The more I thought about this sentence, the truer it seemed. I have lived in Romanian, Finnish and English, and each one of these languages has taught me something the others left unseen.

I began to understand that language shapes our world.

It determines how we see reality, what we notice and what we don’t.

Take snow. Did you know that Finns have hundreds of words to talk about it? Finnish language distinguishes fresh snow from wet snow, falling snow from snow already settled on the ground, a hard crust from a soft surface, a drift from slush. It’s almost like the language itself encourages you to watch, word by word, how snow is changing state.

Brits developed a similar attentiveness to rain. English distinguishes drizzle from mizzle, a shower from a downpour, a cloudburst from a steady rain. Regional dialects become more precise still: Scottish smirr is a fine rain or mist; Cumbrian mizzling describes misty, drizzly rain, while syling means rain pouring heavily. There is spitting, spotting, teeming, pelting and bucketing down. Some words describe the rain itself; others describe how it falls, how long it lasts or what it does to the person caught beneath it. Living inside the English language, one does not simply experience “rain.” It notices whether the rain floats, lingers, arrives sideways, passes quickly or settles in for the day.

I once thought of snow simply as snow and rain as simply rain. Not anymore. Living with new languages I’ve found there are more ways to look at the same world, more ways I can refine and understand the same reality.

It plants images inside ordinary things and tells us what to imagine.

Language can do more than refine the details of the world around us. Sometimes it lays imagination over what we see and gives ordinary things a second life. The physical world and the objects around us might look different depending on the language we use.

In Romanian, a door lock is a broască (a frog) and the burners on a stove are its eyes (ochi de aragaz). English gives the road a shoulder. In Finnish the word for Northern Lights (revontulet) means “fox fires.” In Finnish folklore, the lights were sparks swept into the sky by the tail of a fox running across the snow.

Each word contains an earlier act of imagination: someone looked at metal and saw an animal crouching inside the door; at circles of flame and saw eyes; at the edge of a road and recognized part of a body; at light moving through the winter sky and imagined a fox.

The word preserves that first resemblance forever. It carries it forward, offering it to everyone who speaks the language and each inherited image becomes permission to imagine further.

Living among languages means inheriting several of these ways of seeing.

When the Romanian frog, the English shoulder and the Finnish fox begin to inhabit the same world, who knows what else can happen. Suddenly we can open possibilities and imagine stories that no single language could have offered alone.

It decides what is allowed to remain invisible.

Finnish allows gender to remain invisible. Hän can mean either he or she. If I say “hän on väsynyt” - “hän is tired” - I have told you nothing about the person’s gender. English usually makes me choose. Romanian may demand even more: “este obosit” and “este obosită” reveal gender without needing el or ea. The information sits inside the adjective.

On the other side, English allows the relationship between two people to remain undefined. It gives me “you”, whether I am speaking to a child, a stranger, a close friend or someone in authority. Romanian asks me to choose: “tu” or “dumneavoastră”? Closeness or distance? Familiarity or respect? The decision must often be made before I know what else I want to say.

Each language brings something different into view and leaves something else in the dark. In one, the relationship between two people matters; in another, gender disappears.

The differences become hardest to ignore when I try to carry a word from one language into another. Some words travel easily from one language to another, while others arrive broken, with parts of their meaning missing.

We can explain the meaning of these “untranslatable words”. We can surround them with several other words and can transport all their individual pieces. But what we cannot always preserve is the way those pieces belonged together before the journey.

Dor is the Romanian example everyone mentions, but I am more interested in năzdrăvan. In Romanian folktales, a cal năzdrăvan is a horse endowed with supernatural intelligence. It understands human speech, anticipates danger and advises the hero (usually after eating burning coals).

We also call a child năzdrăvan: clever, troublesome, energetic, endearing and somehow more alive than the rules intended. To translate the word in English, I need to choose. Is the child mischievous, naughty, impish, clever, high-spirited or precocious? Mischievous preserves the trouble but loses some of the admiration. Clever keeps the intelligence but loses the trouble. Naughty introduces disapproval. Precocious sounds almost clinical. Impish comes close, but the old supernatural knowledge has disappeared.

The word cannot be carried across whole. When I translate năzdrăvan, I have to take apart a child who was whole in Romanian.

Finnish divides snow into a multitude of realities but allows gender to remain unspoken. Romanian hides a frog inside a door and preserves a trace of magic inside a mischievous child, yet asks me to name the closeness between two people. English gives rain its many temperaments and the road a shoulder, but allows every relationship to disappear inside a single you.

Each language illuminates something and leaves something else in shadow.

Living among three languages has taught me to move between those areas of light and notice that at the limit of one language, another sometimes sees farther.

English is wonderfully concise, concentrating a great deal of meaning into relatively few words. Other languages, such as Romanian and French, struggle to follow suit, and that struggle goes beyond a translation problem; it’s a clash between worlds in which tenses and modes are meaning-making, and nuances, if not whole concepts, risk slipping through the cracks of imperfect translatability, as I have learned through my work as a translator, and through my philosophical incursions.

To be is arguably clean across the three languages, capturing potential outside of time and space, an abstract seed that’s just as clearly expressed in a fi and être. But the next step is already problematic: been conveys something that is temporally situated, with a concrete sense of completion, and the copulative value demands further qualifications. What is more, the Perfect mode creates what is called a bridging tense, connecting past to present in a way that neither Romanian nor French can manage. Where (am) fost and (j’ai) été are unidimensional, the English branches into (I) was and (I) have been, thus precluding identity between the three languages. Finally, being introduces an additional grammatical category that further complicates any attempt at establishing a strict equivalence. Being is not just a gerund of the verb to be, but also the noun that conceptualizes existence; it captures both process and result, thus illustrating in a most poignant manner the ontological force of the word. In this instance too, the Romanian fiind and the French étant lag behind – the gerund form exists, but the concept underneath it is poorly formulated, and thus weak.

For someone who has spent decades translating worlds into words, these difficulties are hardly surprising. What did come as a surprise was how such challenges arise even when translating – or, rather, attempting to translate – something as fundamental as philosophy. Fundamental and universal, one might say. And yet, even the universality of philosophy appears to be conditional on language, for what other way can there be to convey its contents?

And the be-been-being problem is as relevant in philosophy as anywhere else. When Descartes famously posited Je pense, donc je suis, he was counting on a generous interpretation of to be as to exist, even though the formulation would seem to require a further qualification. English inherited the same incompleteness in its I think, therefore I am. Romanian somehow took the high road and made it explicit: Gândesc, deci exist. A cheeky move for a language that hasn’t contributed much to universal philosophy, one might say. A language that still has a few tricks up its sleeve, as will soon become apparent.

But before we go there, let’s stop for a minute to consider what Descartes’s formulation opens the door to: the concept of a mind endowed with consciousness. It’s safe to assume that all languages have some way to convey this concept, but I’m content to look at how English, French, and Romanian deal with it. English is remarkably particular about it, as the word consciousness maps cleanly onto the concept it represents. French and Romanian require a detour through phenomenology: conscience and conștiință are ambiguous in their bare forms, as they conflate consciousness with conscience. And while it may seem that adding an extra word is merely a question of form – after all, where’s the problem in using conștiință fenomenală or conscience phénoménale? – I would argue that the matter shifts too, if only slightly: adding the qualifier, that is, specifying what kind of conștiință / conscience we’re dealing with might suggest that the relationship between conscience and consciousness is one of subordination, with conștiință fenomenală being a subcategory of conștiință, and conscience phénoménale a subcategory of conscience, respectively. A wrong conclusion, to be sure, but one that further illustrates the depths of confusion that language can engender, even within a monolingual culture. Translation into English saves the day, but it’s a rare exception, rather than the rule.

