A summer day in Bucharest

…or the intoxicating scent of the lime blossoms

The city is already in full summer mode. The pavements radiate heat, dust particles are everywhere, but there is an incredible comfort in the scent of hot lime blossoms.

I walk slowly, taking in the decrepit buildings crumbling more and more with every passing year. Some are now covered in layers upon layers of graffiti, an image from a distopian movie I once watched.

It feels like home, but also as if I was walking on the surface of an unknown planet. Who is the stranger in our relationship, myself or the city?

I tend to my rituals: visit my favourite (Bucharest!) flower lady. For quite a few long minutes I panic, she is not at our regular spot. With her it’s always ours or mine. My favourite flower lady, our spot, our flowers. Buying large bouquets or peonies or dhalias grounds me, when the internal anguish of being here, invariably reliving moments of past,threatens to overwhelm me.

Today she has gifted me the red rose I always bring to my grandmother, along with the peonies, that is her favourite flower: a single red rose.

Whilst wrapping the flowers she enthusiastically shows me pictures of her two baby grandsons. Her daugthers gave birth to them 3 days apart. They are smiling, chubby blue-eyed babies that look like twins and her face lights up with every word she tells me about them.

Her name is Adriana, she is perhaps three year younger than I am. She married when she was twelve years old and started working from 4am every morning about the same time. She’s tired and there is a sadness I can see deep in her eyes, even though she smiles. I can’t help but wish we could have a whole day together to hear her life story.

I leave her with the promise of coming back and walk slowly back through the market, the smoke and smell of the outdoors barbecue engulfing me.

My next stop is a favourite pastry shop where I buy éclairs every time I’m in town.

Later in the day I will watch the joy and pleasure they will bring to my grandmother’s face who tells me she is not allowed to eat sugar on account of her breast cancer, but asks me ten minutes later if she’s eaten them all and when I ter: “No!”, she gives me a cheeky smile: “I might in that case walk to the kitchen perhps I will casually bump into them”.

The day is hot, we’re both a bit tired now. I’ve only slept for four hours last night and she is ninty five years old.

We sit on her bed, hold hands and look at old photographs. From her bedroom window sounds of children in the playground reach us softly and the smell of warm lime blossoms fill the air.

We are happy for this time together.