If You Cant Walk Try Flying - Marinela Drop

I stepped into this world when the sun was rising on a serene Sunday at the end of the winter in Bucharest. Perhaps my whole life beginning on that day at the threshold of the seasons was meant to be a holy celebration. It hasn t quite been like that as many moments of that day the 27th of February 1972 were far from untroubled. It must have clouded over towards noon or evening who can say. Later on as I began to understand the world around me and ask questions I was told of the blinding light that filled the maternity ward where I was born and reached my mother s heart. I was a happy-go-lucky child just like any other. Many of you would say that not all children are blessed with a happy beginning in life and rightfully so What I m saying is that no matter how hard a child s life might get in their own little bubble they are bound to always be happy because over there everything is beautiful. Everything is untainted and everything is possible. This is why you will never hear me saying that I had a miserable childhood although from the outside my first years of climbing the ladder of life might well look like a struggle. Indeed from the outside my brother and I were often looked upon with pity the kind that weighs on you judges you and simultaneously smudges and washes you clean. Oh I have never accepted anyone s pity a stranger s pity I mean. I welcomed my mother s compassion because coming from her it was filled with love. It meant protection and tenderness. It meant warmth from the depth of her heart. Other people s pity starts as unwanted attention and can become altogether nasty at times My brother Marius one year one month and one day my junior and I grew up like Siamese twins always entwined. We used to play together or on our own but always in one another s proximity each of us with our toys. We had a few dear friends as well neighbours from our block of flats who would visit and play with us. And of course Mihai and Flory our siblings were always around us. Mihai my mother s son from her first marriage was more of a spiritual support as we never lived together. He was brought up by grandma Stefania my mother s mother in her house. We sort of grasped that we were different due to the intrusive questions of the people in the neighbourhood who kept pestering our parents with questions about our inability to walk. I could hear my folks answering anything in between this is how they were born or it s from the anti-polio vaccine or we don t know for sure. When we were little it was not us asking the questions what did we know Or to put it differently we were not able to tell better our world at that time did not exactly claim its right to be different. We used to crawl through the room or we would use our potties to move around we had developed a special technique that we now call adaptation. We used balance leaning on one side as we were pushing forward with the whole strength of our bodies. We were really having fun but grandma would watch us and shake her head in sadness as sometimes we could hear her whispering grudgingly All this because of him