I saw her as I was sitting on a bench waiting to be finished for the day. One eye completely clouded from cataracts and the other eye was beginning to look the same. She was walking slowly using a long thin PVC pipe as a cane. I knew that I would be unable to have a conversation with her that I so badly wanted but I had to at least say Buna Ziwa (good afternoon). I wasn’t sure that she could hear me or even see me as she kept walking towards me, but I kept a constant smile on my face hoping that seeing a smiling face may brighten her day just a little (smiling faces aren’t that common around here). As she kept walking along the sidewalk, she took a step off and came to the bench I was sitting on. “Oh no,” I was thinking as she uttered out a long list of words in Romanian, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Romanian”. After a few times of me repeating that (in English, of course) she finally realizes what I’m saying, (I think) then she puckers up her wrinkled lips, bends down and gives me the wettest, biggest, sweetest kiss that just melted my heart.