Differences also exist in how the various phenomena of consciousness are conveyed in the three different languages, and these differences reflect variations in the degree to which such phenomena are conceived of as abstract or somatic. English speaks of that which happens in the mind. French makes it more embodied in its ce qui se passe dans la tête. Romanian, once again, proves more expressive, or more flexible, as it can make sense of both ce-ți trece prin minte and ce-ți trece prin cap. Granted, analytical philosophers such as Gilbert Ryle have examined the connection between mind and head – and dismissed it as illusory – but the fact remains that, at the level of natural languages, even something as fundamental and universal as thinking, and in particular how we think about thinking, is shaped by cultural factors.

Naturally, the above are but a handful of examples. What they all have in common is that they illustrate not just the limits of our individual worlds as defined by the languages underpinning individual cultures, but also the creative potential of translation. When we translate with a keen awareness of the worlds we’re moving between, we create bridges, using what we have in common to integrate what makes us different, thus bringing new worlds into existence. Worlds that we then inhabit, shaping them further and allowing them to shape us.

For those of us who acquire it rather than inherit it, language is never simply spoken. To me, learning English felt like earning passage across land that was never mine to begin with. Every sentence was a toll I had to pay in advance, to prove I deserved to keep walking. AI does not ask for that toll. It opens the gate before I have said a word. But an open gate is not the same as solid ground, and now the work is deciding which parts of what lies beyond it will actually hold my weight. The proving did not disappear. It moved from my mouth to my judgment.

Wittgenstein’s claim that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” reads differently depending on who is doing the building. For a native speaker, the limit can feel like the elusive line of the horizon, never quite touched but beautiful to look at in the morning from my back porch as I watch the sun explode into color along the crests of Pikes Peak, one of Colorado’s fourteeners I plan to summit before I die. But the limit of an acquired language rarely feels like a horizon. It feels like a fence, deliberately installed by someone else, and mended by someone else too, long before you ever learned where the gate was.

I grew up speaking Romanian, learning English as the language that would carry me into my American life, and absorbing Farsi, the mother tongue of my child’s father. Each language holds me differently. Romanian represents the house I was born into. I never have to knock at the door to enter it. In Farsi I am a guest who has learned the customs but will always ask before opening a cupboard. In English I did the building myself, plank by plank, and I still remember the smell of sawdust.

When I was learning English, the language arrived through structures I did not design. Teachers corrected my verb tenses in red ink. Textbooks offered model sentences and asked me to approximate them until the approximation became fluency. I fondly remember my fourth grade English teacher, Mrs. Weltman, who asked us to memorize passages from a textbook called Discovery. How could I possibly pronounce the word “cheetah” without a smirk crossing my face? But because of that practice, ridiculous as it felt at eleven years old, I learned how to build a sentence in English the way you learn to build anything: by copying a form until your hands know it without being told. Fluency arrives through submission to an external standard before it can ever be earned through instinct. I could not yet judge whether a sentence was elegant. I could only judge whether it matched what I had been told was correct, because the instrument that tells the difference between elegant and merely correct had not been built in me yet.

AI produces language differently, and the difference runs deeper than it first appears. When I generate a draft with AI to support a training module, the authority does not transfer the way it did through a teacher’s red pen. I bring the research. I bring the sequencing, the sense of what a learner needs at minute three versus minute thirty, and years of watching how adults actually absorb new material, which depends far more on trust and pacing than on correct grammar. AI can hand me twelve versions of a paragraph in the time it takes me to drink a cup of coffee, but it cannot decide which of those twelve respects the people who will eventually sit through the material. That decision requires the instrument I did not yet possess as a child memorizing textbook passages about cheetahs. That instrument has a name. It is called critical thinking.

For thirty years, the only instrument I trusted with English was permission. I waited to be corrected before I trusted a sentence. I waited to be told a word was right before I let myself believe it. Critical thinking asks something different of me. It does not wait to be granted. It is what I apply, deliberately, to every line the AI hands back to me, deciding not whether I am allowed to say something, but whether it is true.

In practice, this means I set my own standards before I ever open a prompt window: what register the material needs, what a Romanian, American, or Iranian reader might hear differently in a given phrase than I intend, where a metaphor will clarify and where it will only fog the glass. Then I read everything that comes back the way a person reads a mountain slope before deciding whether it is safe to cross that morning. Snow that looks packed and stable from a distance can be hollow underneath, waiting. A paragraph can be hollow the same way, smooth on the screen and empty underneath it. Using AI does not remove me from the process. It puts me at the front of the line, deciding which parts of the terrain will hold.

Some things do not survive the crossing between languages, and I no longer count that as a failure. There is a tenderness in Farsi, braided with grief, that English flattens no matter how gently I try to carry it over. There is a Romanian bluntness that lands as harsh in English, though at home it carries its own kind of warmth, the way a hard slap on the back means something different depending on who is standing behind you. I used to read this as proof that my English fell short. Now I read it as proof about language itself. Each one I carry gives me a different angle on the same reality. The full shape only comes into view when I hold all at once.

I want to close with a reference to Wendell Berry, who recently passed away, and whose restraint has shaped how I pay attention. Berry spent his life writing about a single stretch of Kentucky farmland, and in doing so proved that looking closely at one place can open a wider view than travel ever could. One of his poems describes walking into the woods to rest among wild things that do not tax themselves with forethought of grief. I return to that poem when a workflow gets loud, when the draft in front of me is fluent but hollow at the center. The peace Berry describes represents discipline of attending to what is actually there instead of settling for what is merely available, and that discipline decides whether the language I put into the world deserves to stand.

The limits of my language no longer feel fixed the way they did when I was eleven years old, mouthing the word cheetah into a mirror until it stopped sounding foreign. They shift now, depending on which language I am standing in and which tool I am using to think with. But the limit that has always mattered most was never linguistic. It is the limit of my own attention. And that one has always been mine to set.

The aging train rumbled through Romania’s picturesque Prahova Valley for the one-hour jaunt from Sinaia, a mountain resort and former royal retreat, to Brașov, a charming, medieval city in Transylvania. Alpine air mercifully cooled the unairconditioned passenger cars on a warm day.

Twenty-three summers ago, I was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer and starting my second of two years in Romania. One of my best friends, Frank, had traveled from Washington, D.C., to visit me and check off yet another country. The day before, we’d taken a train from sweltering Bucharest to Sinaia and nearly died of suffocation, not only from the lack of AC but the full-throated resistance by fellow passengers to crack any windows due to the dreaded curent, a draft caused when two windows are open in the same room, car, bus, train or wherever.

Curent is feared by millions of Romanians, who believe deeply that such a breeze – perceived by Americans and other foreigners as relief – causes headaches, toothaches, back pain, colds and other maladies.

