REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND WHAT IT MEANS TO LIVE FULLY…

Easter is a big deal for us immigrants. Not just the religious significance—though that matters—but the deep nostalgia. The memory of celebrations that lasted days. Families gathering. Tables heavy with food. The village alive with music and laughter. Those memories pull at us, even here.

A few years ago, right before Easter, I was planning a gathering at my house. I called a friend and asked her, “Are we getting together?”

She said yes, but then, “I have to finish cleaning my house first. I have to wash the curtains.”

I stopped. “Excuse me? You are going to wash the curtains?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have to wash the curtains.”

I asked her directly, “Did your mother tell you to do that?”

I knew exactly where this came from.

In Moldova, before Easter, my mother would wash the curtains. It was necessary there because we lived in a village where dust was constant, where everything was open to the wind and the dust. My friend looked at me. And I watched the moment of recognition unfold in her eyes.

She asked, “How did you know it was my mother who told me to do that?”

I said, “Because our mothers did that. Are you telling me that you are still doing it? We do not live in the village anymore. We do not have the dust. We live in the city. Your windows are closed. Your curtains are beautifully white.”

The curtains were perfectly fine, and yet she was going to spend hours washing and ironing them because she had never questioned it.

So on Easter, she came to my house completely exhausted. Her house was shining, but she was tired like a dog. She lasted one hour before she had to leave.

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In my community, the quietest kind of unhappiness often belongs to the women who have never been invited to question. They carry traditions faithfully, without asking if those traditions still hold them or weigh them down. And when a different way appears, something inside them retreats—back into what is known, where fear feels more familiar than freedom.