America: My Fairytale

Valentin and Ioana had thrived in the United States. They knew how to do business the right way. They knew about banking and finance, about customer service and competition; they felt the warm light of success.

My grandparents’ lives in America had changed their spirits. This country has a way of living, feeling, and thinking that no other country on earth has. We know that we are the best and with great power comes great responsibility. We own our fate. We decide how we are going to react. Americans are not victims nor perpetrators. We are helpers and survivors. We stand for honor, duty, and order. Even though, the communists looked and talked like they were organized, behind the puppet curtain was a chaotic mess.

They fell in love and got married in a beautiful time in both their lives. Through my grandfather’s stories, I relived the fairy tale time in my family’s history. For me, they were a fairy tale as a child and a relentless goal as an adult. Through my grandfather’s stories, I became aware of a country where anything is possible and got to know a way of life I knew I could never be without – the American way. The communist way of life was so far removed from the right way; I knew it in my heart.

Curse…or fate’s guiding hand?

My ex-husband, John, was a curse. I only married him because I was pregnant. I never listened to anyone back then – my parents, my relatives or my colleagues from the university. Everyone was shocked when I decided to marry John because here I was, a very good looking, well-off girl marrying a very poor man from the south. It sounds a bit prejudice, but it’s true; people from the north of Romania just didn’t marry people from the south.

But that’s exactly what I was going to do, marry John. I was pregnant with his child and it was the right thing to do.

We applied for our marriage license on August 4, 1967, in the village of Ditesti where John’s family lived, and were married on September 2, 1967, in Cluj. It was during my third year of college, and I designed and made my own wedding dress.

Three days before the wedding, I had second thoughts and wanted to run away. I don’t know why I didn’t do it. I don’t have much of an excuse other than I was pregnant and realized my life would be changed forever. I wasn’t very happy with my fate, but I went through with it, and we had an amazing wedding and reception, which was held in one of the most prestigious restaurants in the city.

My father gave us a car and a house as wedding presents. The whole town talked about the Renault 16 he gave me, a wonderful French car that was burgundy, beautiful, and brand new.

John’s parents gave us a set of silver spoons and knives. They didn’t have much money, but I knew they made an effort to come to the wedding and give us a gift. They were such good people, and I was so appreciative of them.

But I wasn’t very excited about my marriage to John. The prospect of having a baby was exciting, though. I was sure it was going to be my salvation, and that it would become the glue for our marriage.

Telling dad…and breaking his heart

John’s family arrived in Cluj before we did. They were waiting outside my house when my father got home from work. He saw them and didn’t know who they were. John’s father got out of the car and introduced himself. My father knew John’s name and asked them in.

Inside, John’s father said, “My son, John, wants to marry Stella. We came to ask your permission.”

My father wasn’t pleased.

“Tell your son that Stella is not to get married because Stella has so much to do. She is not ready to get married.”

John’s father pled his case.

“My son wants to do this. He’s spoken to Stella about it. She wants to as well.”

My father nodded and stood there in silence.

Finally, after several moments he said, “If this is what they want, then I’ll discuss it with Stella.”

Then John’s father and his family left. My father didn’t know I was pregnant. They didn’t tell him. I was appreciative because I wanted to tell my father. You have to understand, I was very popular and successful, everything that a parent could expect from a little girl. I was my father’s everything. He loved me from the bottom of the heart. For him to find out what I did from other people would have made him very, very sad.

The next day, I arrived home with my mother and sister. I’ll never forget how I took my dad in another room and broke his heart.

“I am pregnant,” I said. “Dad, I have to get married.”

My mother and father endured a lot of trials and tribulations in their lives. They always recovered. Always. When my father and I sat together in that room and I told him that I was pregnant and that I wanted to marry John, he was so disappointed. He had endured so much emotional pain in his life from his mother dying when he was a little boy to watching his family’s fortune disappear, to going into hiding, and being a prisoner of war in Russia. However, all those horrible life experiences were behind him. Somehow, his heart and spirit were untouched by life’s circumstances. Besides, those incidents were out of his control.

As I stood before him and uttered the words, his spirit crumbled. He knew the kind of life I would endure with a man like John. He knew even if I didn’t. He felt sorry for me. How can someone so beautiful, vivacious, and promising choose so wrong?

