Happy Baba Marta! Happy Grandmother March!

If you click on the link, you can learn more about the holiday. Unsurprisingly, I was fairly pleased to learn of a holiday with my name in it, even if I wasn’t a grandmother. The tradition of giving someone a martenitsa on March 1st, and then placing it in a tree upon seeing a stork or swallow. As the month of March progressed, you’d see more and more martenitsa in the trees, certain trees being especially popular for reasons I never understood but still enjoyed.

Most of my students would give me a martenitsa, so I’d have a bouquet pinned to my shirt, or a collection around my wrist. I was loath actually to part with them, but I’d hang a few of them in trees and keep a few others.

I was in Bulgaria as a Peace Corps volunteer. I lived in Bankya (for training), Gabrovo (for year one), and Yambol (for year two).

These two years were incredible gifts even when they weren’t easy.

Bulgaria and Ukraine are different countries, obviously. But to me, they feel like cousins, sharing the Black Sea and Cyrillic alphabet. And Bulgaria too has fields of sunflowers. The picture I posted above was taken from the side of the road, but it could easily have been taken from a train window.

This is all to say,