Nightingale Street

Growing up, I lived in an apartment building on Nightingale Street. I was on the second storey, excluding the road/ground level which was considered as a storey in itself but not actually called a storey. My young body was small, and through it I saw a world much bigger. The road was much larger than it appears to me now, at least in photographs. I had to take many steps to get to the other side where there was a small store that served as our dairy. It was quite a mission, not in the difficulty, but in the responsibility of it being assigned to me, to take the 50,000 lei note from my mother's hand and go downstairs, across the asphalt street into the store to buy a Coca-Cola and a Mirinda. Then I made my return journey with the change. It took less than five minutes, but I had completed my errand.

Nightingale Street was small. It connected two other streets and ran parallel to a larger, longer, more traveled road. The sidewalks held ample room for two people to walk side-by-side. More recently, they (whoever that may be) installed parking spaces in front of the buildings, which our family used when we got a car. This left only room for one car to actually travel through the street at one time. I imagine it would have been even more difficult in the winter with the snow. The street looked different in summer compared to winter. In summer, you could see the shoddy repairwork that was hastily or improperly done on the roads. Bitumen spots covered random places, somehow like mosquito bites, together with a myriad of cracks and other potholes, from wee to big. As a child, these features are part of the landscape - I saw nothing wrong with them, they were just there - irrelevant and included. Come winter, a blanket of snow would just about cover the whole street, which is why they had to send in snowploughs and a roster for locals to do manual shoveling of snow. Generally, the street itself would be clear enough for cars to pass through. By that I mean there was a layer of muddy stamped down snow that coated the way for vehicles to travel to work, that is, if their engines weren't frostbitten at 7am in the morning. The sidewalks were also snowed on, as one would expect, but they were also manually cleared by the shovels of middle-aged men with warm coats and fur hats. If the snow got too wet and mushy, footprints of gumboots and thick shoes were visible. At times, when the conditions were right, sheets of ice would form, which would provide good entertainment for children like me to skate on with the neighbour or with some friends I had made at the playground two streets away. Older people at times fell and scattered their groceries here on the ice. The few trees that interrupted the sidewalk to the right of the entrance to our set of apartments were covered in a white mantle all winter. They simply lay there, warmed by the cold, an odd oxymoron, because they were preserved until spring when they would bloom in their natural magnificence. The grassy garden areas between the sidewalk and the apartment building itself, while naturally green and alive in summer, now was tucked away in hibernation, perfectly white except for spots of yellow which neighbourhood strays decided to paint on the landscape. Then there was the occasional sign from heaven that winged children delivered in the snow.

During the warmer part of the year, the aforementioned trees would bear fantastically green leaves, an assortment which would change to warmer colors during autumn when they would carpet the ground, no one to clean them up but the children who kicked them away and awed at their slow dance with gravity. The farthest tree along gave us chestnuts, free to pick. If I were to get one, it would be off the ground because it would have fallen. I wasn't tall enough to climb, but my brother and his friend from the apartment vis-a-vis ours were. They climbed up, exploring the crevices, the spaces between the branches and the view from close to the summit. At one point they may have shaken the tree, resulting in chestnut rain. They're supposed to taste nice. I think I tried them once but I can't recall the taste so likely it didn't make a very good impression on me. At least not a lasting one, and I'm usually one to remember smell and taste.

Going the other way towards the end of the street we didn't live on were more apartment blocks. One of them held a dentist which I went to once or twice, probably just before I moved to New Zealand. In between the two apartment blocks on our side of the street, each four storeys high, lay a rubbish dump where stray dogs used to rummage through. I didn't like going past there, out of fear. There were also some tramps and/or gypsies who did the same thing (rummaging), and I was scared of them too, but they may also have repelled other people with their stench. The lack of hygiene puts people off. By the rubbish dump there was also a concrete space which now probably is a car park. But it used to simply be a space where friends, brothers and sisters played catch or ran around deceptively aimlessly. The other side of the road also held a four-storey apartment block, and then in front of our block lay a much taller ten-storey block, which had, understandably, its own elevator. Generic would be one way to put it, but the whole street from memory had an entrenched quality, almost fixed in concrete, as if those buildings would always remain there, even though they looked unappealing and impersonal from the outside.

I never quite got the significance of why the street was named after a Nightingale. If we were to be correct in translating from the Romanian, literally the street belongs to the Nightingale, and I don't remember any nocturnal songs being sung outside. Maybe it was named after a person. Maybe not. The place, though, has evolved over time, and just as my own vision has changed with age, so has that place. The cracks that I did not notice before, I do see now, and the amount of them, metaphoric and otherwise, leave me with a sentiment of sadness - that my childhood home isn't really being cared for. I still have my memories though and while I don't hold on to them, I am aware that changes happen. Nothing lasts forever and that's the way it is.

January

"In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."
My (Inspiration) calendar informs me that Albert Camus said those words. Let's explore :)

January is a winter month, speaking from a northern hemisphere point of view. I've experienced eleven of those. Mostly, they're characterised by snow, rain, cold, snowballs, snowmen, snow angels, yellow patches of snow, trees with snow wigs, fur hats, layers of clothing that conceal people and air that's harder to breathe but worth breathing otherwise you die and there's a chance the ambulance won't get to you in time because of traffic jams and sheets of ice on the road. No summer.

I remember this month to be unique, in that the first week of it I used to be with family and friends on holiday at home. Ski-time!

I wait in line with some friends, we talk about nothing in particular that I can remember now. We slowly move our way to the ticket machine, where there's a slot that I insert this plastic waterproof card which has a certain amount of money on it. Once it rinses and spits the card out, the metal bars are unlocked and I shimmy forward to catch the incoming platter lift (thanks Wikipedia). I loved taking note of the numbers on the one I got because whatever number it was, it was going to be a different one to the other platter lifts so it was special (just like the other platter lifts :P which I will now affectionately and laconically refer to as claws) I grab hold of the valve and pull hard and place it in between my legs (carefully avoiding any locational trauma). Then I'm off as the claw pulls me up the snow slope. During my ascent I look at skiers in their descent, the skier in front of me on his own special claw (not as special as mine) but never at the skier behind me because I can lose balance and fall, endangering the oncoming skiers (happened before). At the top, I heave the valve from under me and let go. The claw spastically hurls itself this way and the other once or twice then returns to its starting position.

Here, I either wait for friends or go it alone, either is fine. Usually, I go from one side of the slope to the other side, in a winding path that goes in no particular direction except it manages to avoid other people.

A week after the holiday at home, school starts again, so I go back to my class. The mornings are cold temperature-wise, but there's something awfully warm about meeting your classmates and discussing what you were up to during the winter break. I don't remember that happening much, but it could have. We lined up in the courtyard before going inside the classrooms, snowflakes trickling in a delicate yet dense fashion. The sky is coloured winter, so whichever colour you pick, it'll be that, then diluted, mixed with grey and smeared above so you can't distinguish cloud from sky. To add, whatever emotions you feel are touched by a tinge of gloom hidden in plain sight.

And among this, the depth of winter (its harshness varying from year to year) has never placed me under a depressive sheet of ice. Winter isn't sad. Summer isn't happy. They're the same. Yes, I do prefer to swim in the sea when it's warmer, but I also prefer to ski when it's colder. So Albert Camus is right. There is a summer within me - joyful, triumphant - that makes my winters burn.

Further proof? It's January and right now, where I am... summer never left.