Category Archives: Contemplations

Sense of smell as time travelling machine

May 27, 2014Contemplations, Discoveries, Memoriesvica

I am amazed again and again about the dimensions with which we can percept the world. We can see, we can touch, we can hear (maybe not always listening), we can taste and we can smell. We can also feel the world in many other ways too, outside of what is considered to be traditional five senses. But even the five already blow my mind how they provide us with five dimensions (four additional to the three of vision) to experience the world around us. Simply amazing!

Every living being has one or more leading senses. My father had incredible strength of vision. Once as we were driving on a not illuminated road in Algeria in the middle of night, he suddenly stopped the car on the side lane, walked out of the car and went some distance so that my Mom and I lost him out of sight. He came back holding a black umbrella, which we brought back with us to Moldova and which we used for many years to come. We still keep wondering how he could have seen a black umbrella in the middle of the night.

My sister’s hearing sense is close to miraculous. When I was a kid, I hated it, because she could hear every single complain I had about her to my Mom. And I loved complaining. I will not exaggerate too much saying that my sister can hear through walls and closed doors without any intention and without any special tools. I was not the only one not liking it. Her students were not quite comfortable with it either. They had no chance to gossip behind her back during her lectures. But ultimately, they didn’t have to. They loved her too much. She still stays in contact with quite a few of them after so many years.

My mother has also a good vision, but more in a photographic sense. I remember when we went sightseeing in a town we had never been before. On our way back to the holiday apartment my Mom found the way immediately, while my sister and I argued which turn to take.

My niece is brilliant in hearing and listening. She and also my husband are the masters in concentrating on a task at hand and focusing. I am still to find out what my son’s leading sense is. Right now, it looks like all five. Or more.

I’ve been blessed with a sharp sense of smell. When I tell this to somebody, many start wrinkling their noses sympathizing with me having to experience the bad smells stronger than others. The interesting thing is, I don’t remember having been shocked by some really bad smells. I surely disliked one or another, but those that remained in my memory are all about wonderful experiences.

And the best thing about these smelling highlights is that they transport me into the world of wonderful experiences I have made long time ago.

I probably won’t be unique to say that I used to suppress my past and tried to negate it in one or another way. I used to think that after my father’s death most of it was negative. But my top three smelling experiences I have had after leaving Moldova have proven to me that the time after my father’s death was full of many wonderful memories about it and that not all in the “Soviet times” was that bad.

Sicily, summer 2007. My husband and I had spent that summer vacation in Sicily. One of the highlights of our vacation was the eruption of Etna on our last evening there. We were watching it from a safe distance from the hotel terrace and calling our families who were watching it through a live-cam on the Internet. Another memory is connected to the taste senses, when we walked into a small pizzeria on top of one of the mountains outside of Taormina and the owner of this little business has served us the simplest but most amazing dishes we have ever tasted. Dipping fresh bread into olive oil was like a beautiful song.

The highlight connected to my sense of smell happened when we walked along one of the old narrow streets of Taormina, which we did quite often during that vacation. At some point I told to Michael: “Wow, can you smell it?”

“No. What?”

“Freshly cooked tomato sauce with fried onions! Can’t you really smell it? It’s so strong!”

“No, I can’t.”

After walking about twenty meters, Michael said: “Now that you say it, I can feel something, but it’s quite weak.”

I was in awe that I could experience this wonderful aroma from the very beginning to the end of the long street. I sighed with pleasure and said: “Just like my Mom used to do!”

It was the year before my sister, my niece, my husband and I, and a bit later my mother moved to Denmark and my closest family was reunited again after twelve years apart. Since 2008 I could taste many meals with that famous sauce from my Mom.

Darmstadt, Germany, Fall 2000. Indian restaurant. I worked as a post-doctoral assistant at the Technical University Darmstadt during that time. One of our guest PhD students from India has recommended me an Indian Restaurant in Darmstadt, the meal in which, he claimed, tasted just like at his home in India. He said that usually the Indian restaurants outside of India were often very different from what they were at home. But this one had the flair and the meals just like in India, where to locals would go, not the tourists. My colleagues and I were intrigued. So we went there.

When I entered through the door, I was struck by both vision and smell memories. It wasn’t the smell of a particular meal. It was an overall smell of the room. And the hand-woven carpets and rugs lying on the floors confirmed what place I had been reminded of. This restaurant smelled and felt exactly as the houses of my relatives in the villages around fifty kilometers away from the capital we lived in. When we couldn’t go on vacation, my mother sent me to my great-aunt for a couple of weeks. Or we went to the village and the house my mother grew up.