He always had his heart tucked away somewhere safe within his spirit where nothing from the outward world could touch it, good or bad. But I was my dad’s heart. He loved me with everything he had. He knew that even though life had failed him so many times, that that I was somehow immune from that, protected by his steel will and work ethic. Whatever I wanted he did without question. Somehow in me the future was bright, pleasant, and right. Somehow because he paid so dearly I wouldn’t have to. He made sure of that.

In those few moments in that room a daughter broke her father’s heart. The heart that wasn’t touched before was vulnerable, and he was sad. Really sad. For a minute, he saw me five years old dancing in the yard, happy and carefree. He knew that the clouds were coming and his dreams for me were fading. He tried to talk me out of it. Both my parents tried. But somehow they couldn’t reason with me. So they gave up and supported me unconditionally, as before and as always. He could have scolded me. He didn’t. Instead, he just hugged me.

“Are you in love?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

I told him what had happened.

“I think it’s love, I guess,” I said.

“OK,” my father said. Then he smiled. “We are going to have a nice wedding for you and we are going to make it happen.”

I learned something important in that one moment: a parent’s love for a child is unconditional.

A fateful decision that would change my life

The next morning, I awoke at the crack of dawn and sat up. I didn’t leave the bench, though. I just sat there by myself, thinking and watching people go by. By coincidence, John’s mother went to the store to buy bread. I hadn’t met her yet, but John had shown me her picture so I knew who she was. She, on the other hand, didn’t know who I was or anything that had happened the previous night. But she saw me there by myself, looking sad, and came over.

“Can I help you, sweetie?” she said.

She was a tall, beautiful woman, very classy and kind. John had told me she was a teacher.

“I’m a friend of Lelu’s,” I told her.

She didn’t act surprised. Instead, she sat down next to me and smiled.

“Are you Stella?”

I nodded.

“Lelu’s mentioned your name. He’s spoken about you to me. I’m Maria Moga, his mother. Why don’t you come with me to our house? He’s with some high school friends in Cimpina. You can wait for him there rather than here, outside, on a bench.”

I nodded again. “You’re very kind,” I said. “OK.”

And we got up and walked to John’s house together.

John’s parents were both very nice people. They were very different than John. I waited for several hours with them until John arrived. I apologized for waking John’s father in the middle of the night. He said it was OK and that he felt bad that I had to sleep on a bench all night. Had he known that’s who I was or what I would have had to do, he would have insisted that I came in and spent the night.

A few hours later, John arrived. He was surprised to see me, but very happy.

His parents left the two of us alone.

“I’m here to let you know I’m pregnant,” I said. “I want to have an abortion, but I want it to be both our decisions. It’s your child, too, and I cannot decide for both of us. I need help, Lelu. I cannot do this by myself.”

John shook his head in protest.

“I’m in love with you, Stella,” he said. “Let’s have this baby together.”

We discussed it for a long time before John finally got up and brought his parents into the room so that we could tell them.

“Having a baby is a wonderful thing,” his mother said after we delivered the news. “You cannot get rid of it. You two are very young. You will get married and have this baby. It is the right thing to do. You will see. We will have a beautiful wedding for you.”

Maria was so kind to me. Her parents never liked John’s father, who came from a very poor family, but she married him anyway. Because of that, Maria’s parents stopped talking to her. And they refused to give the two of them any money when they got married.

Maria paid for her decision for the rest of her life. The two of them struggled. They had seven children and John’s father didn’t make very much money. Maria struggled to raise the family. But all seven children attended college. If you know nothing else about how good those people were, that’s all you need to know.

I stayed with John and his parents at their house for a few days, then got in touch with my mother and sister and told them where I was and to come get me.

“What’s happening?” my mother asked, a mixture of panic and relief in her voice.

“Just come get me and I’ll tell you all about it.”

And they did.

My mother and sister arrived at John’s house the next day to pick me up. I took her into a room where just the two of us could talk.

“Mom, I’m pregnant,” I said.

“You’re what?”

“Pregnant. John got me pregnant.”

“Stella, how could you?” she protested.

“It just happened, mom.”

My mother sighed. “So what are you going to do?”

“Marry John.”

