Gigi, Privighetoarea, and a Visit I Never Forgot
Some gestures take a lifetime to fully appreciate.
It was sometime after I graduated from college in 1981. I was working in Slobozia, a small city not far from Bucharest, where the communist government had assigned me my first job.
My mother had recently passed away.
I was living in Slobozia during the week, in an apartment my father had arranged through a friend. I was still trying to adjust to my new job and my new surroundings.
Then, unexpectedly, I heard from Gigi.
Gigi was my mother's cousin. We knew each other, of course, but we had never been particularly close.
To this day, I don't know how he found out that my mother had died or how he discovered where I was living and working.
But somehow, he found me.
He invited me to meet him at a restaurant called Privighetoarea, located along the Bucharest–Constanța highway, not far from Slobozia.
Privighetoarea was famous for its ciorbă de burtă, that wonderful Romanian tripe soup that some people love and others cannot even imagine eating.
Gigi arrived with a friend.
We sat together, and he spoke about my mother, his cousin, who had passed away only a week or perhaps a few weeks earlier.
At the time, I found the invitation a little unusual. We weren't especially close, and meeting at a restaurant seemed an unexpected way to acknowledge such a sad event.
But as the years passed, I began to understand.
Gigi hadn't come to celebrate anything. He hadn't come simply to enjoy a good meal.
He had come to comfort me.
He had made the effort to find me, to travel to see me, and to share the sadness of losing someone we both loved.
It was his way of telling me that I wasn't alone in my grief.
More than forty years have passed since that meeting.
I don't remember what we ordered, although I wouldn't be surprised if it was the famous ciorbă de burtă.
But I remember Gigi. I remember Privighetoarea. And, most importantly, I remember why he came.
Today, Gigi is one of the few surviving cousins of my mother and my aunt Adina. We recently exchanged messages, and those memories came back to me.
I don't think I ever told him how much that visit eventually came to mean to me.
So, Gigi, if you happen to read this story, now you know.
Thank you for finding me when I didn't even know I needed to be found.
Sometimes the smallest gestures leave the longest memories.
— Ovidiu Cătănescu
Owl Spit — Because stories deserve to live on.