The same situation days earlier on a bus at the Black Sea nearly tangled us in fisticuffs when Frank opened a window and a few Romanian men grew irate.

Peace Corps staff had schooled us on curent, but our immersive language training, mandatory and useful, didn’t offer any magical lingo to deal with it.

Sitting back and admiring the steep, jagged Bucegi Mountains, I prepped Frank on Brașov, one of my favorite Romanian cities. During Peace Corps training a year earlier, in the gritty oil town of Ploiești, I accompanied a few volunteers to Brașov for the first time. As we entered the main square, one remarked, “Wow, I finally feel like I’m in Europe!”

The train churned northward, weaving and bobbing slightly. As we chatted, a middle-aged woman across the aisle with whom we’d had zero interaction, suddenly corrected me.

“Brașov!” she exclaimed, mildly annoyed, enunciating clearly the sound “brah-SHOF.”

Frank and I looked at each other quizzically. It sounded nearly identical to what I’d said, but I tried to appease the woman, who reminded me of actress Bea Arthur and her TV characters, Maude and Dorothy.

“Brașov!” I replied, enthusiastically, striving for correctness. She shook her head in immediate disappointment.

English speakers tend to say, “BRAH-shof” or “brah-SHAHV,” but I thought I had it right. We went back and forth like ping-pong: Brașov-Brașov-Brașov-Brașov. Failing to meet woman’s expectations, I moved on, mimicking her classic, accentuated Romanian shrug. Frank and I still laugh about it.

Fast-forward to today’s Romania, where I live again, this time for the past decade. Recently, I entered a bakery in Timișoara, in a former mini-market space near my former Peace Corps job. The 40-ish clerk is a familiar face and accustomed to my accent, so I thought, even if she’s rarely exuded an ounce of warmth.

I ordered a loaf of bread and three pieces of pumpkin strudel. In Romanian, it’s ştrudel with the ş pronounced with a “sh” sound. I am fluent in Romanian, speaking reasonably well – markedly better than in my Peace Corps days – but with pesky mistakes, as my Romanian wife reminds me, but I know the ş.

The clerk asked me to repeat my order three times.

“Ooo, ştrudel,” she said, dramatically emphasizing the “sh” sound, adding, “Nu v-am înțeles.” “I didn’t understand you.”

Of course, she didn’t.

Most of the time, fortunately, I don’t have such encounters. Sometimes I wonder, what if I lived here not knowing Romanian? Without a shared language, we have nothing.

Nowadays, most Romanians under 40 probably speak English, either fluently or enough to manage. I’ve often admired Romanians’ knack for languages, with many speaking three or four. Being a Romance language helps, while many Romanians have told me they learned English from cartoons and YouTube.

It’s possible for foreigners to live in Romania without speaking Romanian, especially when English is a common tongue, but I couldn’t tolerate living in that bubble.

I’ve done two interviews on TVR, Romania’s state broadcaster – one of them in-studio on live national television and one extended conversation for a profile, plus a live, hourlong radio show in Timișoara that also streamed in video. All three were entirely in Romanian. I barely went back and watched them as not to cringe too much at my stumbling, but I managed to answer the questions without making a total fool of myself.

Would I have communicated differently, perhaps more confidently in English? Indeed. That’s an invisible limit that I’ve yet to overcome, and probably never will. Then there’s body language.

I’ve heard people say how their mannerisms or even personality can change while speaking a foreign language. Not in my case. For instance, Romanian men will talk right in your face, so close you can smell their breath, even putting their arm over your shoulders – and they’re not even mad. It’s endearing, but a personal space violation for an American, though I’ve learned to tolerate it.

The more I speak Romanian, the more I marvel at its beauty. Not quite as melodic as Italian, but similar, with quirky Slavic components and a smattering of Turkish, it’s also crazy clever in its nuanced humor – and especially challenging idioms – while remaining wholly phonetic.

But when I’m with a group of Romanians around a table, and they’re all talking, often over each other, it’s difficult. That’s when the conversation transforms into noise, especially if I’m tired. It can be frustrating, just as when I don’t know a word and miss the overall meaning. Those are the moments when I just want to crawl away and hear English.

Speaking Romanian to a stranger who’s not used to me, I sometimes get a furrowed brow or sigh. Often, though, they’re pleased with my effort and even complimentary. The former are the ones who typically respond in English. But I stick to Romanian, on principle, trying to push my limits.

I think even “Dorothy” from the train would agree.

The road is neither steep, nor long, but at the end of it the whole world seems to lie below. Maybe not the ice cap between two stone ledges defining the horizon, but everything else: the beach, the ocean, the grassy field. At the top, the trail is short and almost circular, surrounded by impossible surfaces of granite and basalt experimenting vertical angles towards the black sand.

Puffins show off with short flights looping from the green patches into the abyss and back, waiting for the reaction with a curious eye.

On one side, the rocky exhibit stretches into the ocean, bouncing a couple of times before resting in the water, broken by two majestic openings for the wind to enjoy.

Another parking lot guarded by mean cameras waiting for you to leave without using the payment app… A short walk, and then the parking is forgotten: another waterfall sculpting new colors of stone in a shape we have not seen before, proving that nature invented art before us. As you get closer, water splashes your face and a rainbow splashes your eyes.

The asphalt winds between lunar landscapes of porous boulders with unknown shapes, some seeming to float where light slips underneath them, unreal. Darker, smoother surfaces spooned a little farther contradict the lunar hypothesis; this must be lava… At the horizon, the dark blue waves confirm: still on Earth. After a short ritual through a building of glass, stone, and wood, a wooden board-walk leads to milky-blue waters under mystic steam. Once you dip in, the hot liquid melts your tensions and stress into the light vapor that is gently rising into the heavens. The lagoon is, indeed, blue.

Mornings can be strenuous if the night is not long enough, as the daylight eats away at it the closer you get to the Arctic Circle. Gear goes into the hybrid ready for a new adventure, followed by three vociferous goons never in tune… The cabin tucked between waves of bushes sprinkled with singing birds is left behind.

Winding between valleys, peaks, sea, and sky, the drive is endless but never boring. Charming becomes magic, as the line on the map follows the sea deep into the land, then back out again. As this dance of the elements grows into a symphony for the eye, we are approaching our final destination. With streaks of snow in the distance, the last couple of kilometers get almost treacherous, steep and rocky.

If only the Sun could stay stronger than the clouds…

But the clouds gain ground. The battle is quiet and painful to watch as we wait for the

catharsis…

With half an hour left, the Moon slides between the clouds, eating slices of our star. When half of it is gone, the clouds win, making our trip suddenly seem pointless…

Then the darkness comes, reminding us that we cannot control the miracle, but we can enjoy the show. Long minutes pass; the camera is useless on the tripod…

With magic dimming, we breathe out.

Then the light resurrects, and we breathe in again.

We feel the Flow in our cells, as spectators in nature’s front row.

We look around and rediscover the landscape.

We never saw the sun disappear. We never got the photograph we came for. The unwitnessed miracle is a new kind of miracle.

There is always time for more…

Clic… o poză în Maramureșul copilăriei mele.

