Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

As you all know (or don’t) today was Cosmin’s birthday, my forever 29 would have been 30.

But this is not what I wanted to write about (actually this is exactly what I wanted to write about, but being very difficult, I’ll stay with the spinners). I will write about wind spinners. garden wind spinners, more precisely.

One of the most popular decoration in the cemetery are wind spinners. There are so many, only human imagination limits the types and design of such decorations: paper, plastic, light metal, shinny, mate, patriotic, pride…

Because FOMO is a real thing, Popescus’ lady of the house quickly jumped into the spinners bandwagon and, for 2 weeks she researched wind spinners. We almost got one from Amazon (sold out in the nick of time), then another one also from Amazon (too big), before deciding that 2 identical ones from Hobby Lobby, small and delicate, just like him, are the best.

Now, if you look carefully at his cross, a metalic plaque can be observed, that duplicates his name. The sole purpose of the said plaque is to cover the date of birth and date of passing. The original date of birth was May 1st, as ordered by yours truly. Wrong!

I suggested a sharpie, to squeeze an ugly 2 in front of a beautiful 1, while my lady wanted this little plaque. So we got the plaque.

Now, if you continue to look even more carefully at the plaque, it can be observed that the plaque is not perfectly aligned in the middle: this was expected, as two engineers installed it.

This reminds me of Cosmin’s curtain rod, in his living room, installed by the same super handy engineer, me, aka Dad. After I measured 3 times, ruler, leveler, stud finder, finally making the holes and hanging the rod, the darn rod was a little lower on the right side! Not much, but visible, just to drive one nuts every time one looks at it.

In the same good tradition, the plaque was just a little off to the left, just a little, but visible, just to drive one nuts every time one looks at it.

Back to the spinners, the 2 small and delicate wind spinners from Hobby Lobby are made out of iron, thus being very heavy. While all the other wind spinners in the cemetery are doing their job, spinning like crazy at the slightest breeze, Cosmin’s iron spinners are proudly staying there, doing nothing, not moving even half a degree, waiting for the Mother of All Storms, to show their true power, and to finally spin.

I can hear Cosmin laughing: “Dad, those are like you: takes them a lot to get moving and just a little to stop.”