I am having breakfast in my parents’ garden in a suburb of Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. It’s a sunny day, the birds are singing, tulips and violets are in bloom. My two mixed-breed dogs, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, adopted during the pandemic, climb on my knees, asking to be stroked. A truck selling vegetables passes by with a nasal voice announcing on a megaphone: “La cartoafe, ceapa, morcovi, mere” (“Potatoes, onions, carrots, apples” in Romanian). This couldn’t get any better and yet, once again, I am crying, afraid that I may lose all of this.
