Third trimester update, with a brief look back at what was before

love and happiness to come

Did you know that “gift” in Swedish means married and that the same word used as a noun means poison?

My pregnant belly is growing and the nesting instinct has taken over me, so I’ve been burying myself in doing all sorts of stuff and can hardly find the time, but mostly the disposition to write. After a summer full of travels and emotional torment, the urge to settle down has come over me and I seem to be preparing my nest for the little cub on his way. As autumn was approaching and it became increasingly clear to me I cannot travel such long distances anymore, cannot climb mountains or ride my bike, I felt sad for a while and scared. What’s happening now? Am I going to be left behind? Then the desire to cuddle and nest, making plans to redecorate, putting together the birth plan, shopping for the baby, making plans for our new family – all replaced the former travel plans and plane ticket shopping. I can’t say it’s been a smooth transition.

After a very active year, full of journeys (Sweden twice, England, Amsterdam, Greece, mountains in Romania, Bulgaria) and changes (becoming pregnant, moving house, leaving my job), settling down for the autumn and the third trimester poses a bit of a challenge. Especially with that leaving feeling bugging me every time things go different than I want them to go. So I’ve had to convince myself to stay and create tasks to fill my suddenly dilated time, round and spacious like my ever growing belly. Cooking, shopping, cleaning, redecorating, planning, exercising, taking long walks, sewing etc. Reading and writing have proved a little difficult for my agitated mind… Though I’ve always loved the beginning of autumn, calming everything down and lending the eye such warm and soothing colors after the loud and sharp summer notes. There are moments when I feel I have become way too domestic and fear I’m gonna bore myself to death.

I check my body every day and every day I notice changes: my skin is brighter and more beautiful, I am losing much less hair when I brush, my belly is getting bigger and changes shape as the baby changes positions, my breasts have grown two sizes since the beginning of pregnancy and are now letting out drops of colostrum that mark tiny wet spots on my T-shirt in the morning. I haven’t become fatter though and have only put on about 8 kilos in the past 8 months, which is ideal. Still, I feel heavier and the weight of the baby pressing on my bladder makes walking fast a thing of the past. As it does to tying shoe laces or wearing high heels.

On the other hand, I must confess I fear the postpartum transformations – the bleeding, the exploded veins on my legs, stretch marks, cellulitis, my stomach looking like a deflated balloon, milk leaking out of my breasts, dark circles around the eyes from lack of sleep, messy hair, manicure and pedicure, tiredness and depression.

I miss jogging and writing poetry while jogging. Sex is still fairly good, fortunately, though slightly more complicated due to very obvious reasons that we have to accommodate, but I cannot complain. The increased level of hormones has been a bit of a challenge, nevertheless. People in the street never miss my belly and every time I cross the old town I am offered food at the local terraces. When I ride the metro I either get offered a seat right away or not at all, depending on the route and the time. I am amazed by the level of autism the use and abuse of technology has created – everyone is always checking their phone, looking ever so busy and extremely disturbed by the presence of the others.

Speaking about the presence of others, our relationship has been growing alongside my belly and will mature together with the baby we’re raising. I can’t say we’ve had the time to get to know each other too well and this lack of benchmarks on a carefully mapped and controlled territory is making me quite uncomfortable and I still have trust issues. I am a control freak deep down, it’s true. But who asked for adventure?

The latest ultrasound picture, showing my baby boy smiling, leads me to believe he is happy. I wonder what lessons he has for me, what it is that he is bringing with him from back home, what his personality is like, and what he’ll turn me/us into. He’s been modeling me/ us like clay ever since his arrival, so I don’t expect him to stop once he’s born. Quite on the contrary, actually.

I believe it must have been roughly ten years ago when I was actively trying to get pregnant and nothing happened except frustration and disappointment. To be totally honest, I was so scared it might actually happen that every month as  my period was approaching I felt so much anxiety. I couldn’t tell which perspective felt more frustrating – getting my period or not getting it. I got it every month, with the strict regularity of the sunrise, much to my partner’s desperation.

