Sorin, it is September again, and it is morning, and I've set the coffees out on the terrace where you can see the ridge — you know the one, the one that lifts out of Postăvarul and closes off towards Diham. I didn't sleep last night, not from worry, but because I'd been remembering walks. Our long road — not the one on the map, the other. I counted yesterday, in the bed where you were sleeping, fifty years. Without a pause.
You told me about Negoiu for the first time in July of '76, when you were twenty-five and had an old bruise you wouldn't explain. You said the mountain teaches you three things: that you don't climb alone, that the rain always comes, and that the small step is the only one that takes you up. You forgot to tell me the fourth — that once you've climbed with someone, you never really come back down alone. It took me forty years to work it out.
The boys have children of their own now. The house grew smaller every time they came back, larger every time they left. You stopped climbing in June 2024 — up at Mălăiești, when you took my hand and said "this is the last one". I understood up there that I don't need to see another summit. My summit is you, in the morning, when you pour my coffee and say nothing. I'm still learning, there. For fifty years running, that's been everything I needed.
Yours, fifty years on,
Maria
