Ping-pong and thunderstorms.

Sometimes life is just poetic and laughable and beautiful, and last night was one of those times.

Our friends the Trifan family have the most beautiful homestead I've ever seen.  They live in a neighborhood perched on the side of a hill, overlooking the Lidl grocery store and the far end of Lupeni.  Their home is slightly ramshackle, covered in colorful painted handprints and a wild mix of lime and white paint.  The Trifans have nine kids, eight of them boys, who range in age from 29 to 16.  Their small plot of land boasts an amazing garden, fertile and green, vines crawling everywhere and trees heavy-laden with fruit.  Every time we visit, it seems, Papa Trifan fills our arms with something else: a bag of cherries, perfectly red and ripe, just-plucked from the tree; a towering bouquet of lilacs in purple and pink and white; a handful of summer apples, green and tart and crisp; a whole pizza topped with egg and sheep cheese and corn, baked in their wooden outdoor oven. 

It's what I've always imagined the Secret Garden to be like, actually -- a wild, glorious place that keeps surprising you with new spots to explore.  Plums and pears falling with a thud onto the unmown grass, beans creeping heavenward along spiraling vines, tomatoes glistening blood-red in the sunshine.  It's beautiful.

Tucked in the middle of this lovely place is a cement slab with an improvised light fixture dangling precariously from wires overhead.  This is where the Trifan boys play ping-pong, often inviting all their neighbors or friends from church to join them as they play late into the night.  The ball often ends up in the garden, and we have to scramble after it, careful not to trample plants, but it's fun.  We sit on home-hewn wooden benches and make commentary, oohing and ahhing at the antics of the players.  Everyone is welcome, even those without any skill, and the game is often interrupted by 2-year-old Daria climbing onto the table or sending her toy truck under the feet of the players.

Last night, Jack and I went to play at about 9pm.  We could see lightning in the distance, and it had rained for most of the day, but we were eager to spend some time outdoors and went anyway.  As we started playing, we heard thunder, and the lightning got closer -- but we played on.  Thunderstorms in the mountains are astonishing, by the way, and I missed plenty of shots because I was too busy watching the storm.  It was dark by that time, but lightning would flash out of clouds behind the nearest peaks, throwing their outline into sharp relief.  Thunder echoes when you're in a valley, and it seems a lot closer when you live in the mountains.  But suddenly, it really was right on top of us -- thunder and lightning only seconds apart, loud and ominous, with dark purple sky.  "Should we keep playing?" Jack asked.  "Yeah!" I replied.  "Maybe just to 11?"  The score was 6-8.

But before we served the next point, the clouds ripped open and the deluge began.  The few spectators had already left, more sensibly attuned to the imminent cloudburst than we were, so the four of us playing shrieked and quickly folded up the table, carrying it inside a shed.  We were soaked in seconds -- the rain fell in hard sheets, thunder and lightning pounding the sky.  We stood in the shed and watched, munching on apples Papa Trifan had handed us earlier.  Eventually the downpour slackened to a hard, steady rain, and we decided to make a run for it.  Ten minutes later it had slowed to a drizzle, and Jack and I headed home, hand-in-hand, sopping wet, and happy.