Swamp
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015
The first Americans I’ve met, Pam and her husband James from Chicago worked with my dad at the refinery. He was an engineer from a small family and she followed him to this God-forsaken country where everyone seemed to be a prisoner. They appeared friendly in a plastic way, smiling all the time for no apparent reason, totally unconcerned about the misery of the oppressed Romanians around them, barely surviving under communism. Continue reading
The simplest things in life can trigger a wave of memories long forgotten or buried deeply in the recesses of my mind – the scent of food, fresh baked bread, an exotic perfume, a melody, the crisp snowy air, the smell of smoke in autumn and a sudden thunderstorm. Continue reading
My childhood creek
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015
As we age, humans tend to mellow out and nothing that had previously been that important matters anymore in the grand scheme of things. All struggles, frustrations, successes, victories, defeats, losses, and gains, dissipate in the fog of time. Regrets and memories of opportunities lost, of physical pain, of mental anguish and frustration diminish, replaced by arthritis, loneliness, and loss of loved ones. The struggle is still there for billions of others, very real and painful, but it seems almost irrelevant to us. Continue reading
Photo: Florentina A. 2017
The first snow of 2017 finally arrived; a couple of inches covered the ground early before sunrise, turning our world into a powdery-white winter wonderland. The woods were unusually quiet and the animals disappeared with the exception of the resident fox. She ran from the back bushes and left a trail of swirling dry snow disturbed by her bushy tail. My two squirrels were nowhere to be seen. Continue reading
Rare photo of my mom and dad (second row left) and my grandma (bottom row), taken in the village
For the first twenty years of my life, I never traveled much. I have actually seen more of the world since I escaped the clutches of Ceausescu’s communism than I had actually seen of my own country as I was growing up. I changed that in the last five years when my husband and I did cover at least half of Romania. But I still have not seen the other half and I find that to be so sad because Romania is not that big of a country. It is beautiful, with stunning vistas and a rich history, but very small when compared to the United States. And I have seen a lot of the United States! Continue reading
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015
The plane was rocked violently on the tarmac at Dulles by a freak storm. The ten passengers and crew that had managed to board were wide-eyed, praying that the shaking of the Boeing 767 would stop soon and the boarding would resume. My husband was still in the terminal with the rest of the passengers. Lightning and wind gusts were so intense that boarding had been temporarily suspended.
The seven and a half hour flight to Zurich finally took off two and half hours late amid scary dark clouds and soul-rattling sudden altitude drops. Fortunately, as we reached a cruising altitude of 39,000 feet, everything calmed down and we settled into a routine of getting up, stretching, bathroom trips, and watching movies for seven and half hours. I can’t sleep on planes; all my limbs go numb rather quickly. Continue reading
My office desk for 20 years
Is it true that you cannot go back home again and find the reality you remembered or created in your mind as a child or as a young adult? Would you be disappointed? I have embarked twice on such a journey, most recently on Easter Sunday 2014. I wanted to find the town and life I left behind six years ago in Columbus. Continue reading
I watched recently the video of a speech given by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to an adoring crowd of communist useful idiots a few days before the dictator was arrested in December 1989. Ceausescu, a megalomaniac who appointed himself the Father of the Country, was touting the slave wages he had ordered raised for his unlucky proletariat from 700 lei per month to 800 lei.
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