We exchanged earrings in B52 one Sunday morning over Cuba Libre and so began the most outdoor romantic involvement in my life. The setting couldn't have been more appropriate: Bucharest in spring, when the air smells like rain but there's not a cloud in sight, countless parks and gardens and hidden terraces. It was pure bliss while it lasted, but by the end of May it was more than obvious that it couldn't last much longer. It felt as if there were no words left to say, as if we he said them all. We broke up on my birthday and all I remember from that last time we met is my green silk scarf, the awkwardness of the moment, his hand holding mine on the way to the bus stop and the ladybird.
Perhaps the timing wasn't right or we were too young or spring simply isn't the best season for me when it comes to matters of the heart. Then summer came and even though it wasn't a summer to remember, like the incredibly long, hot and eventful summer of 2001, it is safe to assume that it was probably the fastest way to full recovery.
Every once in a while all the stuffed animals, jewelry, vinyl discs, dried flowers, souvenirs collected from flea markets and other trifles, traces of more or less disastruous relationships, end up in a box that spends a few weeks under my bed and eventually vanishes into oblivion. I only keep books, because fiction tends to take a life of its own shortly after it ends up on my shelf, no matter how it ends up there. If it's good, it stays. Luckily, most of the men in my life had very good taste in literature.
The ladybird is the only present I kept over the years. At first because I couldn't let go, later because I kept wondering what it could have been like, under different circumstances, with better timing and lately because it became a much needed reminder of those innocent and amazing years when things only seemed complicated but were in fact simple, honest and unproblematic.
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