15/07/2026
It was an important day for my little sister. She had just turned 9, and our parents, wanting to honour her and show her that they trusted her, gave her a banknote of the highest value at the time, a shopping list, and sent her out to buy groceries. For the very first time, she was going alone.
She left happily, her cheeks flushed with pride. More than an hour passed, and we began to worry because my sister still hadn’t come back. I went out to look for her. I found her in front of the shop, crying her eyes out.
I was terribly frightened. It took me a long time to calm her down enough to find out what had happened.
She had finished her shopping and packed everything into the bag. It was a special bag, lovingly crocheted by our grandmother. Just as she was about to leave and head home, my sister was stopped by a woman who gave her a coin and asked her to go into the shop and buy her a bag as well, because she had nowhere to put her groceries.
“Leave your bag with me. I’ll look after it while you’re inside the shop,” the woman told her.
My sister was young and trusted people easily, so she left the woman her bag full of shopping and ran back into the shop. When she came out with the empty plastic bag she had bought, the woman was gone.
She looked for her, searching everywhere, but she was nowhere to be found…
Overwhelmed by anger and shame, my sister didn’t want to come home anymore. It was incredibly difficult to calm her down and explain that it wasn’t her fault, and that not all people are kind.
The tote bag you see in this picture is one I crocheted myself, inspired by the handmade bag that, many years ago in Romania, a woman stole from my little sister.