Two Weeks Without Mom
Or How Two Brothers Tried to Improve Their Parents’ Home and Ended Up Leaving It
From the series “The Cătănescu Brothers’ Mischief”
I no longer remember exactly how old we were. My brother Adi and I were both in high school, and like any teenagers with initiative, we had all sorts of ideas about how things around us ought to work.
Including how the furniture in our parents’ apartment ought to be arranged.
Mom had gone away for two weeks to Victoria, a small town at the foot of the Făgăraș Mountains, where our uncle Jenică, Dad’s brother, lived with his wife, Aunt Florica.
I suspect she had gone there to get some rest and relaxation.
And she certainly deserved it!
Unfortunately, two weeks without Mom would prove considerably more complicated than we could ever have imagined.
Dad, Adi, and I were left at home.
One evening, Adi and I came to the conclusion that the furniture in our apartment was not arranged properly.
I don’t remember which of us came up with the idea first, but we both agreed that things could be improved considerably.
So we got to work.
We began moving furniture, rearranging things, and improving the appearance and functionality of our home.
The fact that it was the middle of the night did not strike us as an obstacle.
Quite the opposite. We believed we were doing our parents a favor. We were sacrificing our free time to give them a more attractive, better-organized home.
And we weren’t even charging them for our labor!
Unfortunately, Dad did not appreciate our initiative.
As Adi remembers it, Dad came home after having a long day at work and discovered that his apartment no longer looked anything like the one he knew.
The furniture was in different places, things had been rearranged, and his two sons appeared extremely pleased with the results.
Dad, on the other hand, was confused and furious.
Probably the last thing he wanted that evening was to discover that his own children had decided to redecorate the apartment.
An argument followed.
Dad and Adi began arguing about how we had rearranged the furniture and, especially, why we had chosen the middle of the night to do it. The confrontation ended badly. It was one of those moments neither of us would remember with pride.
But in our teenage minds, there was a very simple solution.
Leave!
And that is exactly what we did.
And that is exactly what we did. We walked out of the apartment together, smiling, perhaps even laughing. Not because the situation wasn't serious, but because we were convinced we knew exactly how it would all end. Mom would eventually come home. And Dad would have to explain why his two sons had left home while she was away.
As far as we were concerned, we had done a good deed, and Dad had interfered without any reasonable justification. At least, that was our version of events!
After leaving, we went our separate ways. I no longer remember exactly where I stayed. Probably with one of my friends, perhaps Mihai Conțiu, one of my closest high school friends.
Adi, however, remembers very clearly what happened to him. He went to the Ioniță family, where his friend Cici lived. It was so late that he didn't want to wake anyone. So he curled up and slept on the stairs outside their door. The next morning, the Ioniță family found him there.
And what would remain a relatively short adventure for me turned into something much more serious for Adi. He stayed away longer. Mr. Ioniță was a milițian, a police officer in communist Romania. When he learned about Adi's situation, he offered to help him find work.
Adi even began considering leaving regular daytime high school, getting a job, and completing his education through evening classes. Mr. Ioniță found him an opportunity to work at a shoe factory.
Meanwhile, Adi spent his days with his friends at Casata, a pastry shop in downtown Bucharest where his group gathered almost every day. They spent hours discussing everything imaginable: politics, music, art, and whatever else captured their interest. And, of course, there was no shortage of jokes and laughter. Casata was more than just a pastry shop. It was a meeting place, a place for conversation and friendship.
It was the place to be!
Adi recently told me that he even slept twice inside the Arch of Triumph, where some of the boys from Casata had keys or lock picks that allowed them to open the doors. When he wasn't staying with the Ioniță family, he ate at the newly opened self-service cafeterias, usually buying a bread roll and a salad.
He couldn't afford much else. This was no longer just an innocent teenage escapade.
I returned home earlier and continued keeping in touch with Adi by telephone through the Ioniță family.
Meanwhile, once Dad had recovered, he put all the furniture back where it had been. So our entire interior-design project had been undone! But the biggest problem remained unresolved.
Mom was coming home. And Adi still wasn't there. Eventually, the Ioniță family convinced him to return before Mom arrived.
And so, after an adventure that could have had much more serious consequences, we were both back home. Mom did not immediately learn what had happened.
Neither Adi nor I was particularly eager to tell her.
We weren't quite as innocent as we liked to believe. And Adi recently admitted that he had felt guilty, especially about his confrontation with Dad. But the furniture story wasn't over.
Later, we managed to convince Mom that our new arrangement was actually better. And Mom approved the changes!
So after all that work, an argument, two boys leaving home, several nights spent who knows where, and a possible career change for Adi, our interior-design project was finally approved.
A rather expensive renovation, if you ask me! Looking back after all these years, I feel sorry for Dad.
He was someone we cared about us. He generally didn't try to impose things on us that we didn't want to do, and he largely left the responsibility of guiding us to Mom. Mom knew almost everything about us. The good things, the bad things, our mischief, and our mistakes.
Adi talked to her every day and told her about everyone and everything.
We weren't spoiled children. We had a great deal of freedom, but we were also fairly responsible. We tried to avoid people and situations that might get us into serious trouble. Mom rarely needed to scold us.
Usually, she would simply say:
"That wasn't the right thing to do. I hope you won't do it again."
And then came the advice. Whether we had asked for it or not. The most annoying part was that, more often than not, we knew she was right.
Mom had two other pieces of advice that Adi still remembers today.
The first was simple: whenever we had doubts about something we were planning to do, we should ask ourselves whether afterward we would need to hide it or lie about it.
If the answer was yes, it was probably better not to do it.
The second was just as simple: always behave as though someone were watching you.
That way, Mom said, we would get into considerably less mischief. Looking back, I realize how right she was. Although, judging by the number of stories Adi and I still have to tell, we didn't always follow her advice!
Dad was content to let Mom handle all of this. But our family life wasn't always so simple. Dad had his weaknesses, too, and some of them brought difficult moments into our lives.
Adi and I did not always experience those moments in the same way. Each of us remembers certain things differently, and today, after so many years, we try to understand them with greater maturity and compassion.
Dad was our father, with all his strengths and weaknesses, and our memories of him cannot be reduced to a single difficult moment.
After reading this story, Adi pointed out something important: Mom hadn't been away for just a few days. She had been gone for two entire weeks.
And then he said something that perhaps describes her role in our entire family better than anything else:
"Without her, everything fell apart. She was the glue that held us together."
He was right.
Mom was the one who kept us together, who knew what each of us was doing, who listened to us, advised us, and somehow found a way to maintain balance.
Dad was content to leave that responsibility to her, and we boys had become so accustomed to her presence that we didn't fully appreciate how important she was.
It took just two weeks without Mom for things to begin falling apart.
An argument, two boys leaving home, one of them seriously considering giving up regular high school, and a father left at home trying to put things back in order.
And all of it had started with a few pieces of furniture!
Mom didn't have to be physically present to have authority over us. But her presence was what gave our family the balance we had always taken for granted.
Still, when I think back to the night we rearranged the furniture, what I remember most vividly is two brothers who were absolutely convinced they were doing something wonderful for their parents.
Two teenagers with grand ideas, very little patience, and unlimited confidence in their own judgment.
And a father who probably just wanted to find his furniture exactly where he had left it.
In the end, we did get Mom's approval for our new arrangement.
Which proves, beyond any reasonable doubt, that our idea had been a good one from the very beginning.
Our only mistake was choosing the wrong moment to present the project!
Ovi Cătănescu — From my memories and those of my brother, Adi