She closed her eyes, let her head drop and slowly shook it. Then she raised her head and opened her eyes. “OK,” she finally said. “I’ll support your decision. You need to tell your sister. And then we need to go home so that you can tell your father.”

“I need a few days before I can tell dad,” I said. “Please?”

She pondered my request for a moment before saying, “OK.”

We returned to the other room where I told my sister what was happening. The three of us stayed in Ditesti for a few days before going to the train station and taking a train home to Cluj, where I would have to tell my father.

Unbeknownst to the three of us, while we took the train to Cluj, John’s father, brother, and brother-in-law took a car and went to Cluj to meet my father first. In Romania, tradition holds that you must ask a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Often, it is the father of the prospective groom rather than the prospective groom, himself.

Love lost….or found?

I’ve always liked trains. They remind me of change – either good or bad. I took a train from Constanta toward John’s parents’ house in Ditesti-Prahova, where I planned to find John, tell him about the pregnancy and get an abortion.

It was a painful train ride. Ditesti-Prahova was so small you could not find it on a map, and you certainly couldn’t get there by train. It was a very remote and poor village in the countryside, filled with gypsies. The landscape was dusty, flat, and plain.

The train took me as far as Ploiesti, where I arrived around 11 p.m. From there, I had to hitchhike.

It was late but I was able to flag down a truck on a country road. I don’t know what I was thinking. Looking back, what a stupid girl I was to get in that big truck with a stranger in the middle of the night. I was very concerned, but it was the only way I could think of to get to Ditesti-Prahova, and that was more important than making smart decisions in the middle of the night.

I remember the sounds I heard from inside the truck and the bad smell of the cabin. The smell was so strong that I threw up several times.

The driver was very courteous. He stopped the truck without complaint so I could get out and not get sick inside his cabin. I hardly breathed the entire ride. I would sleep, wake up and look around. I was so scared.

The man never said a word. He didn’t ask any questions. God bless him. He was a good guy. He could have just as easily raped me, killed me or robbed me. But he didn’t.

When we reach the outskirts of Ditesti-Prahova, he stopped the truck.

“This is the end of the road for me,” he said.

“Where are we?”

“Edge of town. You’ll need to walk the rest of the way.”

“Thank you so much,” I said, and then climbed out of the cab.

The man leaned toward the window and waved. “Be safe,” he said then drove off, leaving me alone on the side of the road.

It was a warm night, pitch black, with a sky full of stars. There was a small, primitive, country sign that said “Ditesti.” I followed the sign’s directions down the road toward a small village. I was tired, hungry, pregnant, and scared, but I was determined to solve my problem.

Abortion in Romania was for blue-collar people. It was illegal but people still did it. But I was an aristocrat, a rich girl. I was not supposed to make mistakes and I certainly wasn’t supposed to have an abortion. But none of that mattered to me at the time. Abortion was the only answer for my problem.

I brought John’s address on a small slip of paper. I walked through the village in search of the street and his house. It was about 1 a.m. when I finally found it.

His entire property was fenced in. There was no doorbell, but a gate. I found a rock and I knocked hard at the gate. I knocked a few times.

After a few minutes, John’s father came out.

He looked at me and said, “It’s 1 a.m., who are you and what do you want?”

“I’m a friend of John’s from college,” I told him, not mentioning my name. “Is John home?”

“No. Lelu is not home,” he said, using John’s nickname. “He is at a party in Cimpina. But he is coming back tomorrow. Come back then.”

And that was it. John’s father did not invite me in. I was so nervous – my heart was pounding – so I didn’t ask. Instead, I turned and left.

I walked slowly down the road, crying softly and thinking about my next move. It was the middle of the night. I was alone. I was cold, I was hungry. And I had nowhere to go. Cimpina was at least two hours away by car so John certainly wasn’t coming back tonight. I remembered a grocery store I had passed on my way through the village. There was a bench outside it. I headed to that bench, lay down, and cried myself to sleep.

And then life changed

For Easter vacation, John took me to Bucharest to his aunt’s apartment. She was on vacation. It was there that we made love for the first time.

The experience, itself, wasn’t very memorable, except for the fact that it was our first time. But the guilt afterward was overwhelming. I realized that I was still in love with Sabelli, the football player, but I knew he was not good for me because he was a womanizer and very shallow. John and I were never really compatible. Anyone else would have been better me than John.

