionist at the opera.
I hope to see her someday again. Even though it isn’t obvious, I’m always looking for her when I’m around the place she does her shopping in. (yes, we talked about that too). She was that kind of old adorable lady that hasn’t lost her love of life and even though she complains about being old she is younger at heart than most.
So thank you Ms. M, for being my very first patient, and for being a lovely one.
6 years old. First time on a train.
kid: do the wheels sparkle when the train brakes?
mum: No
kid: what about now, do they sparkle?
mum: No. It would ruin the railway.
3 minutes:
kid: what about now, do they sparkle?
mum: NO!
kid: Mummy, are we there yet?
mum: No. We have half an hour left
2 minutes:
kid: Mummy, are we there yet?
mum: No. We have half an hour left
30 seconds:
kid: Mummy, are we there yet?
mum: No.
1 minute:
kid: Mummy, are we there yet?
mum: No. Stop asking me if we’re there yet.
15 seconds:
kid: How long until we get to the station where we have to get down?
mum gives no answer.
The kid turns around, takes out his gum, stretches it, sticks it on the window, puts it back in his mouth then suddenly turns around at his mum:
Mum! I love you!
I was slowly dragging myself home from uni, when I got to possibly the loudest, brain damaging pizza-terrace in this city. There’s always awful music (actually noise) that’s being played at maximum volume plus the traffic noise considering it’s placed on the sidewalk on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city.
I got a very nice surprise that day. There was Jazz coming out of the speakers. On the sidewalk, in front of the pizza-place, there was a poor homeless guy that spends his time around there. This time only, he was smiling, dancing and greeting everyone who was passing by. He was enjoying that music in such a way he managed to make people on the street stop, smile and want to dance as well. The whole atmosphere changed on that street that evening.
It happened years ago. I started to giggle at first, thinking the reason why he was going from tree to tree was the lack of balance from too much alcohol. Then as I figured it out later, he had enough balance to hold himself steady; he was just hugging every tree and talking to them with nice words.
That put a smile on my face. It says the alcohol brings the true you out to surface. I think this guy had a cute caring heart.
I met him when I was very little, about 6 years old. I had in mind an image of an old grouchy man and I wasn’t too keen on meeting him on the trip to Sinaia. To my surprise he turned out to be a very nice man with incredible stories and actually very fun!
I was with my mum and he took us in the woods and showed us secret paths in the same time telling us stories about the places we were seeing. He was like an encyclopaedia of adventures. A dedicated mountaineer with so many stories about his trips and adventures. I don’t remember much about that time apart from this.
About 5 years ago I met him again, this time with my dad. We stayed at his place, in Sinaia. A small, cozy apartment in which living room we would gather in the evening and share our little “adventures” of the day and his real adventures of a lifetime. One evening he told us of a place where he had built a bench and a table near a spring because the view from that point was so nice and he wanted everyone to sit, relax and enjoy. The story somehow deviated from its actual point because he began telling us how after a week when he went there the benches were ruined and there was a lot of mess around. So we started talking about something else and he forgot telling us what he actually meant to say. The next day we went for a walk without a certain route. We stopped at a point and we tried to look on the map to see what mountains were ahead of us. We figured there were the same that he told us about the night before. After that, we’ve seen what was left of the benches. When we got home we started bragging about it. He looked at us and he just stared for a few seconds. He then asked:
“Did you like the bear?”
Then, he told us that there’s a bear there and when there’s someone around, he comes, sits in the middle of the trail and won’t leave until you feed him. (Yes, bears in some parts of Romania are used and self-trained to beg for food. They do come down at night in cities like Brasov and search the trash bins.)
He was sure that most probably he was near but we didn’t see “little teddy”.
That evening ended with another story of him and his wife sitting in the woods at a picnic when in front of them came 3 little bear cubs. Two steps away - their mother. They didn’t move or breath until they left, they didn’t panic until they got home when they thought: “can you imagine what could’ve had happened?”
His name was Mr. Belu. (i can’t remember his first name, or maybe this was his first name?!). I don’t know much about him, but I know he is a real mountaineer ready to join in adventures, share his adventures, passion and knowledge of the mountain and to direct you on the best trails.
When I saw Ice Age 3rd and got to the Buck scenes…I just thought about him! Excited about adventure, knowing the way and knowing the dangers. But a little nutty to face the danger and know there’s no fun without it. He lives for the mountain!
On the way to my English or IT class there was this huge wonderful old house. In front of it, there was a nice garden with a little magnolia, a swing and apart from that, in spring it’s filled with red tulips. There’s a wonderful poofy German shepherd dog. Two very old people live there. A lady with her husband. On every Tuesday at 5 o’clock they just sit there on the porch with their walking frames beside their chairs. They never say anything, they don’t look at each other. They’re looking at the garden and they’re looking at the city from above. But you can see they’re happy and they’re probably the best friends in the Universe.
He used to sit every weekend in the park in front of the National Theatre with his paintings on the sidewalk, among other people that did the same. But he had something that made everyone stop in front of his paintings. He had talent. He was a real artist. He had small pictures most of them the size of an A4. Houses, trees – all made out of simple lines smudged with the finger across the canvas. Abstract pictures in which you could see anything you’d like. He made one for me and my dad got it on one of my birthdays: a small square painting with what looks like a bird to me.
He had long gray hair, a gray beard, a pair of round thick glasses, long fingers, and a cigar in a corner of his mouth. He once made me a portrait I still treasure. On the other side it’s a portrait of him. His name was Theo and everyone knew his paintings. He used to be there, in the same place, every weekend. People in Iasi would pay him money and get him to paint the insides of their homes. He told us he was once taken in an airplane and after that he was given materials and he was told to paint. He didn’t ask anything he just committed. After that he was sent back.
I don’t know if he had a real home. The money he made were too little to even get him enough food for the day. He would spend almost all on new canvas and colors. He stopped painting at one time. He said he couldn’t afford it anymore. He stopped coming there in the weekends. Another man tried to take his place, imitating his signature and his style. He’s still there today. Nobody looks at his works. I was in utter shock and disgust when I saw him.
Last time I saw Theo he was wandering the streets, about 8 or 9 years ago.
edit: after writing this, I saw Theo in the same place that he used to be, with his paintings on the sidewalk for sale.
