I spent my childhood summers in Transylvania. My classmates thought it was beyond cool that I’d be off to the home of Dracula, bats, and vampires for six weeks.
Transylvania was a magical place for me, but not for any mythical reason — because of my grandfather.
He’s 97 years old now, and I moved to be near him.
I would travel as an accompanied minor
My adventure began from the moment I left my home in north London. From the age of 7, I’d fly by myself on British Airways’ unaccompanied minor plan to the Romanian capital of Bucharest, where my grandfather would meet me at the airport. We’d take an eight-hour overnight train across the country to Cluj, the unofficial capital of the Transylvania region.
Vacations were filled with trips to the park, where I’d swing on the monkey bars until my hands blistered. We climbed up to the top of the Cetatuia hill, where we’d look out over the entire city, and he’d point out the historic sites. One summer, on the banks of the Someș River, we found a patch of four-leaf clovers, which we picked and took home to press into a notebook.
My grandfather was the set designer at the national opera and had worked his entire career under communism. After his retirement in the late 1980s, he started oil painting abstract interpretations of the Romanian countryside and folklore. His studio in the center of Cluj was his sacred creative space; he’d take me there to paint while I played with the black cat, Rascal, that we’d rescued one year.
Our quests didn’t end with my childhood. Just last year, when he was 96, we rode Romania’s last working forestry steam train up into the Carpathian mountains. The train now operates as a tourist line, and as we chugged along, my grandfather told me about how he used to hitch rides on the back of the logging trains in his 20s to get to remote fishing spots.
He had a stroke
When he had a stroke at the end of last year that left him blind in one eye and unable to live fully independently, it was immediately clear to me that I’d be the one to come and take care of him. Six weeks later, my boyfriend and I had packed up our lives and moved across Europe. The ability to do this was made exponentially easier by having a partner who was willing to make this journey with me.
My life looks different now. Every afternoon, I walk the 10 minutes from my ex-communist block of flats to his, and we go for a walk together. He can’t manage much, just to the end of the street and back. Some days, we make it into the grocery store, where he sits on the window ledge next to the produce aisle and waits while I pick up his milk, bread, and clementines. Once a month, I go to his doctor’s office to collect his prescription and take it across the road to refill at the pharmacy.
I tell people that I’m not my grandfather’s carer, even though I am. I think I’m uncomfortable with the label because it forces me to confront a reality that I’m not prepared to accept — I’m no longer the child who needs protecting but the adult who’s providing it.
Our relationship has come full circle
A family friend recently said to me that her memory of my grandfather when she was a child was that he always took her seriously. That’s what he did for me, too. Any childish request was fulfilled. You might dismiss that as a grandfather merely spoiling his only grandchild. But that’s my grandfather — he understands that to respect a child means entering their world completely. I try to do the same with him now at this stage of his life.
He recently asked me for a calendar, specifically a religious one that the Orthodox Church sells. I didn’t ask him what appointments he could need to write down. Instead, I went to the cathedral in the city center, the same one my grandmother would take me to light candles, and bought a pocket diary from the priest in the kiosk.
Our relationship has come full circle. The smallest acts of love — buying a calendar, walking to the end of the street together — carry the same emotional weight as grand childhood expeditions once did.
My grandfather and I still undertake our secret missions, but they look a little different now. On his 97th birthday, I took him to his studio — something he’s not been able to do since his stroke. I drove the car around the back entrance, backing it down the narrow gangway all the way to the steps. There were twinkle lights wound around the stairwell, which took us a while to climb. Once we got into the studio, he sat in the rocking chair, and we looked around at the stacks of canvas, rows of paintings, and boxes of oil colors. “We made it,” I said. “It was an adventure,” he replied.
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