Once Upon a Time

Aurelian Țolescu
When I was a child, and it snowed, the snow would reach up to the balcony. Mother struggled to dig a tunnel to the gate with a shovel, where the rest of the people were clearing a path through the snow so that we, the young children, could make it to school. We liked the snow a lot, not caring about the efforts of those around us. In the evening, all the children from the town came out to the kilometre-long sledding hill, and we had great fun. When I returned home, my mother would place me directly onto the heater. Say, how many children experience the immense joy of sledding, like back in the day? I miss it.
 
 Oana Brumă
... there was a girl who was supposed to come out as a boy. The gossip mill says there has never been an uglier baby. Wrinkled, bald, and noisy beyond measure. You could always feel she was not welcome. They would always cut her hair short, give her boyish clothes, and drag her kicking and screaming to the soccer stadium. Whatever she would have done was never enough. Not for them, not for her. As soon as she got the chance, she ran away from home. In search of femininity and freedom. She started wearing skirts and curling her hair, but the void of inadequacy and grumbling gossip followed her wherever she went.
 
 Florentina Ghițescu
... and a very good time it was, though it wasn't in my time nor in your time nor in anyone else's time. There once was a beautiful girl gifted with all the gifts of the Lord. She was born in a wealthy family that loved her. She played from dawn to dusk. When she grew up, she went to school and became a doctor. Then, she fell in love and had two children, a boy and a girl. Years passed, and she became a grandmother, and then she died amid her entire family, when she was 92. That is the story the girl from Room 3 was telling herself. She lived with other children, without parents.

 
(Translated by Francisc Csiki / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)