New Times

Mariana Jurat
I'm not a perfect parent. I thought, in my innocence, that I could be. With each parenting book I devoured in my brief moments of quiet, I teetered on my imperfections like an iceberg floating adrift. Seeking perfection, I was sinking ever more cruelly into my own quagmire of phantasmagorical ideas about modern times and parent tamers. I had given up on the mirage of perfection. I am the best mother to my children. Perfect mothers raise unhappy people, future monsters for their own children.

Octavia Buhociu
You're done with work, getting up at dawn, your grandson's abroad, you live in a nice flat, doing nothing, except, maybe, watering down your pot plants. And not even that daily. That's it, peace and quiet, with or without Ukraine or Gaza. From now on you can rest, you don't go exercising regularly, for your heart has been through a lot already, you have the odd glass of red wine, organic stuff, made of fruit, the odd chocolate bar, especially dark chocolate, it's not harmful, it's still fruit. Don't forget your card password, so you'll be able to draw your retirement allowance. They have increased it, not that you've noticed, what with the prices going up and all.
 
 Radu Gramatovici
After Gabi left, I found out I was pregnant. At first I was euphoric, it was his baby, but in time I got over it: Gabi had vanished into thin air. The thought of giving birth to a child without a father caught up with me. In my eighth month I remembered Dan. I called him and we met in town. It's your baby, I told him. I love you, he said. We're going to raise this child as my own. But stop saying what you just said, we didn't even kiss. You know nothing, I smiled at him knowingly. I was thinking of you when I conceived him.

(Translated by Anca Maria Florea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan, Edited by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)