I have lived my sixty years with a mystery. I can’t say that I have wrestled with this mystery daily, but there has been a dull, continuous gnawing that has been insatiable. Many of us can visit (and maybe some of us still live in) the birthplace home of our parents. I remember on several trips downstate taking my kids down my old neighborhood in Birmingham and showing them where I grew up. This is the place where I learned how to ride a bike, how to climb a tree, how to fall out of a tree, just how far a slinky can stretch before it inverts and can no longer slink.
I received the vast majority of stitches while living in this home. To say that it has memories is to grossly understate its importance to me. My kids humored me and feigned interest, but still, it seemed important to me. I remember my own car ride with my parents touring my mother’s old neighborhood while visiting her parents.
My father, on the other hand, this trip down memory lane was not only impossible but never talked about. My dad’s family escaped under the hay in a hay wagon during the cover of darkness weeks before the country was invaded and the tides of history turned dramatically against his homeland of Romania. I wrote a bit about this in my previous post, A Tribute to My Father.
My father carried, for the entirety of his life, an irrational fear of being “found out” by Romanian officials and forced to return. Even once things had calmed down after the violent uprising against the Ceaușescu regime and the 42 years of communist control, my father remained unconvinced that it was for real and it was safe to go back. I urged him to reconsider as a naïve young man, but to no avail.
Once he passed on, I had the deep privilege of sorting through his important papers. I suppose escaping communism makes a person very private, so he had never shared any of these things, such as his birth certificate, his marriage certificate, and his papers confirming that he was a U.S. Citizen. As mentioned in the post a few weeks ago, I am a pack rat and keep all sorts of things, but these items have moved to the top of the keepsake list. The same holds true for my father-in-law’s documents. He immigrated from Ireland during a period of relative peace in the world.
Going through my dad’s papers, a notion passed into my brain and has been rolling around there since. There is nothing stopping me from going to Romania to see the place of his childhood. From the birth certificate, I know only the town’s name: Timisoara. With a population of roughly 300,000, it should be easy to find out where he lived. Just kidding, this would be like a needle in a haystack. From stories my grandfather told, I knew they lived in a very rural area. They were simple farmers and what we would call homesteaders.
After my father passed, his older sister passed, and subsequently, his older brother did too. All the information went with them to the great beyond, or so I thought. My uncle’s wife (my aunt) is extremely organized and healthy. We recently reached out to her to see if she knew anything about the family’s origins.
In the meantime, Joan and I made plans to finish cruising the Danube, from Budapest, which terminates in Bucharest, Romania. We had planned to add on to our trip to visit friends in Belgrade and, of course, to visit Timisoara.
This morning, when I picked up the mail, I was surprised to find a package from my Aunt. I held the precious package in my hands as if it were a fragile bird and could not wait to get home and open it. Months had gone by, it could have been anything, unrelated to our request. I was fearful it was nothing, and excited that it might hold the key to a mystery.
I tore it open and discovered Romanian conversational guides of three different varieties, stock photos from olden days of the city square and cathedral, and finally, in her handwritten note, there it was, the name of the street in which they lived. I hurried to the computer and Google Maps. I found the street. It was about 3.2 km from the city center, so that tracks with being rural, and it was only two blocks long (easily walkable from end to end). I used Street View on the map to see the houses. Most are postwar, humble structures, while others are hundreds of years old. I am presuming that the house they lived in is gone, or replaced, but for me, just to be in the same space after so many years will be sufficient for this hopeless romantic.
The river cruise offers dozens of excursions, which I am sure will be nice, but the highlight for me will be walking the street of my father’s childhood and listening in my mind to what that street has to say.
The one story of which I know is one told to me by my grandfather (who also had dementia) when he was speaking to me as if I were his son (my dad). He mistook me for his son, and after I tried to correct him by saying I was his grandson, I thought it better to just listen to what he had to say rather than be right. I know there is a metaphor in there for me that may help in future communications, but I digress.
He said, “Louie, do you remember that time that you were so sick with the fever that I had to take you to the doctor’s in the city by pushing you all the way in the wheelbarrow?”
“Yes,” I said.
And he sat back in his chair, completely satisfied with himself for accomplishing this great feat. Who am I to disagree? The fact is that mortality rates in Eastern Europe in the 30s were very high. If he had not pushed me all the way to the doctors, I may not even have existed. Life is funny sometimes. It is a mystery and an adventure all rolled into one. I’m glad you are part of it with me.