I somehow thought that I didn’t like those times because I always thought of myself as a city girl. But being transported from the Indian restaurant to those places, made me remember that there were wonderful experiences with animals our relatives had, with flowers, picking cherries in summer, getting warm near the old stoves in winter. And walk over all those hand-woven carpets and rugs. Simply wonderful.

Outskirts of Bonn, Germany, Spring 2005/2006. Bonn and its surroundings offer a lot of great hiking routes and Michael and I used to hike many times there just the two of us and with friends. On one of the hiking tours with our friends I caught up a familiar but long forgotten smell. I stopped, turned around. And saw them. Rose bushes! Tall bushes with gigantic light pink flowers open completely to the sun, showing their yellow middle to the world. These were tea roses. You would not usually find them in a flower shop. They are not quite suitable for bouquets and flower arrangements. These flowers are used for perfumery, medicine. And in Moldova they are also used by many in baking and in confectionary.

I ran to those bushes and called all the friends who were with us and made them smell. “This is the true smell of a rose! Not the one you buy in a shop. Smell it! Smell it!”

All girls on the tour joined me and agreed. They loved it. “But how do you know?”

“Ah!” I was thrilled to be able to share one of my childhood stories. “The students at the Universities and sometimes the students finishing the ten classes, equivalent to high school, were taken to collective farms to help with the harvest. While at school, I remember two such harvesting trips. One was to gather apples. And the other was to gather petals of tea roses.”

We had to gather baskets full of petals and we had to be very careful with them, in order not to damage them. Therefore the work had to be done with bare hands. We ended up with many scratches. But I was simply bathing in that wonderful tea rose aroma. It was like from the little rose oil bottle my Mom got as a present, but was much more gentle and embracing.

The boys first protested doing this and claimed it to be girly work, but later were taken by the competition who could gather the most baskets in the shortest time. I don’t think I managed to finish one.

All these experiences and many other have transported me to the time after my father died and reminded me of wonderful times I have had with my family, relatives and friends, while growing up. I am in pure wonder of the way how fast and how exact the sense of smell leads me to the exact memory in a flash. Immediately with a wonderful experience I am transported into time and space of my childhood or my teenager time. There is not a glimpse of thinking or wondering where I could have experienced it. It is just immediately clear. And all I can think is: “Wow! That is wonderful and what I have experienced is so amazing and uplifting.”

Whatever your favorite and leading sense is: let it transport you to the wonderful times and moments, I am sure, you have experienced in your past. Past is not something to worry about that it could repeat itself. It is something to include, to take pride and pleasure in. It led to where you are today. To the beautiful moment of now.

What was your latest time travel to your past?

Pictures: With my strong sense of smell I simply devour flowers. You can find me quite often with my nose poked into a flower, however strong and dizzying its odor might be. I can’t get enough! A clematis in my parents-in-law backyard, Germany, and a young rhododendron bush at the zoo, Aalborg, Denmark.

You don’t need exact words to make yourself understood

May 20, 2014A mother's diary, Contemplations, Discoveries, Memoriesvica

We often evaluate what we have said, sometimes long after the listeners have forgotten what we were talking about. And we judge ourselves for the word choice.

My son reminded me last week how sweet “the wrong use of words” can be and how much fun playing with words is.

One of the wonderful memories in this respect is connected for me with teaching English to beginners. One of the courses I taught was at a large hotel in the center of Moldovan capital, Chisinau. The staff of the hotel had to learn English, and their abilities to talk English at the end of the course would determine how secure their jobs there would be. More and more foreigners were staying at this hotel and English skills were essential. All of my students were elder than me, some of them close to my age but most of them at least two times my age at that time, which was beginning of my twenties.

One of the assignments I gave to my students was to describe their homes. And one of the students, who was a bit more advanced than others, but wasn’t trusting herself in this, made a wonderful description of her home. She used some beautiful details describing colors and shapes in various rooms. She was truly in the moment and thinking in English. I knew this as soon as she named kitchen “cooking room” without realizing it. It was just a logic thing to say. She didn’t even stop to search for the “right” word. She just said: “cooking room”.

I loved that and pointed this out to her when it was time for me to evaluate her presentation. I was touched how proud she was to realize that she could think in a foreign language and make herself understood even if she didn’t have all the words “at her hand”.