He was very unhappy by nature; I’m an optimist, even under the direst of circumstances. I was very active, he wasn’t. I like parties, he didn’t. I love life, he didn’t. John was constantly under the weather; he was always complaining that something hurt. Every day it was something different, a headache, his heart was racing, his leg hurt. Adriana was right. I was just too blind to see it.

We went back to college after the vacation and our relationship continued to get more serious. When the semester ended, we went to our respective homes and fully expected to pick up our relationship when we returned to school in the fall.

My family loved going on vacation. Every summer, my mother, sister and I would visit my mother’s sister, Anuta, in Constanta, near the Black Sea. We loved going to the seashore for our vacation. It was so lovely, so beautiful and so tranquil.

In June 1967, the three of us took a train from Cluj to Constanta. It took three days to get there, and when we arrived, Anuta’s house wasn’t available. But we were undeterred. We found a little house to rent and settled in for our vacation.

A few days into our trip I started to get very sick. I woke up each morning violently ill, more nauseous than I’d ever been in my life and throwing up non-stop. My mother was very worried. She didn’t know what was wrong. But I realized I’d missed my period. I didn’t say anything. This had to be morning sickness, I decided. I had to be pregnant.

After about four days of feeling sick, I knew I needed to resolve my problem. I was young and the last thing I needed was to have a child. What I wanted to do was find John, have an abortion and be done with it. But in Romania at the time abortions were illegal. We’d find a way, I was sure. Even then, I realized that having an abortion would not be a good thing and my family would not approve.

But I didn’t feel like I had a choice. It had to be done. So I decided to leave my mother and sister without telling them where I was going. I told them that I was going out shopping and instead left a note by water container on the table.

“Dear Mom,” I wrote. “I have to go solve a huge problem in my life. I love you. I’ll get in touch. Love, Stella.”

Can you imagine? I left my mother there without her knowing what was going on? I was 19 years old, and I just took off.

Partially, it was because my parents were very strict with my sister and me. My curfew was 10 p.m. even after I started college. I never wanted to disappoint my family through any of my actions. I was supposed to be a good girl and end up successful; there was no other outcome expected. So you can imagine how sad and scared I was when I found out I was pregnant. This was a big problem that only I could resolve.

With college came my first true love

Throughout my high school years and into college, if school and extracurricular activities were my escapes, boys were not my main event. Getting a boyfriend was easy. In high school, my friends and I used to hang around the university football (soccer) players. They used to come by our high school, and all the girls were crazy for them. One of the most successful, Sabelli, took an interest in me and we began going out. I was in 11^th grade at the time, which in Romania was a senior in high school.

Here I was, successful academically, successful in extracurricular activities and with a university football player boyfriend. It was like icing on a cake.

When I got to Babeş-Bolyai University, I was still involved with Sabelli. But he was a very shallow person. He didn’t know much about anything other than sports. One night, his hormones got the best of him and he started a fight with a member of the secret police in a restaurant. Even though he was a big star, because he beat up a member of the Communist Party, they threw him in jail. So there I was, Stella Daisa, the big star, with her boyfriend in jail. That was a big stigma.

They finally let Sabelli out of jail because it was a minor offense. But I didn’t care; I broke up with him. I realized that he wasn’t the right person for me. And then, during my second year of college, I met John Moga in the corridors of the university.

John wasn’t especially good looking. He wasn’t very social. He wasn’t my type at all. And one day, he just walked up to me and began a conversation.

“Hi,” he said. “My name is John.”

“I’m Stella.”

“I know,” he said. “You have a very pretty feminine voice.”

Not the greatest pick-up line in the world, mind you, and I was not impressed at all with him. John didn’t look attractive or even healthy, for that matter. I said goodbye and walked away, figuring I’d never see this guy again.

But I did. This time, he was wearing a white sweater with spots on it.

“Hi,” he said. “Do you remember me? I’m John.”

I looked at his dirty sweater and pointed at the spots.

“Why didn’t you wash your sweater?” I asked.

“I’m waiting for money from my parents to buy detergent,” he said. “They send me money every month.”

That wasn’t uncommon. In Romania, students didn’t work their way through college like they do in America. Even the poor ones just went to school. Their parents sent money whenever they could.

