Nicole Sheets stays still long enough to put down roots good for the soul in Moldova
Staying still long enough to put down roots good for the soul
By NICOLE SHEETS - Moldova column
In Moldova the grapes are ripe, and village schools often release students for a week or two, allowing them to work in the vineyards. (My Peace Corps friends were shocked when I told them that a similar thing happens sometimes in West Virginia, only the break is for deer hunting, not grape harvesting.)
Early last month I went to the village Mitoc for my host brother Sasha’s 18th birthday. The air was sun-filled with an autumnal chill around the edges. We took some photographs outside under the grapevines, and I was struck by how things change: the newlyweds Abbie (the other American "daughter" of this family) and her husband, Sergiu, stood together in the back row of the picture. Oleg, a friend of the family, was here last year but now, like many other Moldovans, is working abroad. Andrea, his pumpkin of a daughter, can carry on a jumpy conversation (Q: Where is daddy? A: In Belgium. Q: What is he doing? A. Making money. Q. Where is Uncle Dima? A. In Italy. …).
At Sasha’s party, I also noticed two new puppies chewing my shoes on the doorstep.
"Whose are these?," I asked.
"Frida’s," my host sister answered.
I couldn’t believe it; Frida was a puppy herself when I arrived here.
In my second year as a volunteer, time seems to pick up speed. When I first saw the 2003-2004 calendar stuck to the kitchen wall of the Mitoc house, the weeks lined up in orderly columns, like so many rows of cabbage for me to plod through. Now those cabbages vanish in great bunches, the seasons falling away. I’m starting to take more photographs, to fill my calendar so as not to lose the time.
Recently my Romanian tutor brought me a dialog to read from a children’s book, a conversation between a bird and his friend. The friend tries to persuade the bird not to leave for winter, but the little bird says he must go with his sisters and promises to return next spring. Pasarea calatoare, a migrating bird, appears in a lot of Moldovan verse, my tutor said.
I, too, imagine myself to be a bird on the move. But here as I see the kids and families grow, the grapes and gardens grow, as I become more entwined in the lives of people I care for, I realize it’s good to stay in one place for awhile.
Nicole Sheets is a Barboursville native and Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova. Her e-mail address is moldovanicole@yahoo.com. Her column appears on the Life page the first Sunday of each month.