My son reminded me last Friday of this wonderful encounter. He, my husband, my mother, who lives close to us, and I went to an adventure park not far from the city we live in. It was a bank holiday and we enjoyed sunny and warm weather. Shortly before the park closed we re-discovered the airplane carousel, which my son enjoyed last year. So, we hurried to test it again. Moms and Dads were allowed to join in one of the two seats on an airplane. Niklas asked me to fly with him. I agreed.

Immediately after that I got some instructions. Niklas has forbidden me to touch the handle that makes the plane goes up or down as it circles with the merry-go-round. He claimed the handle for himself. I happily agreed and called him captain. He loved this and took on this role immediately.

More instructions followed. Niklas has pointed to his tummy and said: “You must not sit here in front of me,” and pointing to his back he added, “But here in front of me”.

I had a big smile on my face and such a wave of warmth at the sweetness of this sentence. It was perfectly clear that I was supposed to sit behind him.

These sweet encounters and realization, that a “wrong use” of a language could be sometimes more fun, allowed me to dare to write in a language of countries, which I visited only briefly, but which I deeply respect and language of which I love and cherish. Help and support from my friends who are native speakers in English is absolutely inspiring and encouraging.

Just the day after my sweet experience with my son, my writing teacher, dear friend and a wonderful author, Menna van Praag, has praised my fellow students from Germany and me on our English skills. It was at one of her monthly writing seminars, which I immensely enjoy and at which I learn a lot. She liked the way I structured sentences to enhance the emotion and feeling in a scene. And she praised me on my word choice. One example made me smile. I have written the following paragraph searching for reasons of the feelings the main character has for his fellow student at the university:

“One of the reasons may lie in her constant merriness. And carelessness. People around her often appear grim and unhappy in contrast to her smile and lightness. All troubles of the world seem to pearl up and flow off her like heavy raindrops on a windowpane. I forget my worries with her.”

Menna’s comment to this was: “Lovely structure. I don’t know the expression “pearl up” do you mean “peel off” or is it a new one on me? :)”

I tried to figure out where I first heard the expression “pearl up”. I couldn’t come up with the exact source. It might be from my time and interest in semiconductor and material science. I read an article long time ago about so-called lotus effect, which allows the lotus leaves to always appear clean and free of dirt and water stains. A very specific structure of the leaf surface does not allow water to adhere to it. Water gathers in large drops, reminding me of “pearls”, and carries the dirt rolling off the leaves. This inspired some of the car building companies to create similar surface structure on the wind-shields, so that they would remain clean and needed less washing, which in turn would save water consumption.

I don’t know if I will keep the expression “pearl up” in my novel or not, but the smiley from Menna strengthened me in my will to continue writing and playing with words in this language, which doesn’t feel that foreign to me anymore.

And the mother tongue of my son is German, which is theoretically foreign to me, since my mother tongue is Romanian, but not foreign to my heart.

Wishing all, who read this, joy in using whatever language you wish, whether the one you were born into or chose to speak or write in!

Picture: On the way home.

What is it about being understood?

April 28, 2014Contemplations, Discoveries, Memories, True Storyvica

My father made once the following note:

Translated it says:

“What is happiness?
What does it mean to be happy?
Happiness it is when you are understood!”

I don’t know, whether this was said by someone else or whether these were his own words. But one way or another, this note reveals what my father thought about meaning of happiness.

In connection to the novel I write about my father, I read, re-read and research books and material that bring me closer to the world he lived in, when he was looking for his family.

He and my mother gave us a wonderful family and I feel closer to them when I do the research and try to “time travel” into the early sixties and before that, and imagine the streets he walked, the books he read and the radio programs he listened to.

We listened a lot to the radio when I was small. To the music and different radio programs. I will always remember, as when I was with my mother and my father in Algeria, I eagerly waited and then listened excitedly to a greeting from my sister transmitted in a radio show from Moscow, where my sister stayed at a boarding school.

One radio program my father listened to, when he was young, was “Find a Person” hosted by the radio station “Mayak” (meaning Lighthouse). This program was moderated by the famous Russian children poet Agniya Barto, who used to work at an orphanage during 1960s.

She wrote a book with the same title, “Find a Person”. This book is based on the experiences she made during the World War II, in her work at the orphanage, as a poet and during the work on the radio program. My father gave this book to my sister as a gift.