Haida, hai la Maramu’, no hai amu’…

Așa cum spun poeții români, am simțit și eu că eternitatea s-a născut la țară, într-o seară liniștită de vară, pe unul din dealurile micuțului sat Drăghia, din județul Maramureș. Eram adolescentă și îmi însoțisem bunica la datul oilor în strungă. Priveam apusul înroșit și simțeam pe obraji prospețimea aerului, în timp ce glasul sătenilor și talăngile oilor mă țineau oarecum ancorată în realitate. Bunicii mei, lelea Elvira și badea Victor a lui Ariton, erau mulțumiți când nepoata de la Cluj participa la astfel de activități. Îmi plăcea mult să calc „fârcituri” ca să pot coborî pe „furcoi” la sfârșit, și în general să ajut la întorsul și strânsul fânului înmiresmat. Dar cel mai mult îmi plăcea să merg cu „ojina” la bunicu’ la coasă, căci așa, toată ziua, străbăteam fără griji dealurile Drăghiei împreună cu verișoarele mele.

Într-adevăr, păstrez în suflet amintiri dragi despre locuri și oameni din Drăghia. Mă văd aievea pe „drumul țării”, adică drumul asfaltat ce trecea prin sat, legându-l de alte sate, unde ne plimbam duminica cu fetele și verișoarele de seama mea; pe „pietrișul” de la intrarea în sat, unde iarna ne dădeam cu săniuța; pe ulițele întortocheate ale satului; și la „căminul cultural”, unde jucam la nunți și baluri. Acordurile ceterii îmi răsună și acum în inimă, peste mări și țări unde nu visam să ajung vreodată, darmite să joc ca în Maramu’... Colindele de Crăciun pe care le cânt și acum le știu din Drăghia, de pe vremea când umblam după colaci din casă în casă, unde întâlneam oameni blânzi și primitori. Desigur, căsuța bunicilor, unde număram puii aurii, poamele și ciupercile înșirate pe ață și lemnele de foc, este un refugiu în sufletul meu.

Biserica, în curtea căreia este înmormântat străbunicul meu și pentru care bunica a făcut multe șterguri, și chiar și biserica veche de lemn sunt folosite și îngrijite de generațiile satului și e uimitor să le văd astăzi pe internet.

Mă simt binecuvântată și privilegiată că am avut bunici țărani, că am copilărit în Maramureș, că am cunoscut un mod de viață ce dispare cu încetul – viața în ritmul naturii, cu grijă pentru oameni și suflet.

English version

Click… and a picture from the Maramureș of my childhood

Come to Maramu’, come now.

As Romanian poets say, I too felt that eternity was born in the countryside, on a quiet summer evening, on one of the hills of the small village of Drăghia, in Maramureș County. I was a teenager and I had accompanied my grandmother to bring the sheep into the pen. I would watch the red sunset and feel the freshness of the air on my cheeks while the voices of the villagers and the bleating of the sheep kept me somewhat anchored in reality. My grandparents, lelea Elvira and badea Victor, were pleased when their granddaughter from Cluj participated in such activities.

I really liked to help build the huge haystacks so that I could slide down on the “furcoi” at the end, and, in general, to play with the fragrant hay. But most of all, I liked to bring food to my grandfather in the fields, because that way I would cross the hills of Drăghia without a worry all day long with my cousins.

Indeed, I keep fond memories of places and people from Maramureș in my heart. I can still see myself on the “country road,” that is, the paved road that passed through the village, connecting it to other villages, where we would walk on Sundays with my cousins and other girls; at the entrance to the village, where we would go sledding in winter; along the winding paths of the village; and at the cultural center, where we would folk dance at weddings and parties village dances.

The sounds of the violin still resonate in my heart, across oceans and countries that I never dreamed of ever reaching, let alone folk dancing like in Maramu’... The Christmas carols that I still sing I learned in Drăghia, when we would go caroling from house to house, where we would meet kind and welcoming people.

Of course, my grandparents’ cottage, where we would count the golden chicks, the apples and mushrooms strung on a thread, and the firewood, is a refuge in my soul. The church, in the courtyard of which my great-grandfather is buried, and for which my grandmother made many embroideries, and even the old wooden church, are used and cared for by generations of the village, and it is amazing to see them on the internet.

I feel blessed and privileged to have had peasant grandparents, to have grown up in Maramureș, and to have known a way of life that is slowly disappearing – life in the rhythm of nature, with care for people and the soul.

“Hmm,” the little right hand points to a spot marked with the least disturbance, save for a couple of shells and a feather sticking out of the sand. I smooth out the ground a little more, sweeping my foot across a broad area before throwing the larger towel into the wind and letting it settle evenly.

Beyond a brief slope, the loose sand becomes dense and compact from the tide; then black, red, brown, and white rocks peek above the sand as the tide breathes. A thin filament of salty foam brushes the crevasses between our toes before fast, cool waves playfully embrace our ankles or calves (or thighs if you’re only 3 feet tall on a good day), then pull you toward them like you’re a dear friend not seen in too long.

I take out a few of the toys – a little green turtle mold, a shovel, a rake, and a yellow bucket – for when he decides to come back and play, but for now, he’s curious about the little treasures revealed by the green seafoam.

My little one is standing on the cool dense sand, observing the way his toes don’t sink deep here like they did above the slope. He’s looking beyond with a sense of wonder and awe I can’t quite comprehend anymore.

“Big wawa!” he yells over the wind and sounds of elements colliding into something magnificent. “Woooow!” His little voice intertwining with the wind, dancing along with it, then carried up and away.

Here they were, these little moments, sharing stories, talking over each other like a band of aunties over a meal. Little rounded rocks of muted earthy tones with the occasional flash of bleached white, bits of sea shells black, grey, and beige – each one another sunny day taken for granted, all of my awkward moments that no one noticed (or remembered) except me, a kind word spoken by a stranger that meant the world at that moment, a genuine laugh at a joke someone should have been arrested for, a sudden release of pressure from the chest after realizing I was indeed going to survive this.

When I was young, this was a place where everything was carried off by the water or torn away by the wind – sometimes where the rain became a quiet absolution that numbed the sting of deep wounds, then purified the cuts so I could keep going.

It’s astounding that a trivial place can do such a thing – allow you to slip through a fine filament to a different world for a little while where time stands still just for you, but keeps going for others, and the voices of the outside world, with all its expectations, are put on hold so you have a moment just to catch your breath. To remind you that your thoughts have a safe place to live and run wild, another little stone, a pattern of pelicans flying overhead, or a distant lifeguard tower serving as totems of this sacred space.

Every moment here lives stratified just beneath the fresh grains of the present one, layered like sediment and appearing as the tide exhales and pulls away.

He’s gathering little fragments, holding them up for me to see, carrying them around for a minute, sorting them into piles, then returning them to the water. Little pieces of my own history written across it were noticed, honored, then released into the world to find peace by these little hands.

I pull my phone out of my pocket, kneel down to get the perfect angle of him looking out towards the water, snap a photo. I’ll probably only go back to look at the photo a handful of times, but this moment has etched itself on a little stone somewhere in the sand.

Recently, I met up with my sister in Lombardy. The first photograph we took together- we had, of course, to send our mother proof that we had found each other - happened to be in front of a roadside shrine.

We expected her usual response, something along the lines of, “I’m happy you found each other!”

Instead, the message that came almost immediately had nothing to do with us.

Mom looked at the shrine.