My partner back then really loved me, though. There was absolutely no doubt about that. I was on top of his priority list, I was number one. That made life easier and more comfortable, as I felt relaxed and wanted and special. He used to express his love to the best of his abilities, telling me he loved me all the time, bringing flowers and gifts, writing short poems, preparing surprises, making sure I lacked nothing. And still, we didn’t appreciate our life together. We were so critical, so sarcastic, so sloppy and we gradually grew apart and unhappy. Eventually lack of communication and lies crammed up between us, driving us apart, each with his own separate life, longing for love and authenticity. So, having spent roughly half of my life in that relationship, I left for fear I might wither and die otherwise. And leaving that life behind was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

Then my two years of freedom followed, travelling on my own (Hungary, a nomad month in Romania, then England, Sweden,  Norway, Thailand, Cambodia, Turkey) dating, making plans independent of other people’s ideas or desires. Just me and myself and my dreams. It was awesome, I confess. Though it felt lonely only too often, that feeling of freedom was something I just had to experience before committing to a new life. I am not nostalgic, I can still remember very well how my dating life went and what a nightmare it could be at times. Yep, it’s been published in The dating nightmare – and by the way, in the meantime the friend of a friend got married, the two friends I was confessing to have totally disappeared from my life, along with the Turkish physicist, the creepy Canadian (thank God for that!) and the schizophrenic stalker, while the cancer guy with the job interview communication style proposed.

Life has such funny ways! And now it’s all new. ALL of it. So I still get cold feet from time to time and wonder if I’m on the right track. Who can tell? And what does “right” mean, anyway? I’m on the track that I am on, becoming someone new. No turning back. We’ll see where it takes me. From time to time, I am shaken by little earthquakes and start questioning everything again. And still, the baby is here, I can feel him moving inside me and that is the most special thing I’ve ever felt in my life. Maybe it’s weird, but sometimes I still find it hard to believe it’s real…

I am grateful for a beautiful and easy pregnancy so far and I’m so scared more often than I like to admit… But I can honestly say this is the greatest adventure and the most special journey I’ve ever been on. And I still think it’s absolutely miraculous how life goes on, in spite of everything. No matter what you’re going through, the earth keeps moving, the sun keeps rising and setting, people are born and die and life continues through the happiest times and through the most painful dramas. Miraculously.

(More or less) related posts:

PS Took the photo at the National Museum of Literature.

“Have you ever felt the ground falling from beneath your feet?”

The thin, short haired lactation consultant asks the three of us, sitting with our hands resting on our bumps at this white, round table in a shabby chic corner tea house in the old city of Bucharest, the only customers this sunny summer morning.

And I’m suddenly back twelve years ago.

“I want us to split”, my boyfriend tells me bluntly, sitting legs apart in the small, torn armchair by the balcony door in our rented studio five bus stops away from the University square in Bucharest. “I don’t love you anymore,” he adds, stretching his long legs across the Turkish carpet in dusty shades of blue on top of the worn out linoleum covering the floor.

I’m mute for a few seconds and I feel my throat exploding and wonder if I’m ever gonna be able to utter a sound again. At the same time, I remember our love making the night before and the goodbye kisses that very morning and the “I love you” before he closed the door behind him and went to work. They all seem like faint memories from another lifetime. What’s happened in the meantime? When did I die? I have no job ’cause “you’ve just finished university, don’t get hired just yet, let’s travel this summer” and nowhere to go. I can’t breathe.

Five months later, having spent about a month apart, we are married. Too afraid of loneliness, both of us, to pass the opportunity. Nine years later we are divorced. On our ten year wedding anniversary we sign the bank papers so I’ll no longer be part of the mortgage contract on our commonly held apartment – a home so hard to leave behind. That same day also happens to be the first day of my last menstruation before I get pregnant.

The two lines on the pregnancy test, on March 8, at around 3 am leave no ground beneath my feet, nothing to hold on to,  and force big tears out of my eyes like in a manga comic. Happiness and panic, two long and slippery snakes mating in my solar plexus. Another burial awaits – the girl I used to be is struck dead by two pink lines on a white background she’s just peed on, alone in her boyfriend’s bathroom, the whole universe spinning around her. Yet never again alone, to be accurate.

