My great-grandmothers never saw the sea. Not a single one of them. I wonder whether that made them unhappy.

Post World War II, Bulgaria was rebuilt by its women. Women like my great-grandmothers who worked the land, who drove trucks, who made sure their kids got up on time for school and actually went to school, no matter how battered the building or few the teachers. Women who led simple and rational lives. Not easy lives. I have a feeling they simply did not have the time to even contemplate going to the sea. Yet, I am sure they dreamt of it.

My parents told me that when they were children, their parents would do everything possible to spend some time at the seaside during the summer break. Workers would receive month-long leave if they told their bosses they are travelling to show the sea to their kids; to make sure their kids have different childhoods, expectedly happier. Simultaneously, they were also, in a way, rewriting their own sea-less childhoods and living their parents’ dreams. What a rite it is to go to the sea.

Then they would go back to our little town, huddled in between mountain ridges, slopes, and fields of potatoes and raspberries… sit at the table with their grandparents and teach them all about the sea. My father’s grandmother was particularly excited to welcome him back from a trip to the sea. From his stories, it is clear it had been her greatest dream to go see the sea herself. But she had her kids and her animals to tend to, a garden, and a job in the fields somewhere in the great Danube plains… She had a country to rebuild.

My father has never seen New York City. Or any part of the U.S. for that matter. Back when he was a high schooler, a favorite pastime of his and his friends was sketching elaborate plans of escaping the Eastern Bloc on kite surfs through Turkey, or by jumping the fence of the U.S. embassy, or by sneaking into Serbia. It is not that they did not have the guts, just that they already had each other and their families, and the thought of being separated made any plans somewhat worthless, even if staying meant they could never really travel abroad. Well, at least they always had the summer and the sea. The agents of temptation were the truck drivers, those superheroes of Eastern Europe in the 70s and 80s. They carried whole worlds across a border so notoriously difficult to cross, everyone knew it as the Iron Curtain. It is as if they were able to pierce that veil between worlds, never meant to see each other. Kids collected their empty Marlboro cigarette packs, colorful candy wrappers, and Coca Cola bottles – the glass ones. After dark, the truck drivers dealt forbidden music: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Deep Purple. The kids learned their first few foreign words from them, the true map of Europe, and how to dream of something… different. But they still had their families, their friends, and their grandparents to tell stories of the sea to.

I have seen the sea. I have seen several seas, to be precise. I have also seen New York City. I have seen bits and pieces of the U.S. outside of it, too. I have become the driver of a truck full of stories. Much like my colleagues who drive cut tulips from the Netherlands and spare car parts from Spain, I am away from home for months, loading and unloading stories at every stop I make. I train by playing a game of memory cards, and I rest by writing things down, occasionally. I go back home because I have my grandmothers to tell stories of the Ocean to. They repay me with homegrown tomatoes and homemade bread. And every time I wonder… who did I learn envy from? Because it was definitely not my Eastern European family, who traveled the world through stories.

My envy knows no bounds or shame. It manifests itself in building walls and distances. It is so difficult for me to come to terms that I will not travel every break, that I will not see every sea, that I will not have a story of every place, even though, technically, I could. Aye, there is the rub, quoth Hamlet. I have been spoiled by being born at a time when any place seemed within reach. I could see far and wide above the remnants of the Iron Curtain’s foundations. But the more you know, the more you want to know. And the world is so vast, yet so tauntingly small and well-connected.

Now that we seem to enter another era of Iron Curtains, my envy has grown into fear. It feels like I will not have the chance to collect every story I wanted to. I am about to lose the one job I had, the one joy I knew I could bring back with me, no matter what. It has all made me wonder how my great- grandmothers found happiness having never seen the sea. It has made me realize that maybe I never had the chance to see it all in the first place.

I am about to go home soon. I wish to learn more of my family’s history so that I learn the trick of the trade of standing still. In the meantime, I propose a new form of trade. As you go home to places I will most probably never reach, hoard stories for me. You tell me of the world, the way I do for my parents. Let us extend the network of stories further, so no curtains and walls could ever separate us. I cannot promise I will not be envious yet, but I think I can learn to be a story-listener as well as a teller. I can promise to show you my mountain with the raspberry and potato fields, now mostly forgotten since more kids grew up into truck drivers, not farmers like their grandmothers. And you… you give me a glimpse of your sea.