When Dreams are Calling (6 page)

“I don’t want any
pee-nap-uhl
and any
jeez
.
And
I hate that Michael
Buhb-uhl
.”

“Sure, you don’t, sweetie. You want
gees
and
pahy-nap-uhl
,
and maybe some Michael
Boo-ble
,” he corrected me
gently.

“Damn it! I’m so tired…”

“You’re freakin’cute! Don’t worry! You’ll get
it!”

Day by day, the whole process was becoming
easier. He was slowly learning
a bit of Romanian and I was making huge progress with English.

On my birthday, Robert, with the help of master
Google, wrote me a card
in broken Romanian:

“
La multi ani! Sa fii fericita si
iubita! Te ador!
” Meaning: “Happy
Birthday! Be happy and loved! I adore you!”

When I read it, I burst into tears. His
devotion to me, to my dream,
to my well-being was more than anyone could ask. He must have been an
angel sent
by God. And so, each day I expected he would just disappear, same as he
came,
out of nowhere.

“Thank you,” I said giving him a strong kiss on the cheek. 

“You’re welcome. But if you keep crying, next
time I’ll have to
write it in English. And it would not be even half as fun as writing
this one
was.”

“But it will be easier!”

“Pfff ! If it’s easy and no fun, there’s no
deal, you should run.”

Despite Robert’s support, my first few months
were miserable. I felt
terribly lonely, depressed with not getting a job and very tired. My
mind was
tormented by questions and doubts. Nothing could have prepared me for
such a
different life than the one I was used to or the one I was hoping to
find.

But no day was passing without promising myself
that one day, I
would feel at home in Canada. One day I would be a lawyer again,
meaning in my
mind simply that one day I will be someone again, at least more than a
lost
child with nothing but dreams. And this kept me going.

Dora’s
Journal Notes
 

• There is no other
  trip like the one you
  embark on finding yourself.
  
• Adapting and
  belonging are two
  different things. Try to adapt less and belong more.
  
• Where luck fails,
  resilience succeeds.
  
• If people will
  want to help you, they
  will do it without too much talking and if they don’t, a million of
  reasons
  will not be enough.
  
• Only when
  compassion translates into
  action, you know it is genuine.
  
• Learn from
  disappointment, but don’t let
  disappointment rule you.
  

9
Before Jobs, There are Choices

Finding
jobs is never dull

And
most definitely not fun!

Stand
your ground or simply wait,

Hope,
believe, just hang on, mate!

Sometimes what
we look for in faraway places, we might find close to us.

And so, after looking for jobs in newspapers
without much luck, a neighbor
offered me my first job in Canada.

Together with him, I installed bathtubs. The
pay for my one and only
day of work: a pair of cheap running shoes and a meal.

Now let me tell you that, although for a
trained lawyer it was not
quite exciting, it was definitely challenging. Plus no one in my family
had ever
installed bathtubs. For the first time, I got to be the first. Wasn’t
that something?
I was laughing to myself imaging my poor mom’s conversation with her
fellow doctor
friends:

“So, what is your daughter doing in Canada? Is
she doing her master
in law?”

“No, she’s installing bathtubs.”

“Wow! That’s interesting…”

Did you ever wonder how come such a promising
word as “interesting”
is, can be used by people to mask disdain and shock? I know I did.

Leaving my mom aside, I’m not sure how my
neighbor selected
me
for
the job. Was it my brain or my looks to be blamed for it?

But when such “luck” strikes, you don’t ask
questions; you turn
around. 

Dora’s
Journal Notes

• Not each challenge
  is worth taking.
  
• If I admire the
  ones who dare to dream,
  I bow before the ones who never give up on their dreams.
  

My next job
offer came from a woman, immigrant as well. I was sure she’d understand
what
being a young woman, all alone in a new country means,

After she scanned me from top to bottom, she
delivered the verdict:

“You’ll make a great stripper. Great money in
it too.”

“Are you flattering me?”

“Does it sound like a flatter to you?”

“No, not really.”

“You’re lucky. I know just the right person for
you.”

“That’s lucky indeed. I just doubt I have what
it takes to be a good
fit. If nothing else, I’ll be the most educated woman in the business.”

“You’re all shy at the beginning. You’ll get
over it once you see
the money coming. Plus this education of yours, what good came out of
it anyhow?”

“This is like asking me why I should be kind
when ruthless people
are the ones who rule the world. I’m kind because it makes me feel good
and
because...”

“And because it lets you sleep at night. I
know, you all say that.
The problem is what’s happening when you wake up.”

I had to admit she had a point. Longer we would
have talked, I am
sure more reasons she would have raised. But, this did not change the
truth: I
was an educated woman, which might not have meant much for her, but it
meant
the world for me. And while working never killed anyone, some sort of
work
might have killed me.

