This year’s Romanian representatives to the Eurovision 2008 held in Belgrade are Nico & Vlad Mirita. She’s one of my favorite singers, and he’s pretty cute, so they’re a well-matched pair with pretty good voices.
Pros: They’re hot, they can sing, their song is half in Italian. Cons: They’re not gonna win.
I’ve been despairing with the Romanian Eurovision selection for two years, last year being a huge embarrassment and this year a clear decision to walk a safe line in terms of selecting a song. Romania had its glory days a few years back, with the incredibly talented Mihai Traistariu and previously, Luminita Anghel & Sistem. However, the song is cute and sweet, and it did beat out the clearly gay Swedish band Biondo, which is an accomplishment all in its own. Anyway, the first semi-final at Belgrade is on May 20th. The final is a distant hope and fantasy.
Eight years ago, I was a funny looking kid with three color variations of the same sweater (seen above) in my closet. Then, on December 10th, 1999, I flew out to America, made peace with the natives, and celebrated Thanksgiving over and over and over again.
Home is a matronly woman, dressed in an old fashioned summer dress with polka dots on a thin material. Her hair is long, but not too long, with a hint of gray through soft curls of tired youth. She looks at me like no one else, and talks overwhelmingly in clich?s which, from anyone else, would sound commonplace and stale.
Home is a panorama of my six year old self with a scraped knee and dirty feet. She is the sound of teenage gossip on the run-down Boulevard and the scent of cigarettes from a third floor bedroom window. Home looks like me. I have her nose, and she has my laugh. We share a taste in music and cheap earrings from the corner store run by a middle aged gypsy woman.
Home knows I don’t think about her all the time. She knows I’m too busy to send Christmas cards or call on her birthday. She wakes up in the morning and goes to sleep at night without me. She cooks, she cleans, she adopts stray kittens. She shows up to her low-paying job every day and walks home with the sound of children laughing and their mothers’ impatient calls to dinner.
Home will prepare the guest bed for me, but I will fall asleep on her lap instead, like always. She won’t mind.
