The Storm After the Calm

After spending the past month in Romania’s picturesque villages, where every breath is infused with the scents of snow and forest, readjusting to life back home has been harder than expected.

Take our apartment, for example. After being shut for so many days, it greeted us with air that felt heavy and damp, almost hostile. As if it had taken offence at being abandoned. Every attempt to warm it up and appease it failed miserably. And overall, after a month of experiencing a Romanian winter, I feel as though I’ve had my fill of the cold season. It’s too early, perhaps, but I’m ready to welcome spring.

Still, I do love winter. Especially a proper winter like the one I experienced in Romania. As someone who grew up in the Lower Galilee, the winters of my childhood were fragile, timid, and the snowy days could be counted on one hand. The Lower Galilee is the bald patch of the north. Surrounding areas would get some snow—just a little, slowly, melting quickly, then a bit more elsewhere, like the morale in Israel over the past year—but not us. The whiteness would flicker on the neighbours’ peaks, and if we wanted to see it up close, we’d have to bundle up, pile into the car, and drive to Safed or Beit Jann. We’d step out for two minutes, take a look around, and declare, “How beautiful!” before rushing back into the car, rubbing our gloved hands as if we’d just braved a polar expedition.

But in Romania, the snow reached my doorstep—twice (As it happens, the second time was on my Hebrew birthday). It was wonderful.

Returning to Lisbon, our lives resumed at a dizzying pace. Friends invited us to celebrate the opening of their new business—they’ve started selling matcha coffee just around the corner. Not my cup of coffee, quite literally, but friendship isn’t conditional on taste.

My husband’s open-water swimming group, which he’s joined for twice-weekly dips in the Atlantic, invited us to a special Christmas party. After a night swim in the freezing ocean, they met us—family members—at a cosy restaurant.

And they weren’t the only ones. With Hanuchristmas approaching, we were invited to festive parties from all directions, each one more vibrant and lively than the last. Amidst all this, there was precious little time to settle back in.

As for me, for “some reason”, I wasn’t feeling at my best. Headaches came and went, and a near-constant fatigue took hold of me. Then, this past Saturday, I succumbed to an almost three-hour nap that finally restored my energy. I explained to anyone who asked that it was probably the drastic difference in weather between the two countries, but I know the simple truth: it’s the abrupt transition from the quiet countryside to the bustling city that took more out of me than I expected. Noise feels far sharper after a month of perfect stillness.

And now we are probably on the brink of another flight, and this time, the reason is far from joyful.

My husband's stepfather, a wonderful man with good qualities and a captivating smile, is dying. The doctors say, "Any moment now," and we are standing at the threshold of the next step. At such a time, every word seems inadequate, every gesture fails to achieve its purpose; we just want to be there, without the need for words. But we are far away, and everything hangs between certainty and inevitability.

He wrote a remarkable science fiction novel called Mobrad.

We tried reading it together but concluded it’s the kind of book you need to absorb on your own, as each person sees a different world within it. Naturally, it’s highly recommended.

But its talented author is fading, and we’re already preparing ourselves emotionally for an “unexpected” flight to Cape Town, South Africa, where my second family lives.

I’m sorry to end this post on such a sombre note. May the next one be filled only with good news and even miracles.

Until then, I wish us all a Happy and full-of-light Hanukkah!

Goodbye, Câmpulung

Tomorrow, we’ll bid farewell to Campulung, that small and grey town that seems to cloak its daily toil in a hushed breath, hidden from view. Twenty-four thousand residents orbit their routines, twenty second-hand clothing shops, five funeral parlours, and one long road that curves at its end into total darkness, as though disconnected from everywhere else.

The stay was pure delight, and if we could have stayed longer, we probably would have. These were the most pleasant cold days we’ve ever experienced. Here are a few moments I’d love to share:

Our host was Tzipporah the cat, so named after we discovered she had a perfect understanding of Hebrew.

One morning, radiant guests arrived for breakfast in our back garden.

Let’s just say we managed just fine with the cold.

Most evenings were remarkably quiet. Guess what I read during my stay here?

We were even blessed with two days of snow, one falling on my Hebrew birthday. For a born and raised Galilee like me, snow truly is a celebration.

