While They Are Still Around

My childhood was marked by the flavor of the rural Transylvania, the smell of the animals in the stable and that of fresh hay. I cannot forget the joy of making dolls of corn cobs, walking barefoot in the mud, chasing dogs and being chased by them. But places like this are fewer and fewer. As a grown-up now, I see the hardship of my grandparents lives. I see the dark clothes that widows never stopped wearing after their husbands died. I stare at them and cannot help wondering where is their humor and strength still coming from?
Hidden in the hills of Transylvania there are still places like this. Tina, Mariuca, Miron, Lelea Vusi and the others still plough the fields, sow, mow, take the cattle to the pasture lands. They salt the meet for the winter and bake their own bread in clay ovens built by their hands. What’s hidden beneath, the poverty, their old age pains, their hardship, one cannot easily see, because my old friends radiate serenity and a powerful desire to live. Every time I go visiting them, they keep feeding me with their freshly home-baked bread and a strong doze of optimism.