Lost Path to Solitude

Once you leave home, can you ever return? In the summer of 1989, Maria Pop reluctantly followed her husband, Victor to New York. She went because she loved him, but she always longed for the life she left behind in Romania. Twenty-five years later, she finds that her native country is experiencing a rebirth. And she wants to be part of it. But what about the new life she and Victor built for themselves and their children in New York? Maybe this is the source of her power, and also, paradoxically, the root of her problem: learning to leave in the first place, packing some suitcases, and closing the door behind her, leaving her beautiful apartment, her furniture, her books, some of her clothes still hanging in the closet, an unwashed coffee cup in the sink, a cup still full of coffee going cold, coffee her mother had told her not to drink on that unfortunate morning twenty-five years ago, when she left without wanting to leave, coffee her mother said would make her agitated, giving her instead water and extraveral - little green pills that made her loopy. "Here, take this, you need to calm down." The problem was that she did calm down. She calmly took each step she did not want to take, calmly watched Victor lock the door - an absurd gesture, if you think of it - wondered about the dirty coffee cup but did not say a thing, calmly got into the taxi, calmly walked into the airport, the wavy line back then still its roof, the lost path - you can't go back in time -, calmly boarded a plane she did not want to board, and as it took her away from the life she did not want to leave, when she finally broke down crying, it was too late. She had already left. It had already changed her. You can't go back in time.