I felt a little sorry for John, and I had plenty of money. “Come with me,” I said. “I’ll lend you money so you can wash your clothes.”

We went to wash John’s clothes, and we got to talking. I found him smart and interesting. He was different than anybody else around. John was strange. He wasn’t very social. He wasn’t my type at all. And I don’t know why, I can’t explain it even today, but I was attracted to him.

Over the next weeks and months, John and I got serious. We fell in love. Everyone who knew me – and my former famous, good looking and rich university football player boyfriend – was shocked about this choice. Nobody believed I could possibly go out with John, much less fall in love with him.

Adriana Hodosan, a good friend that had gone to high school with me and now was in college with us, used to say, “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you see he’s depressed? He acts like an old man in a young man’s body.”

But I didn’t listen.

We were able to subsist because the Communists were corrupt

My parents raised me in a place where the rules were made of deceit. The reason America is such a successful triumph of the human spirit is because people are fair and logic is seen in every aspect of American life. Not so in a Communist country. The people who came to power under Communism did not earn or deserve their titles or positions. They took them. Whenever something is not earned, you do not know how to treat it or how to hold on to it – you don’t appreciate it. You misuse it. Power is like money earned. So for me, the general rules and guidelines in Romanian society were a joke.

Within the walls of my family’s home life, we adhered to the same universal traits the rest of the world was built on – honor, duty, integrity, and general well being. I became a true free spirit. The American way was alive and well within my own heart. As a student, I studied hard and followed the rules of hard work and dedication. As a student in a Communist Romanian school, I could not have been anymore defiant. Their silly rules that did not make any sense like reading only Communist propaganda and making sure we screamed our allegiance to the Communist Party. Well, I wasn’t going to go for all that. When they talked about manifestos and atheist beliefs, I dreamed and prayed to my sweet dear God to help me find a way to my beloved America. So I guess I walked on the positive side of believing the rules didn’t apply to me. I could’ve been angry at how different my thoughts were from theirs and developed a superiority complex that would have only gotten in my own way.

Instead, I chose what was good for me out of the education system and excelled at those subjects and activities. The ones that did not agree with my spiritual make-up, I left behind with a “No, thank you” attitude. I did not beat anyone over their heads with how wrong and ridiculous their system was. I left it alone. And I always did it with a pure heart.

By my junior high school years, I was left to my own devices and everybody loved me. I turned into a great student and my family was proud of me. In school, I became involved in many things, including sports, where I was successful in gymnastics. I also did well in drama and choir.

Track always fascinated me but I didn’t join the team. I did run, though, and one day, the coach needed a replacement. He asked me to take a sick team member’s place. The team was competing in a regional meet and I was asked to run in the 400-meter event. I was fast. And, although I had never run this type of event before, I was sure I’d do well.

My father came to watch the competition. I knew I couldn’t let him down. So when the event started I ran as fast as I could and won. Then I fainted. I hadn’t trained properly and didn’t have the right conditioning because I never practiced with the team, but I finished first. And that’s all it was about for me – being first.

The drive to exceed expectations led to me wanting to better myself in all areas, including education. I heard about a high school that was better than the one I was attending. I begged my mother to let me go. She refused and explained that it was too far for me to go each day by bus. But I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I kept insisting. Finally, my mother acquiesced and I got accepted into that school. It was far, as far as my mother had warned me, and I walked many miles to school every morning and then home every afternoon. But it was worth it.

When I arrived at the school I found that the students were all more advanced than I was because the school employed better teachers. But soon I caught up with them and became one of the best students. I joined the drama club and though I wasn’t a very good singer managed through my personality to become a soloist, compete nationally and win an important competition. I acted and sang in numerous programs and always was the main character in whatever play we put on.

Things truly turned around for me at this school. It was a fresh start, to say the least. And when my parents went in for parent-teacher conferences, the teachers all raved about how well I did in my academics and how involved I was in the extracurricular activities.

Of course, the teachers tempered all those positives with a handful of complaints, primarily that I didn’t follow directions very well. None of those things surprised my parents. But they were of the mind that if I did well in school, the rest of it was OK.