Once more, I could just imagine my mom’s
conversations:

“So, what is your daughter doing in Canada? Is
she doing her master
in law?”

“No, she’s a stripper.”

“Wow! That’s interesting…”

“You tell me about it?”

So, for the sake of my mom and everyone else’s,
I refused. Too bad
so sad, I was not given the option again. Must have been the age
catching up
with me.

Dora’s
Journal Notes

• Your beauty can be
  used in many ways.
  Use it right!
  
• How you choose to
  make money says more
  about yourself than how much money you make.
  

As if someone
was determined to show me that all people are bad or just blind to my
true
qualities, the next disastrous job proposal came from a proud owner of
a famous
Torontonian cake store.

No bathtubs to install there, no poles to dance
in the middle of the
night, just some delicious cakes to serve and nice customers to take
care of.
Make no mistake, after my previous adventures, this was my dream job.
However,
there was just one itsy-bitsy problem: before getting paid, I had to
prove my
competencies in the area. At least, this guy believed I had some other
skills
as well, except those of an amazing stripper. So, I gave him credit.

But, after one month of working under a
so-called “training program,”
I was not getting paid. It was blurry for everyone how much “training”
I would
still need and in what areas.

Was my smile not quite the right one? But if
that was it, it was too
late for my parents to change it and too expensive for a plastic
surgeon to fix
it.

Was my skirt not short enough or was
it too short? I’m afraid the answer
would have largely varied from customer to customer.

And so, unappreciated and broke, I quit this so
called job.

Dora’s
Journal Notes

• There are no
  verbal or written promises,
  just promises.
  
• Don’t be shy or
  humble with your
  achievements! If you are, people will keep devaluing them, until there
  won’t be
  anything left to be proud of.
  

10
Education Should Not Be Denied to the Ones Who Want to Learn

Going
back to school if you have money

Is
more advisable than playing rummy.

But
if you don’t have it and ask the Gov

Good
luck to you my dear dove

What is the
secret of a successful career in life?

First, I thought it is all about having the
brains.

Then, somebody told me it is about having the
right paper.

In the end, I found out that more than anything
else, what you need
is passion, lots of it.

For now though, I was stuck at the “right
paper” phase. And, without
much luck in finding a job, I jumped at the first opportunity of going
back to
school.

After getting a student grant from the
government, I got accepted to
a college to study for paralegal. I marked the day on the happy
memories
calendar and called Robert.

“Yay! I have news, Robert!”

“Sounds like big news to me.”

“No big news, just baby steps. I’m still a baby,
so what do you
expect?”

“I’d say more of a babe than a baby.”

“Ha! I got the grant! I’ll study again!”

“Sweetie, that’s great! You’re great!”

And it was. Because the college was very far
from where I was living,
I had to move. And finding a new place was tricky. For an entire month,
each
day, I was knocking on doors, looking for a room to rent close to
school,
without any success. It was tiring, depressing and disheartening.

Finally, a week before the college started, an
Indian guy offered me
a room in a newly built house. But, when I went to see it, I found out
the
house was still under construction and so was the whole neighborhood.
The
nearest phone cabin was about fifteen-minutes walk, the bus stop about
half an
hour walk, as to the grocery shopping mall, it was yet to be built.

Lesson learned: If something sounds too good to
be true, then it
probably is.

But, when push comes to shove, there is not
much you can do or you
wouldn’t do. So, all alone, I moved out to my spooky, haunted house.

Robert and I celebrated the event on the beach,
well
wrapped in our blankets
,
feeding a few Canadian geese, and hoping the worse was behind
me.

My first week of school was fun, full of
laughter, excitement and
new hopes. But my happiness was short lived. The second week, a letter
from the
Government came:

“We are sorry to inform you, but a
mistake has been made and the
Government of Canada cannot offer you the grant. Please try again when
you have
been granted the Canadian citizenship.”

“Yes, in about five years you mean!” I thought
to myself. Then, I
crashed.

With no money to continue the school, I was
back to scratch. Back
to…the truth is I had nothing to go back to. All the time I had
invested in
looking for a place, the money I have paid to move in, all my plans and
efforts, all my hopes were once again, down the drain.

At two o’clock in the morning, at minus ten
Celsius, I went walking
around the house, with tears pouring down my face feeling hopeless and
defeated.

Back home, I spent the rest of the night on the
floor, blubbering
like a child and wishing I would just die.

I had no money left, nowhere to go and no idea
what to do next.

If there was a God, He was definitely either on
holiday or on sick
leave. His replacement, if He had one, was not doing a very good job.

To make everything worse, I got very sick. So
sick that Robert
decided to call the ambulance. After spending a whole night at the
hospital, in
a wheelchair, too weak to move or to talk, shaking with fever, the
doctors
finally found some time to see me. I had pneumonia.

