Barefoot In The Grass

I think many people know, they have seen the play or the movie Barefoot In The Park. In fact, when I think that the play was written by Neil Simon in 1963 and the movie came out in 1967, I'm beginning to think that not that many people remember and most of you weren't even born in those years. A film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Young, wonderful! A boulevard comedy in the unmistakable Neil Simon style.

Today's story has only a very slight connection to what I said above. When I arrived, after a long hiatus, in the hills of my childhood, I remembered the film, took off my shoes and ran through the grass. Barefoot Through The Grass! The year the play was written I was a free kid, spending most of my day on these hills, in this grass or perched in trees. Freedom! Freedom that I didn't notice then and that I now regret.

Nostalgia

When you say childhood you automatically say nostalgia. I don't think there's anyone who doesn't have that feeling when they think of childhood. My childhood was for ten years in these places, mostly in the grass that I now run through barefoot, to feel it better, to miss it, to keep it alive in my memory.

Summer Holidays

After those first ten years of my life spent here in the country, at my grandparents, actually only at my grandmother's because my grandfather died in the Second World War and I never knew him. There followed another five or six years when I came only in the summer, during the long summer holidays. Still in the fields and hills, still in the grass, all my friends played. I was already the one from the city and my old friends somehow looked at me differently, the break was starting to be felt.

The Green Tunnel

After graduating from school, life in the city took over me completely. The hustle and bustle of the city, the shows, the fast-paced life made me forget about the green sea so far away. Only one short trip of three days maximum a year, to see the ever-aging grandmother. That's all I did to reach the land of childhood. However, without realizing it, in my subconscious remained the love and need for the hills and places I had traveled in my childhood. As soon as I reached my grandmother's house, I left my luggage and headed for the hills. The road to the hill passed through what I called the Green Tunnel. In fact the old horse-drawn wagon road in my childhood. Now there are no carts and the grass and vegetation have taken over the road.

The Horizon

It's been almost sixty years since I've lived in the city. In the big city, the biggest city in my country, Romania. Bucharest, the country's capital, with over three million inhabitants. Can you imagine what a crowd of houses, people, cars! After so many decades I got used to city life but I was left with nostalgia. The lack of horizon! In the city, my horizon stops at the wall of the neighbor's house...

Grandma died a long time ago. In my grandparents' house now live my younger brother and so I still have a reason to make the annual trip to childhood places.

Well, now I don't just look for the grass of yesteryear, now I look for the wide, open spaces that let the eye reach far into the horizon. I climb the hill that has a strange name, it's called Glimeii Valley. Of course, if there is a hill, there must be a valley. I walk up the hill and look around and feel the horizon come into my eyes, it all comes into my eyes. Of course, the eyes can't capture it there but the camera can. Fortunately!

Every time I return to this place I take a dip in the green. No asphalt, concrete, metal, glass. Just green. The best of tranquility, of inner peace. Unfortunately, so short!

The place where I grew up. A suburb of a small town in the northeast of the country called Falticeni. A suburb that is actually a small village. The luck of my childhood, the luck I had to live very close to nature for a good part of my childhood.