I read this book as a teenager, and today, I discover it anew. In contrast to the first read, I don’t read the book at once. I read one story at a time, savor the story by reminiscing it and by thinking about all those families, who were separated during the World War II and who could find each other thanks to this program.

My father, encouraged by my mother, also wrote to Agniya Barto and her colleagues at the radio. The radio program and my father’s search are prominently featured in the book, I am writing.

One of the stories in the book “Find a Person” is about being understood.

Along with other writers and poets, Agniya Barto was invited to participate at a literary festival taking place in the capital of the former Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, today Armenia.

During this trip to Erevan, Agniya Barto was asked to give a speech at a train station. This speech was going to be transmitted on the radio. She had only one night for preparations and when they arrived, she discovered that she had to perform in front of hundreds of people.

After the speech, she asked Alexander Fadeev, who asked her to do the speech, whether he thought that the audience liked what she said. She hoped they did, because they clapped and cheered when she finished.

The answer was surprising and rather shocking for her. Alexander Fadeev said: “They did like it a lot, but they probably didn’t understand a thing. Because most of them don’t speak any Russian!”

With hurt feelings, Agniya asked Alexander why he didn’t warn her about this before the speech.

With a hearty laugh, he said: “Because, if you wouldn’t believe in having been understood, then you wouldn’t be able to speak from the heart.”

Wow, what a beautiful amendment to my father’s note!

All we need to do to be happy is to believe, be present and do whatever we do by putting our whole heart and soul into it. And by this, we can inspire others and make them happy, whether they understand our language or not.

The way to understanding goes through our hearts.

Everyone’s perfect

April 23, 2014Contemplations, Discoveriesvica

“The perfect human being is uninteresting. … It is the imperfections of life that are lovable. … Perfection is a bore, it’s inhuman. … the imperfection, striving, living … that’s what’s lovable.” Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth (discovered in Creating Unforgettable Characters by Linda Seger).

I like this quote very much. But I admit that we all strive for some kind of perfectness. Or “good enough” as we sometimes put it in order not to be blamed being a perfectionist.

Perfect according Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary is among other “having everything that is necessary; complete and without faults or weaknesses” or “the best of its kind”. In this Learner’s Dictionary, there are seven definitions of perfect. And my guess is that there are many more in various other dictionaries and thesauri.

I had the most wonderful Easter holidays this year. I can say they were perfect. But not because I liked everything or everyone that came my way all the time. Far from it. I had my share of upsets and happened to be angry at least once.

But what was wonderful is that I was more and more aware of what was happening around me and inside me, without judgment, and discovered novelty and the wonder of the current moment.

This is what is truly perfect: the novelty of a moment.

I realized that as soon as I am here in a given moment and discover the novelty of this particular moment, as soon as I say “Wow!” it appears perfect to me. And I suspect I am not alone in this.

To anyone who reads this: have a perfect day full of discoveries at the very place and in the very moment where you are!

Picture: when I saw these trees, close to where I live, being surrounded by flowers, I said “Wow!” and took this picture.

A laundry picnic

April 7, 2014A mother's diary, Contemplations, Discoveriesvica

Several months ago, I have written in this blog that my son didn’t like tidying up.

This has changed. He doesn’t throw things on the floor anymore but puts them into boxes or onto the tables. I had to take one of his socks off the dining table today.

He also started to be appalled when we spill his toys on the floor in order to find one particular toy. Or he gasps and laughs afterwards.

This is the way Niklas tidied up last Saturday. He took an empty laundry basket, put it in the middle of our living room, which is also his playroom today, and piled various toys in it, so that the toy-tower was taller than him. Looking at his creation he said proudly: “Now I have tidied up!” I had to explain myself to him when I started to un-pile the tower and put the toys on racks and into boxes at the end of the day.

On the same day, I was folding up our washed and dried clothes as I recalled several occasions, on which I did this before. On some of them, I was in hurry and folded up the clean clothes and linen while standing in our master bedroom between the bed and the closet and trying to finish the task as fast as possible. I didn’t enjoy those. On other times and this time as well, I sat on my cover as one would sit on a picnic blanket and played memory while folding up the socks. I had fun. And I came up with a fun name for my new hobby. A laundry picnic.

The experiences on this day made me realize that we humans are not only complaining or seeing the things we usually enjoy sometimes as a burden, of what we often accuse ourselves in. I realized that we are definitely able to turn the activities, we might not have liked before, into a hobby.

When did you have your last laundry picnic?

Picture: Our window sill tidied up by Niklas.