Even today, after all these years, it’s still hard for me to follow directions. I continue to believe that the rules simply can’t apply to me. Despite that, I’m wise enough now to recognize that when it’s something serious I have to follow the rules, such as banking or other areas where right and wrong are a matter of legal or illegal.

I ended up graduating high school with honors. At my graduation, my grandfather, took me aside. “Stella,” he said. “You don’t belong in this country. Whatever you decide to do, you must make sure that you end up in America.”

“I understand,” I assured him.

My goal for adulthood was simple: go to a university, do well, then find a way to leave Romania and get to America.

Because my high school grades were so strong, I was accepted into one of the best universities in Romania, Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, in Transylvania. I hoped that would be the beginning of my journey to reach the great United States of America.

 

Childhood experiences instilled the power to succeed

It’s so amazing how my childhood experiences instilled within me the strength to succeed and the confidence of my convictions. My spirit could just as easily have been pummeled, and I could have grown up into a weak person. Instead, I became as strong as steel. And I saw firsthand and up close how to beat the system.

That is probably why I tried so hard and never gave up when everything looked grim in America. And what a wonderful country America is for providing me with all of the opportunities it has so that I could become as successful as I wanted to be. It’s not the money. It’s not the possessions. Rather, it’s the simple fact that I am allowed to do what I want as long as I try hard enough.

What I’ve accomplished during my adult life could have probably been predicted by watching my younger self. Being a leader and taking charge of any situation always came easy to me. I led rather than followed. Once, when I was when I was 11, my grandpa took me to Cetia, the village where he was born. After a couple of days on vacation there I got bored. There was nothing for me to do so I found this old barn and cleaned it up and told my grandfather that I was going to put together a play. He said that would be fine, and I began to organize a program that was comprised of a play, songs, and spoken poetry.

I was a ball of energy and began seeking out children to get involved. It didn’t take long, a few days, before the situation changed and they began to seek me out. Soon there was a large group of us and we practiced the program for weeks. Here I was, 11 years old, and the producer of this amazing show.

When we felt we were ready, we put together invitations and invited the entire village to come see the program. We actually set a price to come see the show and sold tickets. Keep in mind that this was during Communism and people didn’t have much money, so for those people who couldn’t pay cash I asked them to pay with eggs or chickens or whatever they had.

Our program became this huge village-wide event. Everybody came to see it. It was amazing. And my grandfather was extremely proud of me for putting it together.

By the time I was in high school, the political situation in Romania had begun to settle down a little because of outside pressure from different countries. It also became easier to live there because the corruption among the secret police and Party members grew to epic proportions. The corruption was out in the open. Communists wanted money from people and they would do things under the table, even if everybody else around knew it was going on.

If you were lucky enough to have some money, any money, you could get whatever you wanted from the Communists who controlled the cities and villages. My parents managed to get some of their property back through bribes. I never learned the actual details but it wasn’t hard to figure out. One day, my father told me were moving, and we moved from the one room we lived in to another house, a house that had been built by my mother’s parents. Suddenly, we had two rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. That was a big step toward regaining the lives we’d lived before the Communists took of Romania. And best of all, we were allowed to keep a small plot of land behind the house.

As a result of the payoffs, my parents were allowed to get jobs. That let us do a little better. They also were allowed to start a vegetable and animal farm on the land and, as time went by, they hired other people to work the farm and help produce vegetables. My parents raised animals and sold the meat on the black market to make extra money. They learned how to successfully work the system and we managed to do well.

Mom worked as an assistant of a director of a hospital. Dad was a farm worker and became valuable to the company he worked for, being named the equivalent of vice president of sales. He collected animals from surrounding villages and sent the meat to foreign countries.

I, not surprisingly, developed into a true type-A personality as a teenager. I was outgoing and outspoken. I refused to be a young Communist and didn’t follow the rules. That’s not to say that I went out of my way to make trouble, because I didn’t. But I did do things like go to church when you weren’t supposed to do that.

While the Communists didn’t close all the churches, if you were seen in a church they stigmatized you. But I loved to go to church. It was a refuge or sorts for me, support for my confusion. I would go alone and hide from the prying eyes of the secret police. And I would pray. I would pray that one day I would go to America and escape this life. I would ask God to listen and answer my prayers.

