I cannot – and could never – fall asleep quickly. As a child, I would often lie in bed, in the dark, sometimes for hours, and stare at the imperfect rectangle of light drawn by my half-open door on the ceiling. I would hear the television sounds and sometimes even my parents go to bed. I don’t remember what I was thinking about, but I suppose both insomnia and daydreaming – memory strongly joining in a little later – were always part of my life.
But my mother or father would often tell me bedtime stories, to help me overcome my insomnias – famous ones such as Cinderella or Snow White, traditional Romanian ones (such as the very frightening for a child Youth Without Aging and Life Without Death or the sad Master Builder Manole) and even stories invented by them. My mother would tell me a tender story about a little girl called Maria who would rescue a canary, in her attempt of making me fall asleep in the afternoon (but naps seemed to me the dullest and most useless activity and I would just ask for more tales), while my father would start telling me stories from his childhood, at night. When we started this ritual, he would lie in bed next to me and begin: ‘In a little town surrounded by snow-peaked mountains…’ and I would immediately interrupt him with great firmness: ‘This is not how you start a story.’ ‘How do you start a story, then?’ my father would ask curiously.
‘Once upon a time when daddy was a little boy.’
And so he began his stories from then on.