Timisoara: Cradle of the Romanian Revolution

Before I close this spotty and jangled retrospective on Romania and Rome, I'd like to tell you a little bit more about the part of Romania where my grand-kids live and teach English as a Second Language.

I've talked generally about Mat & Marisa's orange apartment in their purple apartment house. I've suggested the homes I saw and visited are like the people who live in them: colorful and warm. I spoke briefly about how the kids' lovely landlord included us in her family Easter dinner. I also mentioned the Easter carnival -- the middle-aged dancers and carnival rides.

Here's something I have not told you. We visited Marisa's school in Chisoda. Guess what!? It looks just like an American elementary school built in perhaps the 1970's. The classrooms look like ours -- complete with newer metal desks, green chalkboards, and flower-pots on the window sills. Perfectly printed and written alphabets around the top boarder of the room? Yep! Student papers neatly posted? Yep! Copy machines? Yep! Furthermore, the teachers I met look just like American elementary teachers. They're mostly good-looking young women. (Though one hardly notices!) They dress conservatively, as do most elementary teachers. They're engaging, warm, and smiling. I had to shake my head and make myself realize I was in Romania.

Here's something more: Giroc and Chisoda -- where Mat and Marisa teach -- are rapidly developing bedroom communities attached to Timisoara, a large and thriving city of (I'm guessing here) perhaps 60,000 souls. It was in this western city of Timisoara that the Romanian Revolution began some twenty years ago. And it was in the Romanian Revolution Museum there that I experienced perhaps the most emotional moment of my visit.

I remember well, for instance, the aborted Hungarian Revolution of 1956 -- how Soviet tanks rushed in a restored the hated regime. I also remember Poland's struggle to break free from the Soviet bloc: how Lech Walesa and his courageous minions wrestled control from the Politburo in 1989. And I clearly remember thinking in December, 1989, that the Romanian popular uprising would certainly fail to overthrow the hated Nicolae Ceausescu. To my surprise, the revolution succeeded.

Mat and Marisa took me to the Romanian Revolution Museum -- a modest building pressed in between places of business in downtown Timisoara. The RRM is filled with memorabilia of that troubled, but triumphant time -- stuff like army and police uniforms, various weapons, significant documents, and the like. The docent was a lovely woman who appeared to be in her late-forties. She was dressed in a trim tweed suit, and she reminded me of every good teacher I have ever met. She was engaging and warm, bright-eyed and eager to inform us about the revolution.

The first thing she told us was that Timisoara was the center of the uprising, largely because it is situated in the far western part of Romania, and despite the news blackouts of the time, information about the surge of freedom sweeping the western provinces of the Soviet Republic reached Timisoara quickly.

The second thing she did was show us two remarkable and frightening videos of the early freedom riots. Imagine Romanian police shooting live ammunition into masses of angry protesters. Imagine dozens of tear gas canisters flashing through the air, landing at the feet of pressing crowds. Imagine unarmed individuals and groups clashing directly with police in a mad melee of twisted bodies and clubbed-down victims. While Americans often see this sort of thing on television news broadcasts, the large mass of us seldom see this sort of thing in person. Nor does it appear to be taking place close to home.

Imagine people indiscriminately shot dead in surging crowds.

It was after watching these two appalling videos, when our docent was showing me 8x10 black and white glossy photos of bloody protesters dying in the arms of their friends and loved-ones, that I suddenly became aware that tears were running down my cheeks, and I was breaking into sobs.

I was embarrassed. I couldn't account for my emotional response. Though I've always thought myself a compassionate person, I thought my reaction inappropriate. I had to turn away, fight for control, gather myself, and apologize. I kept thinking: Bob, for goodness sake: you don't know these people. . .this was decades ago. . .you've seen this sort of thing scores of times before on nightly television. It has nothing to do with you. Settle DOWN.

It was only an hour or two later that I realized how much Nancy's death has changed me. Before Nancy's death, seeing stark pictures of people dying in the arms of their friends and loved-ones would certainly have raised in me a sense of real compassion -- but no tears. I had some knowledge of death. But I had no personal experience with death. Since Nancy died in my arms nearly four years ago, such pictures bypass my head and go directly to my heart. Such pictures apparently remind me of my own loss and touch me deeply. Now I empathize. Now I realize: death is real and unrelenting. It leaves an emptiness, a hopelessness and state of emotional turmoil only fully realized when one experiences such loss oneself.

Thinking about the experience reminded me finally of a passage in T. S. Eliot's Hollow Men. He completes that long poem with four lines:

This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Fifty years after first reading that poem, I finally understand and deeply feel what these lines mean -- and how they challenge my life-struggle. I feel the warning in that passage. Now, near the end of my life, when my energy and powers are dwindling, when I sometimes wish to give in -- at this time, I know it's important for me to discipline myself rigorously, to martial and concentrate what powers may remain to me, to lift myself, to set my jaw, brighten my eyes, and generate my best possible self -- for myself and for my remaining friends and loved-ones.

I've had a wonderful life. I'll be damned if I'll permit myself to whine about it when I have every reason to be grateful. No more tears. Life is a grueling and joyful race. I intend to finish strong.

So in a way, I suppose I do know these people. Time and distance make little difference. Our hopes, our losses and tears unite us. So too does our shared determination. These were brave souls, determined to live life fully and freely on their own terms. It's well they should be remembered and honored. They set a powerful example of human courage. For our own sake, we need to remember them.

I suppose I cried because I was caught off guard. I was neither prepared, nor had I expected my emotional reaction. The worst part, I suppose, was that this breakdown came in the presence of my grandkids. I have always tried to create for them the impression that while I miss Gramma terribly, I am now -- nearly four years later -- not so easily reduced to emotional turmoil.

Later, I was sharing with our docent my impressions of the Romanian Revolution when it was going on. She asked if I would be kind enough -- and could be calm enough -- to sit with her for a video-taped interview of my recollections , my feelings and impressions about the revolution as it was going on in Romania when I was younger. I agreed to do that, and to my relief I was able to respond to her questions in a controlled manner.


Only much later did I realize that this woman of some forty-plus years had likely been present in those surging and defiant crowds, had herself been one of those heroes. And had survived.

We Americans of a certain age:
We take a lot for granted.
And we owe even more!