“It looks like the roadside shrines back home.”

For my mother, “home” meant the villages of Muntenia, her parents’ house in Vulcana Pandele, and her aunt’s house in Brănești.

I asked her what she remembered about those shrines.

They were built by well-to-do people. Sometimes by one family, sometimes several villagers would join together and build one in memory of their parents and ancestors. Or to ask for the Virgin Mary’s goodwill and protection. Or to show their gratitude for what life had given them, or what God, in His great mercy, had given them.

Some of the shrines, however, also carried memories of tragedy. During the strong summer storms, it happened more than once that people who took shelter from the rain inside the shrines were struck by lightning. The community saw these events as punishments from God for things the people who were struck had done, or even for things their ancestors had done.

And how did people know what sin the person was being punished for?

Well, that’s when the discussions about the family’s history would begin. People talked during the three days and three nights of the wake. The discussions usually ended with the funeral.

But what do you remember about these shrines?

Mostly I remember the strong summer storms. Sometimes they caught me on the road between Vulcana and Brănești, between our house and my aunt’s house.

This road comes up again and again in my mother’s stories, for all sorts of strange reasons.

And why did you make that trip so often?

Well, you see, my mother would wake up in the morning and decide she was going to make soap. It annoyed me my entire childhood that she couldn’t prepare for it the day before. She was always missing something, and I had to run off and get it. Usually she was missing salt. Salt was very important. If you didn’t add it at the right moment, the soap would separate.

And then there was the lovage.

We had an enormous lovage plant by the gate. But my mother would pick the whole thing at once instead of leaving some for next time. It would dry up, and once again we had no lovage. So then it was, “Go get some lovage from Auntie Fina.” “Go get some parsley from Auntie Fina.”

And the storms would catch you on these trips?

Yes. Most of the time I would sit down by the side of the road and wait for the storm to calm down a little, so I wouldn’t be a moving target for the lightning. It would never even have crossed my mind to take shelter inside a shrine. The old people said you shouldn’t shelter in a shrine during a storm; tradition said it was a sin. And by then I had also learned some physics, around sixth grade. The old people’s advice and the laws of nature agreed on this one: you don’t hide in a shrine when there’s lightning.

But according to tradition, were the people who took shelter there struck by lightning only if they had sinned?

There is no such thing as a person without sin.

For example, you said you were going to pick parsley from the garden, but instead you went off to play. That’s a sin.

In the world of her childhood, it seems the distance between sin, parsley, and divine punishment could be surprisingly short.

Were you afraid of sin when you were little?

I was afraid of lightning and thunder.

And just like that, from a photograph in a beautiful place, a memory for the future and a thought sent home to our mother, we found ourselves on the road between Brănești and Vulcana Pandele, among roadside shrines, summer storms, stories about the sins of our ancestors, soap that would separate if you didn’t add the salt at the right moment, and the eternal shortage of lovage in a household that, paradoxically, had an enormous lovage plant by the gate.

We sent home a photograph from Lombardy.

Mom sent us back a piece of the Muntenia of her childhood.

*************************************************************************

Romanian, original

Din Lombradia la Brănești

De curând m-am întâlnit în Lombardia cu sora mea. Prima fotografie împreună - trebuia, bineînțeles, să-i trimitem mamei dovada că ne-am găsit - s-a întâmplat să fie în fața unei troițe.

Ne așteptam la răspunsul ei obișnuit, ceva de genul „Mă bucur că v-ați întâlnit și ce frumos vă stă împreună!”

În schimb, mesajul care a venit aproape imediat nu avea nimic de-a face cu noi.

Mama s-a uitat la troita.

“Seamănă foarte mult cu troițele de acasă.”

Pentru mama, „acasă” însemna satele din Muntenia, casa părinților in Vulcana Pandele și casa mătușii din Branesti.

Am întrebat-o ce își amintește despre troițele acelea.

Erau făcute de oameni înstăriți. Uneori de câte o familie, alteori se asociau mai mulți săteni și ridicau o troiță în memoria moșilor și strămoșilor. Sau ca să atragă bunăvoința și ocrotirea Maicii Domnului. Sau ca să-și arate recunoștința pentru ceea ce le oferise viața ori Dumnezeu, în marea Lui milostenie.

Unele troițe păstrau însă și amintirea unor tragedii.

În timpul furtunilor puternice de vară s-a întâmplat de mai multe ori ca oameni care se adăposteau de ploaie în troițe să fie trăsniți. Comunitatea considera asemenea întâmplări pedepse ale lui Dumnezeu pentru fapte săvârșite de cei trăsniți sau chiar pentru fapte săvârșite de strămoșii lor.

Și de unde se știa pentru ce păcat fusese pedepsit omul?

Păi începeau discuțiile despre istoria familiei lui. Se vorbea în cele trei zile și trei nopți de priveghi. Discuțiile se încheiau, de obicei, odată cu înmormântarea.

Dar tu ce-ți amintești despre troițele astea?

Îmi amintesc mai ales furtunile puternice de vară. Mă prindeau uneori pe drumul dintre Vulcana si Branesti, între casa noastră și casa mătușii mele.

Drumul acesta apare de mai multe ori în poveștile mamei, pornind de la cauze care mai de care mai ciudate.

Si de ce făceai atât de des drumul ăsta?

Pai uite, mama se trezea dimineața și se hotăra că face săpun. M-a enervat toată copilăria că nu se pregătea și ea cu o zi înainte. Întotdeauna îi lipsea ceva și eu trebuia să plec fuga-fuga să aduc. De obicei îi lipsea sarea. Sarea era foarte importantă. Dacă nu o puneai la momentul potrivit, se tăia săpunul.

Mai era și leușteanul.

Aveam la poartă o tufă de leuștean cât toate zilele. Numai că mama îl culegea pe tot odată, în loc să mai lase și pentru data viitoare. Se usca și noi iar nu aveam leuștean. Și atunci: „Du-te după leuștean la tanti Fina.” „Du-te după pătrunjel la tanti Fina.”

Și te prindeau furtunile pe drumurile astea?

”Da. De cele mai multe ori ma asezam pe marginea drumului si asteptam sa se mai potoleasca furtuna, să nu fiu o țintă în mers pentru fulgere. Nici prin minte nu mi-ar fi trecut să mă adăpostesc într-o troiță. Bătrânii spuneau că nu trebuie să te adăpostești într-o troiță pe vreme de furtună, tradiția spunea că ar fi păcat. Si mai si învățasem fizică, prin clasa a șasea. Motivația din spatele sfaturilor bătrânilor si legile naturii erau de acord - nu te ascunzi in troita cind fulgera.”

Dar ce spunea traditia, oamenii care se adăposteau acolo erau trăsniți numai dacă aveau păcate?

“Nu există om fără păcat.”

“De examplu, ai mințit că te-ai dus să culegi pătrunjel din grădină, dar tu, de fapt, te-ai dus și te-ai jucat. E pacat”

În lumea copilăriei ei, se pare că distanța dintre păcat, pătrunjel și pedeapsa divină putea fi surprinzător de mică.

Ție îți era frică de păcat când erai mică?

“Îmi era frică de trăsnet și de tunet.”