Then the phone call I get when I am 15 from my first lover, announcing me he’s cheated on me and “I need to meet that girl and discuss our feelings for each other… I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.” I can’t talk. The dirty receiver is heavy in my right hand and my thighs are getting wet as I’m kneeling by the bedside cabinet of my ground floor neighbors, who keep poking their heads around the door to check up on me from time to time. We don’t have our own phone, you see. I have to go down two floors to take the call, leave my corpse on my neighbors’ bedroom floor and then carry my ghost back upstairs again.

Then it’s early morning again, last year in spring, and I’m standing in front of the bed in that scruffy hotel room in Sultanahmet in Istanbul, dimly lit through the thick and brown heavy curtains. Ten years younger than me, short and handsome, amber skin, light brown hair, thick eyebrows and long lashes, full lips covering his tobacco stained teeth, my Syrian lover seems perfect. I’ve taken a shower, put my makeup on, got dressed, packed my suitcase and I’m ready to leave. And I can’t. I can’t wake him up. I can’t open and close that bloody door behind me.

I can’t stop looking at him sleeping there, so vulnerable, his bare chest moving up and down with his soft breath, a bent knee resting over the white sheet, his toes almost reaching the wooden side of the bed. I feel my chest exploding in a thousand pieces at the sight; silently and deadly. I’m perfectly aware I’ll probably never see him again. “Don’t make it difficult”, he says, seeing my face as I pull myself together and wake him up,  whispering his name while running my hand over his face. “Take care of yourself, Dhana”, he advises, knowing I’ll never listen. “Just go…”, he adds when I go back the second time for one last kiss. Minutes later, in the car seat taking me to the airport, I say goodbye to the sea.

“How do you know?”, the Cancer boy I’ve met using a dating app asks me, his big, beautiful eyes resting on my lips, unable to look higher. Lying flat on my belly in his bed, I tell him exactly what he did on a specific day in December last year, precisely one week after our first date. “I hate lies”, I warn him. “Please forgive me, I promise I’ll never lie to you again. Can we just leave this behind us? We have so much to do together…” I know I can’t trust him about the first part, but I am perfectly aware he’s absolutely right about the last part. Still, a leftover from the innocent me dies in this scene, too.  About a month and a half later, in the same bed, a strong light warms up my womb as if a comet hit the earth and I describe the whole experience in my diary the next morning, so that five weeks later, holding the two lined test in my hand, I find the exact conception date: Valentine’s day/ night. Three weeks after that, manga tears again as I’m listening to my baby’s heart during the first ultrasound in the doctor’s office.

“Yes, I have…” I answer when the lactation consultant says it’s my turn. The other two expecting mothers have already spoken while my memories were flooding my brain like a swollen river on a sunny day in mid spring, when the snow melts all at once.

“And? What can you share with us?”

“You know, my life has changed so much and so many times… And there have been moments when I felt I couldn’t breathe, when there was absolutely nothing familiar to hold on to anymore, nothing to cling to, seemingly no one and nothing to rely on… I’ve felt driven out of my own life. I’ve died. And I’ve survived every time. The hardest thing, feeling suddenly suspended in mid air, was having enough patience to get to the bottom of the pit, having enough patience to fall all the way, to hit the ground. Then crawl and cry down there for as long as necessary and climb back up again. To a new life. I’ve survived all my deaths… Every time… All of us do.” I answer, giggling at the revelation, an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and confidence filling me up as my left elbow reaches behind over the bentwood chair back, to make room for my growing heart.

There’s a short silence as the three smiling women are all looking at me as if I’ve just said something important.

PS Attachment is the name of the monster I’m learning to tame.

PPS Took this photo in Văcărești natural park earlier this week – felt like early fall is creeping in…

sunset in vacaresti natural park

I used to despise pregnant women

I thought they were ugly, disgraceful, stupid, naive, helpless creatures, fooled by society that it’s their duty to sacrifice their bodies and their freedom to perpetuate the species. I thought men had it so much easier for them, so much more freedom and control. And I hated it. I used to roll my eyes when I passed by a pregnant woman in the street. On rare occasions I used to feel pity. But it was disgust, contempt and anger that mostly animated me around them.

The radical feminist in me denied their right to happiness and freedom of choice. Their situation had a simple and certain explanation in my head: manipulation and brainwashing by the patriarchal consumerist society. Yes, I was in my early twenties back then, in my last years of university, passionate about gender studies and still badly suffering from older wounds.