Scared, I called my mom’s cousin in Montreal
hoping to stay with her
for a few weeks until I would feel better. She listened to me,
pretending to
care, then she cut the conversation short and bluntly told me:

“My dear, it is your expedition, your
adventure, and I do not want
to have anything to do with it. Plus, I’m already late for a party and
I cannot
seem to find a pair of shoes to match my dress for tonight. Take care
of
yourself, dear.”

And that was all.

This was my mom’s cousin, always walking around
in style, in her
expensive, shiny clothes and always in too much of a hurry to stop and
help
someone else.

I will always remember her voice, her words and
the way I felt. She
was my own blood, the same one I use to write long letters to when she
immigrated to Canada and she needed some encouragement.

This last blow hurt even more than any other.
It made me think again
of the meaning of family. For now, I might as well have been an orphan.

But, back from his too long holiday, God took
pity on me and soon
after my return from the hospital, an Indian girl moved in:

“My name is Simrin,” she said with that lovely
Indian accent which
even Russell Peters would envy. “I heard what happened to you. Such a
shame,
really. But, you never know…things happen for a reason. I know what you
need.”

“Knowing is not the problem, dear. On the other
hand, having is. I
need a job and I need to get better,” I said, sadly.

“You’re right. But for now,
we’ll go together to
an Indian wedding. It will be fun. We’ll dance, get drunk and who knows
what
else…” Simrin replied, smiling provocative.

“Getting drunk and at an Indian wedding will be
something new to me.
As to that “what else” stuff, it is out of the question.”

I could just imagine myself dressed in a pink
sari, barefooted, with
some Henna on my pale, white hands.

“So, it’s all set.”

“It is, if I’ll make it till then.”

“You’re a tough cookie, you’ll be more than
fine.”

“I’m not that greedy. Just fine will be quite
enough for now. Or
maybe not enough, but good enough.”

So the next Saturday, here I was, dressed in a
pink sari, to what
was to be my first and probably my last Indian wedding. Although I
didn’t get
drunk and because I was so sick I was barely able to walk, let alone to
dance,
I had fun watching the rice and other kinds of seeds thrown in the air
and over
each other, as a symbol of fertility and abundance. I learned that food
eaten
by hands is not bad, but it can become so when everyone else’s hands
are
touching it. I smelled the curry over and over again, from the first
word the
Indian guy at the door said to me, to the last piece of clothing
touching my
skin. Other than that, I don’t remember much of it.

“You must be tired and something tells me a bit
hungry too,” Simrin
told me once we got back home. “You don’t like curry much, do you?”

“I think I’m still at the first phase, trying
to get used to its
smell. At least, I could easily tell an Indian from a non-Indian, even
blindfolded.”

She laughed:

“True. You know what they say, you are what you
eat.”

“With the Indian version being: you smell like
what you eat.”

“Admit it: it’s cheap perfume!”

“With the emphasis on cheap!”

“I love your humor, even the cynic side of it.
I’ll make us a cup of
tea and some tasty sandwich. You don’t look well tonight. I think I’ll
sleep
next to you, just in case you need something.”

“If only all the Indians were like you,
Simrin,” I answered,
grateful for her willingness to help me.

“And all the Romanians like you, Dora.”

“But we know they are not,” we both said in one
voice.

For the next few weeks, Simrin took care of me,
like a devoted
mother will do for her child. Each night, she made sure she put a smile
on my
face, listened to my worries, tried to give me advice and prayed with
me, for
me. From a stranger, she became my family and my mom’s cousin from
family
became a stranger.

For years and years I hated my mom’s cousin for
not helping me and
for destroying my trust in what a family is. All those days when I was
shivering with fever under the blankets, I was imagining her in one of
her
shopping frolics, smiling and laughing, hiding behind her beautiful
appearance
a heart of ice, deceiving and mean. For years, I wished one day she
would feel
what I felt, she would need someone to help her and everyone would turn
their
backs on her.

But then, one day, I stopped. I buried her like
you bury a stranger,
with no tears in your eyes and no memories left behind. She became a no
one for
me, a stranger, same as I was once a no one to her, a stranger. I
refused to
let hate poison my heart and I chose to let only the love and
appreciation for
my Indian girl fill my days.

I replaced the bad memories of my mom’s cousin
with the happy ones
with Simrin.

I learned to forgive, but never to forget.
Because forgiving sets
you free, while forgetting gives others another chance to hurt you.

With Robert and Simrin by my side, I started
again to look for jobs
and rooms for rent in a more populated area.

Like a Phoenix, I was determined to rise from
the ashes.

Dora’s
Journal Notes

• If the road starts
  being bumpy, tighten
  your seat belt, look ahead, and keep driving.
  
• Where there is a
  way down, you can
  always find a way up.
  
• There may be times
  when the action
  itself does not say much about us, but the circumstance in which it is
  done
  says everything.
  
• Memories are a bit
  like your clothes.
  Only the best ones are worth keeping.