Si uite asa, dintr-o fotografie intr-un loc frumos, o amintire pentru viitor si un gand pentru mama, am ajuns la drumul dintre Brănești și Vulcana Pandele, troițe, furtuni de vară, poveștile despre păcatele strămoșilor, săpunul care se tăia dacă nu puneai sarea la timp și eterna lipsă de leuștean dintr-o gospodărie care avea, paradoxal, o tufă cât toate zilele.

Noi am trimis acasă o fotografie din Lombardia.

Mama ne-a trimis înapoi o bucată din Muntenia copilăriei ei.

At the end of June, we invited writers to send us flash stories inspired by Liliana Sâmbotin’s Gate of Blossoms. What emerged was a collection of poems and flash stories.

Every writer took the original work of art in a different direction, discovering a world that could only have emerged from that particular meeting between the artwork and the writer. The art piece became several new works of fiction, each independent of the original and yet impossible without it.

That is what art does. While we meet in our appreciation of its beauty, it speaks differently to all of us, allowing us to complete it with everything we have lived, and to feel it in our own special way.

The Gate of Blossoms became a search for truth, a longing for memory, one encounter with loss and unexpected kindness, a meditation on the invitations we choose to refuse, and the ones we choose to follow.

Each writer approached the same blue door carrying different memories and different fears, different questions. The painting remained the same. The worlds they discovered did not.

The challenge may be ending, but the gate is waiting for the next person who pauses long enough to wonder what lies beyond a blue door beneath purple blossoms.

The Truth, by Ariana Pîrvu

Nostalgia, by Catarina Pîrvu

Feeling Blue, by Barbara Fuller

Gate of Blossoms, by Liliana Sâmbotin

Wild Enough, by Diana Sâmbotin

The Vandalist, by Erin Steele

The Door in the Wall Shall Remain Closed, by Ileana Marin

The Stories Behind the Door, by Sanda Berar

Thoughts, Haiku by Camelia Clinciu

The Blue Door, by Zoe Leetch

At the edge of a sleepy village stood a brittle old blue door, set into a crumbling stone wall covered slightly by a breathtaking purple wisteria tree.

The origin of the blue door was a complete mystery to the people of this village. No one knew who had built it. There was no house behind it, only the deteriorating wall, the purple wisteria, and the blue door that had been locked for as long as anyone could remember. Everyone except young Mara had given up on trying to open the door. She had always felt a strong, unexplainable pull towards it.

One hot summer afternoon, on her way home from school, Mara noticed something she’d never noticed before scratched into the wall beside the door. Three tiny drawings stared up at her: a dragon, a crown, and a ship.

Suddenly, Mara felt a pull so powerful she instantly reached for the rusted handle.

To Mara’s surprise, the door opened. Beyond it was not another room, but an endless silver forest beneath two moons. Gorgeous blue fireflies drifted between the sparkling silver trees, and rivers flowed upward into the stars. In the distance stood a castle made of the most beautiful crystals Mara had ever seen, its towers glowing like lanterns.

A small fox wearing a red cloak stepped into view from the cover of the shadows.

“You are late,” it said.

Mara blinked in confusion.

“Late for what?” she asked the fox.

“The choosing”, the fox responded, and with a quick flick of its head, three paths materialised in front of her.

The first led toward the castle. The image of a golden crown placed upon a plush red cushion that sat almost patiently on a throne entered her mind. The image quickly disappeared almost as fast as it came.

She turned her head and looked over at the second path, which disappeared into a disturbingly dark forest, where something formidable lurked between the trees. Mara could feel the hot breath of the monster wrap around her body.

Mara swiftly averted her gaze and turned her head once more to see where the third and final path wound its way towards a glistening, shining blue sea, where the largest ship she had ever seen floated calmly against the swaying waves. Its pearlescent white sails flapped briskly against the wind. The ship was so enormous that Mara had to strain her neck backwards to get the full view of the stunning ship.

“Which one is the right path?” Mara asked the little fox.

The fox tilted its head to the side and gazed up at her in slight wonder.

“There is no right path. Only the one you are brave enough to take.”

Mara looked back at the open blue door.

Home was behind her. But her sheer curiosity soon won the battle in her head as she stepped forward towards this new world. As Mara slowly closed the door behind her, the purple wisteria began to glow. Mara marched on towards this new, enchanting realm filled with determination and didn’t once look back towards that blue door behind her, because honestly? What did she really have to lose.

~ a story by Zoe Leetch, age 14.

There was a door in Ada’s grandparents’ village that no longer belonged to any house.

The house had disappeared long before Ada was born. First the roof collapsed, then one wall, then the other, and after a few years nobody was entirely sure where the yard had ended and the road had begun.

Only the door remained.

Every spring it disappeared beneath purple blossoms.

The tree was one of those trees that seem to take flowering personally, covering itself with so many blooms that within a few days you could no longer see the trunk or the branches, only a violet explosion that appeared to have landed accidentally in the middle of the world.

The door was always closed and that, more than anything else, bothered Ada.

Not because there was anything remarkable on the other side. If she stood a few steps to the left, she could see perfectly well what was behind it: a field, some grass, a path leading toward the creek and, farther away, the first houses at the edge of the village.

And yet the door remained closed.

Every day during the summer she passed it several times. On the way to the well. On the way back from the store when her grandmother sent her to buy bread, yeast, or the small sour candies she pretended not to like. On the way to Tanti Tanta’s house carrying apples, eggs, jars, messages, and occasionally information that seemed far too complicated to trust to a child but was entrusted to her anyway.

Every time she passed the door she wondered what would happen if she opened it.

Not what was behind it, that was clear and visible, but what would happen. These seemed to Ada like two entirely different questions.

That summer she was reading Narnia, and the situation became considerably more complicated.

The fact that she could see a field behind the door no longer proved anything. Books had already established that wardrobes were unreliable, mirrors were suspicious, and ordinary-looking objects frequently concealed entire worlds. There was no reason a blue door in a village in Muntenia should behave more honestly than a wardrobe in England.

For several weeks she became convinced that the field was merely a disguise and the real world would reveal itself only after the door opened.

The difficulty was deciding which world she wanted to uncover.

She considered Narnia itself, it seemed like a promising outcome.

On the other hand, if she opened the door and found herself in the story of the Three Little Pigs, she would be deeply disappointed. The entire story irritated her. Everyone made poor decisions and the ending felt undeserved.

Some fairy tales suffered from similar problems. The handsome prince was rarely the most interesting person in the story and even Ileana Cosânzeana, despite possessing exceptionally beautiful hair, appeared to spend too much time waiting for other people to solve her problems.

Winnetou was more attractive. A Journey Around the World in Eighty Days also had potential. Narnia remained a strong candidate.

The summer passed. Then another one. Then another one. The door remained closed.

Ada continued thinking. She got more and more convinced that choosing the wrong story could have serious consequences. If the door opened into a world she did not like, she might be forced to stay there. Books were strangely vague on this subject.

She decided to wait until she was sure.

Years later she realized that she had never opened the door.

The door, meanwhile, appeared perfectly willing to wait.

Later she wrote down the explanation.

EVERY DOOR LEADS SOMEWHERE.

TECHNICALLY CORRECT.

THE DIFFICULT PART IS DECIDING WHICH STORY YOU ARE ENTERING.

My son and I traveled to Chicago together.

