Two weeks ago I had to put on wings of courage and fly from San Diego to Bucharest, Romania.

A stage of my life had ended abruptly, not once but twice within a very short period of time: my parents.

The entire innocence of the snowdrop flowers from my childhood Cismigiu Park was crushed under the feet of a woman with dark hair, so dark that the sunrise dies at the beginning of each day for all the beautiful souls.

I went back to Cismigiu Park after twenty years and looked up and down the alleys to see my Dad walking back home from work at the National Radio Station. He caressed my hair and I started giggling. I turned quickly so I could hug him but my Dad had hands of winter storm. In a shocking pirouette I turned toward the building of my high school so I could ask my Mom why Dad had hands of wind. I ran between the students who were leaving for the day and wanted to ask them if they'd seen the teacher and Principal Viorica Scripca. They passed through me like an echo of a totally new generation barely born in the 1980's.

I entered the teachers' lounge of my childhood and adolescence, a room mostly occupied by a long and imposing table of solid oak, so long that hundreds of lives and careers of all the teachers of this high school could be stretched open and immortalized in the scroll of this "modest" profession. I sat down on my mom's chair at the meeting table with the unrealistic hope of hearing her voice again, at least for a moment. A moment cut short by the paradox of a carefree blond little girl hiding under the oak table at the end of Mom's work day and the black of the mourning depth of the cruel reality.

Time had slapped me repeatedly and mercilessly so I could stand on my own two feet once again. I whispered "Farewell" to the new generation of teachers of my high school "Gheorghe Lazar," the high school of the intellectuals and professionals from Romania, USA, Canada and the entire world.

I exited the building so I could meet with my parents, on their payday, and go to the restaurant so we could celebrate the joy of simply being together. Dad was messing up my hair with the mild breeze of the fatherly love while Mom was covering my face with kisses unusually warm for that cold season. I was back but I was not at home, I was the daughter of my parents but I did not have parents any longer.

It was my turn to go back to my Christopher and make each moment of his childhood an unforgettable memory for when I, his mother, would become a wave of the Pacific Ocean pushing him back to shore to safety.

I flew together with my parents above the clouds, above Germany, Northern Sea, Iceland, Canada, and America. I told them that I had to land and to get ready to meet again in the flames of the two candles lit forever back in my place.

"Welcome back, Ms. Scripca!"

"Thank you. Glad to be back!"

My ocean is calm, with its eternal waves that come and go, go and come, rhythmically, more often and faster, with the unexpressed tears of hail, with the potential of a Tsunami of my soul

"Mom, I'm so happy you came back home. What did you bring me from Romania?"

My ocean is finally Pacific and I smiled.