When I graduated, I got into a gender studies master and I remember I was attending a course taught by the the coordinator of the program, a well known Romanian feminist. I felt so angry at her views and stood up, in my military leather boots and my all black outfit, and powerfully voiced my own point of view on a popular culture matter, which made her exclaim:

“Girls, it seems we have a misogynistic feminist among us!”

So now, sitting among these very pregnant women, moving slowly and carefully, like whales in shallow waters, calmly petting their huge bellies, and among these breastfeeding women, their swollen breasts, dark nipples and visible veins, all smelling of milk, their babies squeaking in their arms and looking curiously at everyone around them, toddlers running all over the place, listening to talks about types of birth and breastfeeding positions and benefits, feeling my own little baby squirming and kicking in my seven month pregnant belly, I am one of those women.

my seven month pregnant belly

A freedom forever lost

“I’m right here, love. What are you doing over there? Playing? Hmm? I can feel you.” I tell my baby while caressing my belly this morning. He’s woken me up from a strange dream.

Having gone through some old clutter in a house and picked some wool flowers to keep, I was heading to work on my bike. And I stopped at this house up on a hill to visit my lover – a former university colleague I’ve never been attracted to, actually. As soon as she sees me in her garden, she comes up to me and kisses my lips. I tell her I’m going to work for an hour and a half and she says it’s too long to wait for me and she’s going to this journalistic evening event somewhere in the city. Something I wouldn’t be interested in, she adds making sure she’s got the evening for herself.

I’m feeling lonely and I know I’m no longer on the most eligible bachelorette list. Not since I’ve got my bump, anyway. But she doesn’t seem to mind the bump. Nor the absence of the father, for that matter. She’s got a five year old boy herself, being raised by her parents. I tend to be clingy at this point and want more of her. It’s like I’m trying to fill this vacancy – the life partner vacancy. And I hate that about myself. I swallow my disappointment and put on some sparkling, slightly transparent clothes, mount my bike and head to work.

As I’m waking up, I’m feeling happy it was just a dream. It’s not the first dream of its kind – my subconscious clearly projects its feelings of loneliness, anxiety, fear of the absence of the baby’s father. The kind of dream that makes me feel an acute loss. There’s a kind of freedom that’s now lost forever. Because no matter what happens to my relationship, I’ll always be a mother from now on. Can’t change that. And it involves so much attachment it often scares me stiff. On the other hand, it also involves so much love. A unique kind of love. They say you’ve never (been) loved this way before. That’s gotta be worth paying the price. You give up a kid of freedom for a whole world of love. It’s a deal!

24 weeks pregnant

On fear, bravery and waterfalls

I am the bravest person I know personally. And still, a part of me is so afraid…

That’s what I’m thinking the other night, unable to sleep.

Afraid of all the changes I am going through, in spite of wanting them so much. Afraid of what the future might bring, afraid of losing control, afraid of making mistakes, afraid of loss, afraid of heartache, afraid of my own body having a life of its own, beyond my control.

And right then and there, fighting through the burning sensation in the overstretched skin on my abdomen, rolling over on to my other side, it dawns on me. Being brave does not exclude being afraid. Of course I am afraid. Experiencing fear is part of human experience and absolutely no one is exempt from it. Being brave means you don’t let fear bring you down. It means you go on no matter what. It means you stand up for yourself. It means you confront your fears, you dive into them, find out their names, and pull through. And that is the only way ahead.

Being brave means having trust. An immutable trust in life to carry you further no matter what. On your own blessed path. Nothing, absolutely nothing can go wrong. There is no such thing as failure. And I have no doubt about it.

So yes, I am afraid. And I am brave enough to admit it. My most precious dream is coming true and I am more afraid than ever. The stakes are high, you see. And then, in the light of this new understanding, I tune in to my baby and feel his strong kicks in my belly. He is real. There can be no doubt about it. He has come to me. Shortly after my travel companion came. It all seemed long overdue for all three of us. So, like waterfalls, we pour into one another’s lives, swiping away everything else. Here we are.