For a few days, we walked the same streets, looked up at the same buildings, ate at the same tables, and collected the same small stories.

Then, at the end of the trip, we went to the airport.

He flew home to Helsinki.

I flew home to Seattle.

There was nothing unusual about it. At least, not for us. Families like ours become fluent in airports. We measure distance in flight times rather than miles. We know how to calculate time differences without looking them up and how to plan visits months ahead. We learn to say, "I'll call you when I land," as naturally as "See you tomorrow."

And yet, somewhere between the airport security line and the two flights carrying us in opposite directions, I found myself thinking about the geography of families.

For a long time, the story of migration seemed to have a fairly simple map. You left one country and made a home in another. The old country remained behind, the new country grew around you, and somewhere between the two, you tried to preserve the language, traditions, and values you hoped your children would carry forward.

But what happens when the family no longer has one place it simply calls home?

Children grow up and build lives in countries their parents eventually leave. Brothers and sisters settle on different continents. Grandparents remain in Romania. Cousins speak to each other from time zones eight or ten hours apart. We gather in Cluj, Helsinki, Seattle, Edinburgh, or sometimes in a city like Chicago that belongs to none of us. Then we return home, except home is no longer the same place for everyone.

The map keeps changing.

Maps tell us where a family is.

They don’t tell us how a family is.

What deserves our attention isn’t where our families live, but what still makes them feel like family.

Part of the answer is easy to see. We share a language, memories and traditions. We make a conscious effort to keep those alive because they help us remember where we come from.

But the things that make us a family are often more subtle.

They live in the way we tease one another, in the silences that don't need filling, in what we consider rude or polite, or how long we linger at a table after the meal is over. They are there in the flavors we search for in unfamiliar cities, in stories that grow richer with every retelling, and in laughter that begins before the punchline because everyone already knows what's coming. Sometimes they might even appear in that stubborn instinct to send someone away with food, regardless of how many restaurants, grocery stores, or airports stand between here and their next meal.

Our children may carry these things into lives very different from ours. They may speak several languages, build families whose maps are even more complicated, and be shaped by every place they call home. Romania will be one of those places, even if it is no longer the only one. They may never know where one influence ends and another begins.

Perhaps they don’t need to.

Perhaps this is another place where culture lives.

Not only in the things we deliberately preserve, but in the rhythms of family, in habits that no one remembers teaching, in ways of welcoming, worrying, laughing, celebrating, and saying goodbye.

Romania is present in those rhythms, even when our homes are scattered across the world.

At the airport in Chicago, my son and I went home in different directions.

But for families scattered across countries, home is no longer where we meet. Home is who recognizes us when we arrive.

So whenever I face a door, I wait. I let someone else go in or out, then study their features, their clothes—though I know the proverb about clothes revealing nothing—and even the spring in their walk. Most of the time, I decide to stay on my side. No risk of betrayal is a risk well taken: no risk, no betrayal; no risk, no challenge; no risk… who cares.

But this door is different. It’s guarded by a crawling ivy of violet glass shards. The blue door itself is fragile, breakable, whispering a different kind of invitation: break me. Be the villain for once. I feel stronger than whatever lies behind a glass door. The glass ivy is spreading fast; soon it will cover the whole wall. I will be the only one who knows that there was ever a door in the wall. I will walk alone down the street, pass the hidden entrance, and feel confident that I made the right choice:
I did not open the door; I did not need to! What I should do now is mark
Liliana’s glass door with graffiti and finish Magritte’s Unexpected Answer with a shard from hers.

Rene Magritte’s Unexpected Answer, 1933

The shock of turquoise attacked her eyes when she turned the same corner she took every day on the way to work. She was used to the peeling plaster, the little weeds that lined the creases between the building and the dusty ground – hell, even the brick that shamelessly exposed itself and the stubborn weed that she promised herself six months ago that she would spray next weekend became commonplace. But this… this was atrocious.

The door was always white. Well, recently it was white with streaks of brown where paint had flaked and yellow where it hung on for dear life and weathered. She would paint it white again next weekend but she loved those little nooks and crannies that formed from afar. But this… it was painted over inconsistently in a suspicious tone of blue and green.

Down the street, splashes of turquoise, blues and greens dotted bits of the old street’s fondest memories – windowpanes, benches, clay roof tiles, storm drains, planters. It’s Friday and as wandering travelers from near and far trickled into the town’s bed and breakfasts, someone who believed they were more creatively talented than others thought it would be best to “elevate the aesthetic” of the quiet town without notice. No one who lived here actually knew who that person was, but they sure as hell wanted to find out now. And this… This was vandalism.

Her cheeks warmed and reddened. The door was always open, with the orchestra of tools at work by the hands of the very first man who loved her and whom she loved back with everything.

Her mind swam in a flood of memories of endless summers playing on the floor of the little workshop with her toys strewn about, the humming of old tunes, her father’s hands working quickly on delicate things like clocks, locks, and jewelry. Sometimes he would tell her stories about families who grew old in the town, sometimes stories about those who left one day to never return. But one day, a dragon snuck into their home and into her father’s body. It injected venomous pain into his legs so he could barely make it up the tall step. Then it took his eyesight and focus. Later, it twisted its claws around his body and dragged him into bed, holding him there until he was too tired to fight any longer. Then one day, holding her hand in his, he left town too.

But not her. She would stay here and flake and weather and peel apart until there was nothing left.

“Because there is nothing left,” she said quietly.

The turquoise, blue, green, whatever it was, had started to settle behind her eyes like a slowly pulsing promise. Glints of purple caught her eye – someone manicured and shaped the weed, now elegantly stretching upward and over, framing the door and adding a touch of mystery. For the tourists, of course.

She took two cautious steps forward as it beckoned to her again. “Look,” the door said. “Someone else came and made me beautiful.”

A deep inhale that caused her sternum to pop. Then another step forward until her toe almost grazed the tall step, greeting it like an old friend.

Somewhere behind the door, she was sure she had left a few building blocks and a beloved plush giraffe to watch over the orders her father had to finish.

She placed trembling fingers on the small knobs. It was probably time to take them home.

July has arrived, and with it comes that familiar feeling that life slows down just enough for us to notice the things we usually rush past.

Some of us will travel. Some will return to Romania for a few weeks. Some will spend their days listening to the waves of an ocean or a sea, others will hike mountain trails, wander through museums, explore unfamiliar streets, enjoy evenings on a porch with family, or simply find a quiet afternoon with a good book.

Summer has a way of collecting moments we don’t expect to keep.

A handwritten menu tucked inside a book. An old church bell at noon. A tiny museum no one told you about. The smell of pine after rain. A conversation on a train. A bakery you wish existed back home.

If you find one of those moments this summer, don’t let it disappear.

Share the street you couldn't stop photographing. Tell us about the book you couldn't put down. Introduce us to the café you'll remember long after you've forgotten its name, or the place that made you pause, smile, or feel unexpectedly at home.

We can’t wait to see what this summer brings back with you.

Happy summer from all of us at ARCS!

May it be filled with good books, unexpected conversations, beautiful discoveries, and moments you’ll want to remember long after the season has passed!

Send your story to: sanda.berar@arcsproject.org. We’ll select a number of submissions to publish in the ARCS Journal throughout the fall.

No one planted them.