My family believed in God. My grandfather had seen the good that faith creates in people in America. America is a country built on the many different faiths. People can overcome insurmountable odds with God in their hearts. My mother would pray every chance she got. She would kneel in our little house and I would kneel beside her. I felt the strength of her faith and the pure joy on her face when we would pray together. I felt it kneeling there with my mother as a little girl. I got to know God kneeling there with my mother.

I trusted him and when we worked hard, He would deliver. My mother would say, “God doesn’t give you what you want. God gives you what you need. And when he gives you hardships, it is only for you to work harder and serve your purpose here on Earth better. When God takes something dear away from you, he gives you something else in return.”

When the Communists came and took away our land and possessions, we became closer to the rest of our family. We rarely fought with each other and we helped one another. It made our extended family bonds strong. This is how my mom viewed God, and that is what she instilled in me as a child. Whenever something happened, I always tried to see the lesson even in the worst moments. When you are taught this simple skill as a child, your mind automatically goes to the positive in any event. It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react to it that matters the most.

That’s why even now, when I get no for an answer, I do not accept it. I knew I was not allowed to go to church but I was confident enough in myself to know that nothing bad would happen to me, even if I got caught. The harder they tried to stop me from going, the more I wanted to go and the more often I would.

After the Communists took over I learned how to adapt in school

For several months in the early 1950s, after the Communists took everything away from us, my family lived in small room. We barely had enough food to eat and clothing to put on our backs. We had no money to buy sugar, and my mom used homemade marmalade in my sister’s milk. I remember how my parents, after they were stripped of their possessions, weren’t even allowed to have jobs. It was punishment by the Communists for their resistance.

Somewhere during that time, I can’t remember exactly when, Party thugs seized most of our land. They never did get my mother to sign those papers. There was no fanfare when it happened. I just remember that one day I noticed we didn’t have the land anymore, and nobody ever spoke about it.

School was very hard for me because people knew my father was born in America. I was known as “the American’s daughter.” America, they taught us, was capitalist America, evil America, and I became a pariah because of my father. My teachers and classmates picked on me. It forced me to work harder than everyone else just to get by in the classroom and survive in an increasingly hostile environment. But instead of breaking me, it made me even more confident in myself that I could handle anything that was thrown my way.

We wore uniforms each day to school that demonstrated our “sameness.” The Communists mandated that no one should have any more than anyone else. Nobody was supposed to have more than one home, and if the home’s square footage was bigger than the Party felt was appropriate, the rest of the house would be allocated to other Communists. We had friends, many friends, who lived in a house and shared bedrooms with other families and used a common kitchen for everyone.

In school, the teachers told us that God didn’t exist. They explained that we should not go to church because there was nothing there for us. The only thing we should believe in, they said, was Communism and its philosophies. We read from Marx and Engels, and nobody else. We were not allowed to read American authors or any book that said anything positive about America. And we were not allowed to own foreign currency, especially U.S. dollars. If we were caught with foreign money, we were treated the same way that people are treated in America when they are caught with illegal drugs – we were sent to jail.

Those Communist teachers hated me. As the daughter of the American, they singled me out for scrutiny every chance they had. Then, at the end of the school day, I would come home and tell my parents about how terrible school was. And every day, my grandfather took me aside.

“Stella,” he said. “Do not believe these people. Don’t do whatever they tell you to do. Do not believe in Communism. It is evil. We believe in other things than they do.”

I would cry and explain all the lies they told me that day.

And my grandfather would look me in the eye and say, “Stella, my princess, you are born to be in America. One day, you will go. It is an amazing country.”

Can you imagine how confused that made me?

But my family was great, all of them, not just my parents and grandparents, but also my aunts, Aurica, Anuta; my uncles, Iosif, Tvaian and Tinu; and my cousins, Daniela, Titi and Voica. Our family was very close and we all stood firm together against Communism.

Slowly, I learned how to cope with all this confusion. I was smart enough to become a chameleon. I worked hard and kept my mouth shut. I learned how to gain my teachers’ and peers’ acceptance by being a good student, getting involved in lots of extracurricular activities, like drama and sports, and not arguing with anyone. I kept my beliefs to myself and shared my true thoughts with no one outside our home.

At home, I listened to my parents and accepted and believed what they said. I excelled because in my heart I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would prove that the Communists were wrong and that we were right.