The little prince hiding behind his fists, on the coldest hot summer day

It’s a hot day in Bucharest and I’ve arrived half an hour early for my ultrasound appointment. The clinic is right on the street where I spent my university years. So I take a walk and again I feel like a young girl visiting her grandparents in the city, on a summer holiday.

deserted garden bucharest

The dust particles stirred by occasional cars linger in mid air before deciding upon a surface to rest on after their flight. I walk by the old honey shop, where this very old bee keeper, white hair, blue eyes, wearing a sturdy white apron, used to welcome his customers into a different century as they were crossing his threshold. It’s been closed for years. He’s most probably died… I’ll always feel sorry I’ve never been in. I was just thinking I cannot afford to buy anything and was feeling guilty to go in just out of pure pleasure and curiosity. Such limitations have long been overcome by now and I prefer socializing and risk taking to regret.

closed honey shop bucharest

As always, I am impressed by wild gardens and their run down, deserted houses, where parties used to be held in the old times, love made, babies born… My own baby is squirming in my womb and I can feel his weight getting heavier by the day. Gradually his presence is becoming more and more noticeable, more and more real, albeit still miraculous in my view.

garden behind gate bucharest

The cold and sterile environment in the clinic half an hour later is making me uncomfortable and I realize I must be really nervous. My tensed muscles and shallow voice are giving me away. It’s also getting harder to focus and I start feeling like taking off. The doctor pushes the baby with her fingers and then taps on my belly, stinging me with her nails, in repeated, unsuccessful attempts to get him to turn his face towards us. He’s looking away all the time and hiding his face behind his fists. I cannot blame him.

His father, whom his profile seems to take after, is looking at the screen sitting on a chair behind the doctor, paying attention to all the details and trying to get as much of a view of his son as he can. I think he’s too far away and there should be room next to the bed so he can hug my shoulders, kiss me and hold my hand. There isn’t any, although the doctor’s office is impressive in size. Big and cold.

Later on, all three of us attend “The little prince. A show for grownups” and it dawns on me this is how our baby must feel. He’s left his world behind and is now travelling on a different planet. This is how I feel, how I’ve been feeling all my life, actually. An alien trying to establish contact with the species populating this planet, its inhabitants utterly and strangely autistic and so cold that their proximity  freezes the blood in my veins. I’m a complete stranger to these people… What am I doing here? I’ve left so many lives behind, so many identities, so many worlds… Where am I heading? Who is by my side? Who have I become?

The first day in Bucharest after a week on the island

It feels as if I were going through the long corridors of a mental institution. What is wrong with these people? I wonder.

The metro ride seems to last forever and I’m looking at people’s faces for a while, before getting out my book. A guy smelling of alcohol sits next to me and keeps falling asleep and over me. After two stops he is replaced by an overweight lady, who strategically places her big shopping bag full of groceries over my foot. I carefully extract it and she has no intention to apologize. I miss the cold politeness and remoteness on the fringes of autism of he Nordic countries.  Patience, my dear, I tell myself and go on reading the story  about a girl who has no friends and she can see and talk to ghosts.

I interrupt my reading to get off the train and find that it gets more bearable when I get into the park and among the trees, in a shaded alley, where I sit on a bench and enjoy the light being filtered by the leaf curtain. A girl gets up from a nearby bench, mounts her bike and rides off, the water in her plastic bottle fastened behind her seat sending rays of light to the tree trunks lining the alley. I miss my carefree bike riding, having only myself to think of. And as soon as I write this I my head I wonder if that’s even true. If indeed I ever only had myself to worry about and if indeed I miss those times when I longed for my travel companion and a family.

I take out my book, “Stories of the Peculiar”, and finish the story I started on my metro ride to the park. The girl in the story eventually falls in love with a living man, he loves her back, they move in together and have kids.

I am secretly hoping for a happy end, though I am afraid of a disappointment. That is why I don’t reject the possibility of a tragedy. It’s there, masking my hope for a happy end for fear I might look stupid (even to myself) for imagining pure happiness.

When I come to the end, after the ghosts of her dead parents and sister find her in her new home, having looked for her for a long time, and I read the ending

ending of story

I realize I do have a fear of happiness. When everything is fine I am afraid of things going wrong. I tend to be secretive about my plans until they have worked out for fear that spelling them out might spoil their chances of coming true.

I miss our holiday mood.

Related posts:

For photos from our journey in Samothrakis, follow “A lover of the road” on Instagram and Facebook.