My final day here will be devoted entirely to writing. That’s how I am—predictable in the little things, in the day-to-day. But in my stories? Never.

My writing refuge in the attic.

I hope to finish today the story I began here. Remember it? The one that at first seemed short, almost a passing whim, but quickly sprang to life, grew wild, tore through its seams, and became an independent entity that can no longer be confined to a few words.

Somehow, the spirit of this place has quietly slipped into my writing. Romania, and Campulung in particular, breathes between the scenes. Not overtly, but it’s there, like a shadow stretching with the sunset. That’s why I know that if I don’t bring this story to its end here, in the place where it was born, it will remain unfinished. It will dissolve in Lisbon, swept away by the everyday moments, and disperse into that ghostly void where unfinished stories accumulate, churning, threatening to swallow everything I’ve written and everything I will write.

I can’t recall the last time I felt so inspired. I think I didn’t realise how much I needed this journey until it came to be. Some things can only be found in a specific place, at a specific time.

How Not to Write a Novel

The house in Campulung, Romania

It’s been two weeks since we moved to Romania—half the time we planned to stay here. That’s a long time but also hardly any time at all, during which I’ve written three stories. Yes, three. And that’s not even counting those wallowing in their unfinished words by the wayside, still waiting for an ending.

It turns out that change inspires me in industrial quantities. A new home, a new view, a new culture—all these breathe words into me, turning me into a production line of fresh stories, essays, and anecdotes drawn from life or imagination. Some are tiny, some are moderately sized, and some are as long as the traffic jams on the Ayalon Freeway but flow as smoothly as the Jordan River. Maybe one of them will even grow into a full-length novel one day.

But the stories—what are they worth?

The story is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but the truth is, I’m rusty. Not long ago, I told my husband, “I’m rusty.”

“What are you saying?” he exclaimed. “You just need to exercise a bit more.”

“Not physically!” I replied. “I’m rusty. I write like a teenager experiencing their first creative writing workshop. Where is the writer I used to be? I read the things I’ve written, and they feel like a cheap knockoff of something I was trying to say.”

He thought momentarily, then asked, “When was the last time you wrote a story from beginning to end?”

I was struck silent.

“A story, a poem, a piece, a slogan—anything?”

A story written from start to finish...

That was in South Africa during the COVID pandemic, in a small town called Prince Albert. I had travelled to Cape Town for two weeks, but lockdowns stretched it into eight months. There, surrounded by breathtaking mountains and wrapped in a desert-mountainous landscape, I wrote a lot. One night, I had a dream—one of those long dreams that feel like a lifetime, so vivid you wake up in disbelief that none of it is real. For me, it was a whole period of life. I immediately made coffee and sat on the porch to write it all down. It was still fresh in my mind, so I sank back into it. I’m talking, of course, about Vandana.

Since then, life has thrown plenty of upheavals my way, mostly family-related. I kept writing, of course—I never stopped. I have a respectable collection of half-written stories, barren essays, and fragments with untapped potential. Most of them sit in the drawer of forgotten dreams, hoping one day to recover and see the light of day. And most of them, I haven’t revisited since they were written and abandoned. My main focus was my novel, which I completed. But since then, I haven’t produced anything new—a story that coalesces into something whole, that you can relish from beginning to end and finish with a sigh, or a tear, or a laugh.

So much time has passed since I wrote anything other than the novel. The narrator’s voice is so embedded in my head, and their world is still imprinted on mine. I feel distant from other things, disconnected, and… well, rusty. Strange, isn’t it?

But that’s not all. Here in Romania, I’ve found that since the atmosphere is so different and the quiet so absolute—especially because we intentionally chose to stay in the countryside rather than a city—I’ve rediscovered the ability to start my mornings without rushing into work. Instead, I sit with a cup of coffee by the fireplace, listening to the crackle of the wood, maybe reading a chapter or two of my book. Only then do I get to work, with a clear head.

Sometimes, I even start the day by writing, with my eyes still webbed from sleep and my mind pleasantly foggy.

So now, I need to learn again how not to write a novel. At least, until the next one.