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His voice was rich and warm; a sneaky spoonful of sugared honey before dinner, the second one just as delicious as the first. I looked at him. The warm evening air gave his skin a slight sheen, and had made him roll up his sleeves. "It was hard back then." He sighed. His words were cold. My grandfather was the middle child of eight, born in 1944, in the midst of a war torn Romania. He took his first breath in the small village of Calafindesti near the border of Ukraine and Moldova, and here, is where he will take his last. Vasile, a sure-footed and sure-minded man, struggled to find the words to answer my simple question. Finally, he answered. "We worked a lot." His dark eyes scanned the vast green in front of us. The years had taken away any boyish charm he once had, evident in the deep ridges and lines in his face. They reminded me of the plowed fields we would see, from above, as we were flying over in the airplane. "Is that it?" I asked. I remember becoming restless, unsatisfied with his answer. "What about school? What about friends? You have to tell me about your childhood." My grandfather turned his head towards me. He half smiled. "You don't know how hard it was." He scratched his ever expanding belly. "Do you need to go anywhere?" He asked. I nodded my head. My eyes caught his. "Life was a misery." - I was a month old baby. Unwanted. Unloved. Wrapped tight in soiled cotton rags in the middle of a corn field. Sweat. Tears. Ants crawling over my eyes and inside my nose. Concerned villagers pleading with my mother to come take me and hearing only "let him die" over and over. I was 8 years old making a pair of shoes with wood for the soles. They hurt my feet yet unless I wanted the pebbled roads cutting me, I had to make due with blisters. I want to play. I want to run outside with my friends. Instead I'm beaten for not working hard enough. A teenager. I've given up school. My father is in prison for refusing to accept the new Communist ways. I'm in Bucharest working 16 hours a day to bring enough money so that my mother can feed my younger siblings. The dust of the city hurts my lungs and the work makes my back ache. Ceausescu makes it even harder to get a good wage. I don't eat well nor sleep well and over half my salary goes back home. Eighteen years old. Compulsory military service. Drink. Cigarettes. Repetitive orders. More drink. Work. Drink. More work. More drink. - The crickets were deep in their moonlight song by the time my Grandfather had finished. Our cow mooed behind us, warning us. It was time to milk her for the last time for the day. "That damn cow." I couldn't help but giggle at that. He smiled back at me and, with a grunt, he stood up and walked to the barn. His sleeves were still rolled up.