That’s the thing people forget, or maybe never knew. They simply appeared one spring, the way certain things do - without permission, without explanation. A tendril at first, cautious and thin. Then two. Then the whole cascading rush of purple reaching across the stone, unhurried and certain.

The door came later. Or perhaps the door was always there and the blossoms simply decided, in their own time, to find it.

They grew through drought and through rain, through summers that bleached the wall to pale gold and winters that should have finished them. They didn’t ask about any of that. They moved the way water moves. Not toward anything in particular, just forward, just because forward was available.

People have tried to explain them over the years. A seed carried by a bird. A root no one thought to trace. But the blossoms were never interested in being explained. They just kept going, quiet and unhurried, the way things go when no one is expecting anything of them.

They don’t belong to anyone. They don’t mourn anyone. They grow because growing is what they do, reaching toward the turquoise the way any living thing reaches toward something bright. Not out of longing. Just out of habit, or instinct, or something that has no name yet.

The wall crumbles a little more each year, old brick showing through in patches like the building is slowly remembering what it was made of. The blossoms don’t notice. They were here before the door. They will be here after.

She had tended this garden for over forty years, long enough to know roses bloom whether you’re watching or not.

She checked them for the second time that morning, straightening a stem that didn’t need straightening. The purple tree by the gate was in full bloom, as it always was when her daughter came home. The sun was still high. There was still time.

Inside, the soup was on the stove and the cherry pie was in the oven, filling the house with something that smelled like every summer at once. She stirred the pot and added another pinch of salt; her daughter’s preference, memorized decades ago. It wasn’t the first time she’d waited like this. In the college years she’d done the same, knowing the train would deliver her back by evening. The distance then had a size she could hold in her mind.

Now there was an ocean between them.

She went back to the garden. Then, a low hum above the rooftops. She looked up, shielding her eyes.

Cannot be. Not yet.

She watched the airplane until it disappeared.

The call came before the sun went down.

The pie cooled on the counter. No one cut it. Outside, the roses were still in bloom: indifferent, perfect, unbothered by what the day had taken. She had checked on them three times.

The blue door stayed closed.

The neighbors said the roses had never bloomed so fully as they did that year. She had whispered to them all spring, the way she whispered to everything she loved: gently, persistently, without asking anything in return.

The purple tree would bloom again next year. It always did. It didn’t know how to do anything else.

The blue door opened again, not for her, but because of her. Some gates never truly close. They live on in the hearts of those who once passed through them, carrying her legacy into a world she taught to bloom.

Its beauty caught my eye immediately. I had been walking for a while through a historical, walled neighborhood looking for just the right color. I would often drive the few miles away, sometimes, just to walk my dog and admire the old landscapes. Jacarandas and crape myrtle dotted the sidewalks. Ferns and fuchsias brushed together below them making rhythm as we walked. My house was a fixer-upper, and I had spent everything I’d had to buy it. Resources were limited for updating anything costing even the smallest amount of money. I knew that painting my front door was an affordable way to give this new love a boost.

Despite being a bit worn, this door in the brick wall still radiated, embraced by a dripping wisteria. Deciding to take a picture, I held up my cell phone, about to point and press. The door began to open. My face began to blush.

An old man was standing there looking back at me. I continued to watch him through my phone screen. I hesitated for a few seconds before bringing it down. “Hello,” I said, “I’m Sorry; I was just trying to help to remember this beautiful color. It’s lovely. Do you happen to know the brand and name of the paint?” He continued to stare, saying nothing. My face continued its journey to turning crimson. I recognized and knew well the feeling without needing a mirror. Like a bad friend, it had always given me away.

It felt like an entire minute before he spoke. “I don’t know the name. My wife painted it.” I knew it was rude to take the shot, but I was desperate to know the name. I lived two towns over and felt it far enough away to avoid looking repeated in the neighborhood. I am a hypocrite. I detest a copycat, but it came in handy this time. I glanced at the color again. Memories flashed through my head.

I am a child at the beach in Mexico with my family. My brother is standing next to me on a cliff. We held hard to the rail, both of us looking down at the ominous waves swirling against the cliff rocks. It was magnificent! This aqua blue color, and everything accompanying it, I had never experienced before. It floated me away. The briny air and relentless cacophony of the waves was magical to this 9-year-old. My brother, soon bored, walked away. I stayed until summoned by my parents. I couldn’t stop looking below into the sea at those jewel-like tones of blue, watching it vary in richness with the changing depths, at once shifting this mystical color from the blues of midnight to the blues of daylight.

“Is she around? Maybe I can ask her about it?” I pushed.

“Well, she sure was the gussy-upper around here! My job was just to bring home the bacon!” he laughed, his eyes twinkling. “No. She isn’t here. She passed away last September. Give me a minute. I’ll go and poke around the garage a bit and see if I can find the can.” My heart sank for him. “Oh no! That’s okay.” I started, but the back of his grey head was long heading away from me. I stood awkwardly staring at the vacant threshold, feeling ashamed.

The memory with my brother was stirring in the undercurrent of my thoughts. He, too, had since passed, and with time I found my memories of him returned more and more often. I started to weep but pushed the tears back with the approaching footsteps. The old man reached out his weathered hand which held the can with the paint I’d wanted. Even the long-dried drips in a frozen fall still shone sapphire. At his suggestion, I took a shot of the text on the can.

“Thank you. I really appreciate that. It means a lot to me.” With relief, I felt the blush starting to fade. He looked through me for a few seconds with recognition.

“It means a lot to me, too. Have a good day.” He looked at me and with a knowing wink and a thoughtful smile, he closed the door.

They say everyone will eventually go through it.

Some walk, some run. Some arrive out of breath-desperately searching for something they cannot name.

It is always there.

The azure kissed door tucked beneath a cascade of lush, sun-washed blossom lilacs.

People come here for different reasons.

A personal reason.

For love.

For heartbreak.

For healing.

For a quiet hope to remember a trusted emotion and touch a fading memory.

Running barefoot through the violet lit field of grass, I reach the door entrance for what feels like the hundredth time.

The aquamarine hue of its exterior reminds me of peace, complimented beautifully by the surrounding heliotrope blossoms of first love and innocence.

Laughter. Tranquility. Reminiscence. Memory.

Why so many knock at this door remains a mystery. But it is said that when opened, the mind experiences quiet clarity and peace enveloped by emotions inexplicable by words. Nostalgia.

By now, this door feels like a second home.

Welcoming me for the hundredth time, I eagerly await the feelings of bittersweet melancholy that I know will soon precede.

Nostalgia.

This door has seen me walk, run, and sprint through its threshold, rekindling emotions that remain unseen by anyone else.

I have walked through this door for a chance to remember a time where I felt truly untouchable. Proud.

I have run through this door for a chance to bring him back to me, to cling to the version of intimacy that once made me feel chosen. Loved.

I have sprinted through this door for a chance to never forget the one thing I am most afraid of losing. Myself.

My pull to this door only expands as I grow older, experience gathers, and feelings accumulate. I find myself running desperately to its entrance for comfort whenever the cruel fear of forgetting comes too close.

The entrance never fails to steady me.

It isn’t the blue honey frame that holds my memories together.

But the very threshold itself- the very place where nostalgia gathers and reminds me of who I am.