A journey with the little fruitarian runner on board. Day ten: Alexandroupolis – Bucharest

The next morning, though we’re sleeping in a tent and hear the birds chirping, other campers snoring, still others zipping and unzipping their tents, others starting their cars and so on, getting up doesn’t seem the easiest thing to do, so we keep postponing, although sweaty and hungry, until around 9 o’clock.

It’s another hot day when we leave the camping, having said goodbye to the sea, the island a little bit hidden behind clouds, making it easier for us to go home, of course. We do some shopping for the road (mainly fruit for the little fruitarian runner, of course) and hit the highway. (Oh, yes, the supermarkets are open today in Greece, it’s Tuesday.) I realize only now how close we are are to the Turkish border and that partly explains the large number of Turkish campers who were our overnight neighbors.

I get a lump in my throat as we’re leaving. It’s been like a honeymoon in three and perfect just the way it was and I don’t want it to end. Ever.

We resolve to speak English on the way back and there is a short delay before we start. Stalling is something we are especially good at, by the way. English between us is awkward and I’m thinking about the little fruitarian runner overhearing our conversation and imagine he’s feeling a bit confused.

Sunflower fields are growing on the side of the highway and I can’t imagine why I didn’t notice them a week ago. For mysterious reasons, the GPS takes us on a detour through a narrow road in a fir tree forest before taking us back to the national road. It looks beautiful and deserted. Only later will I find out about the stories of the Bulgarian robberies and hijacks. I can only be happy I had no worries on the road.

We make a stop in Velko Tarnovo for a hot walk, to stretch our legs and see the castle there on the outside, before getting on with our trip, making plans for the time ahead so that the return doesn’t seem purposeless, pointless and joyless.

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For photos from this journey, follow “A lover of the road” on Instagram and Facebook.

A journey with the little fruitarian runner on board. Day nine: Leaving the island

We postpone getting up, having absolutely no desire to pack and leave this place. When we do, eventually, it’s because we want to be kissed by the sea again.

We pack and have a pleasant breakfast on the balcony, accompanied by butterflies and singing cicadas, while the sheep in the neighboring garden are silent this morning.

We carry our luggage and stuff it in the car, then head to our favorite beach in the south – Lakkoma. I’m holding up through the swim and the first few minutes on the beach beds, but then sadness and a feeling of longing and lack creep inside and I give in.

“I don’t want to go…” I complain, rolling on to one side. And then, trying to keep it all together and struggling for a more positive attitude, I add:

“Let’s make our life beautiful every day. Let’s do beautiful things that make us happy. So that we are not sad about having to go back home.”

I can feel the water evaporating from my darkening skin as when we get out of the car in the harbor and look for the ticket office. We have already purchased the ferryboat tickets online and we need to have them printed there. The sun is cruel.

We eventually find the office, following the directions of a beautiful islander. We get in and stand in line for a few minutes, to benefit from the impoliteness of the clerk, an overweight middle aged man, of course, who can speak only Greek. He is very rude and shows us how bothered he is by the electronic tickets we show on the mobile phone screen. He finds it difficult to read the ticket number and, when he manages to, he keys it in on his computer and prints our tickets, which he throws on the counter in front of us without a word. I secretly think it is life’s way of making leaving easier on us.

We then send postcards to our family and ourselves, which we have written on the beach after the swim. Hoping for the best, I take them out of my turquoise purse and slip them in the yellow box on the side of the road in the harbor.

I desperately need to go to the toilet and choose the taverna I have been admiring the whole week but never gone to. It’s an old, wooden one, traditionally looking, with the walls of the tight space inside full of old black and white photographs of the island and its people. The overweight middle aged guy (of course) sitting by the side of the door cries out:

“Provlima!” When I ask about using their toilet and points across the street, directing me to the public toilet in the harbor, which I haven’t noticed before. That makes it even easier to get on the ferry.

We later board the ferry, shuffling our feet to the outside deck and spend almost the entire 2.5 hour trip standing, all the time looking at the island we are sailing away from and at the beautiful shades of blue of the waves the ferry is cutting through my beloved sea. I wish I could kiss her a thousand times more before I turn my back and go on my way, before I dream of her, before we meet again.

samothrakis from the ferry in the harbour

We want to see dolphins (not a dolphin, this time), and our wish is granted. A lovely school of dolphins comes close to the ferry, playing with their babies, starting a competition with the fast going boat and surprising us with their swift moves and quickly changing directions.

The little fruitarian runner starts a series of strong kicks right before we get off, making us wonder if he’s actually more of a martial arts fighter than a runner.

After trying unsuccessfully to find a supermarket open in Alexandroupolis (“No, is closed, is Monday today”, we are explained), we go to the camping without any fruit for the little fruitarian runner, except for the glass of fruit juice we got from a juice bar on the way.

We choose our camping spot, check in, park the car and head straight to the beach. It’s big, crowded and a little dirty and the water is even more unpleasant, with an uncertain shade of dirty green, algae, feathers and unidentified fragments floating in it. It all makes it easier to go back home… But we can still see Samothrakis rising in the middle of the sea, straight ahead.

“You know, this island is the first thing we saw when we got here a week ago and we had no idea that was where we were going… And here we are, a week later, after having explored it, still looking at it.” I remark pensively, and I feel this  sense of protection from the high mountain that allowed us to climb its highest peak. It’s still watching over us and I get a lump in my throat and goosebumps at the thought.

“Thank you.” I send out the thought with a deep bow.

I miss it already.

 

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For more photos from this journey, follow “A lover of the road” on Instagram and Facebook.

A journey with the little fruitarian runner on board. Day 8: Water. The last full day on the island

This morning is slower and, during our breakfast on the balcony, a small basket tied with a rope descends next to the table. I follow the rope upwards and I am met by the smiling face of the lady of the house, looking down at me from among her laundry hung out to dry.

“Hello! Kalimera!” she says, pointing to the small basket.

“Kalimera! Efharisto poli!” I reply, picking up from inside the basket a white bowl with the best olives in the world.

She was very kind and came to our door with a plate of delicious apricots the night we were back from the mountains. We spoke some more Greek then and I was happy to have someone to practice with.

After breakfast we make a stop at the bakery but, being Sunday it’s closed today, so we shortly stop at the supermarket on our way to Fonias.

Once at the river, we start going upstream, back into the land of dragonflies and soon find the vathre (pool) where we bathed the first time we were here. It’s tempting, but we don’t jump in this time, but walk ok, determined to get to the waterfalls.

And before long, we find a bigger varthra and we can hear the water falling from the left, hidden behind a huge rock. We climb on and see the gorgeous waterfall from above. We continue the climb through the forest but give up after a while, eager for a bath down below and then for a swim in the sea and relaxation on the beach.

So we go back down and when we get there we find a crowd of loud people taking a swim. We can’t be bothered. We ARE going to jump in no matter what. When we do, in spite of the cold water, we are amazed by the beauty and the freshness of the place. There is such purity and such clarity about it. We swim to the waterfall and let it splash us with its fresh, clear water.

“Clean me”, I tell her, “purify me of everything I no longer need, everything stale, everything burdening me, make me clean and clear, purify me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

After the purifying and refreshing swim in the vathra, we go down the river, get back to the car and go to Lakkoma beach in the south. We crash again under the same bamboo umbrella, take a swim and just relax.

We have a meeting with Carlota at 8.45 pm, so we go back to the house before sunset. The view of the mountain rising up to the sky on the right, the tumbling hills with their olive orchards below, gradually becoming lower and lower until they turn into the pebbled seashore that pressed against our foot soles a short while ago, all in the mild, golden light of the setting sun are signs of paradise.

At home we are offered ice cream by the lady of the house, while waiting for Carlota to finish her giggly conversation with the young English couple that’s just arrived, looking for gifts for a wedding they are attending in Alexandroupolis next week.

When she is done, we are next. Like a good host, she asks us about our stay and is particularly interested in our climb on the Feggari two days ago. She’s impressed by our performance and asks about the baby, whom she insists is a “strong boy”. And she is right. Later on we pay for the room and her mother in law comes and makes good wishes for us and our baby, expressing her gratitude and good will.

“Write to us”, Carlota says, “send us pictures and come back with your boy!” And then translates her mother in law’s words: “She wishes you that with only one cry to take him out.”

 

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