Let's be that young when we are old.

"HOLD YOURSELF!" my hostmother translated as we sped around a corner, the car lurching at the hands of our driver, an eighty-six year old woman named Stefanica who had just belted out a string of consonants (i.e. Croatian) before bursting into laughter.

In her entirety, Stefanica is 5 feet tall and 100 pounds. If you round up. Her car  has the seemingly universal smell of old people as well as a bumper sticker pasted on the dashboard that reads, "VOZITE BROZ?" (Driving Fast?)

 Yes, I thought, as Stefanica released a high-pitched, "wooHOO"  when racing through a yellow stoplight. It was a Sunday afternoon, the streets in Zagreb were nearly empty, but as I was quickly coming to realize, Stefanica was not one to slow down.

We three women were on our way to a Medieval festival on Mt. Medvenica, just outside of Zagreb.  As we drove up the mountain I could feel the car straining. At every vista we pulled off, to let the cars that had accumulated behind us pass. Stefanica giggled as she wrenched the steering wheel on hairpin curves, pulling one hand over another, cutting just in time for us to avoid certain death, thelma and louise style.  After one particularly harrowing turn, she let out a loud exhale and whacked herself on the shoulder with a closed fist and a surprising amount of force.

"Her shoulder has been hurting her," Heda, my hostmother explained. "She puts plastic bags on it to make it feel better but it hasn't been helping much."

"Plastic bags?" I asked, suddenly remembering my grandmother's homemade remedies--the awful lingering scent of garlic and the sweaty stickiness of a saran-wrapped knee. "With some kind of ointment?"

"No, just plastic bags." Heda said, confirming it with Stefanica as a family of hikers narrowly avoided being hit by our side mirror.

It turned out that the Medieval Festival was not all that entertaining. (Stefanica was not impressed with the troubadour.) The main attractions were a puppet show, a photo op in shackles, a ferret and some chain mail. 

We headed to a nearby lodge for lunch. The line was long, and since my Croatian skills leave something to be desired, Heda went inside to order. This left Stefanica and I outside at a table, waiting.

Over the course of the next hour Stefanica and I learned a lot about each other using gestures, facial expressions and the few places where our languages overlapped. One of Stefanica's English words was "synthesizer." She taught me to count to 100 and when language became too tiresome, she began rummaging through her purse. This yielded ziploc bags for our leftovers, an orange for me, a harmonica for her and a small concert for neighboring tables.

Stefanica asked me how many years I have. When I said twenty-one, her face lit up.

"So young," she said, running her small, arthritic fingers against my cheek.

“So old,” I wanted to say with equal awe, tracing her worn in wrinkles.

Instead I dodged a stray rubber tipped arrow, launched by a portly and unapologetic child and Stefanica started eating an open bag of pretzels that previous diners had left on the table.

Later, when Heda joined us, Stefanica began speaking urgently in Croatian. Heda translated, "She asked if you hug trees, she said you should be sure to hug trees every once, that it's good for you health." 

As in be a literal treehugger? 

"I think it's superstition," Heda added.

"Ne!" Stefanica said, explaining that trees were alive too, that they could feel if something was sick inside you and take it with them, up into the sky even. It reminded me of elementary school science, where you learn that cold is only the absence of heat. Like saddness could just be the absence of happiness, and a tree would always be willing to help you reach an equiibrium. I smiled at the idea of Stefanica, at various stages of her life, holding onto a tree, clutching it desperately as a little girl, crying into the bark like a friend's shoulder or simply standing silently in that sturdy  familiar embrace.

We walked back to the car quietly, taking in the fresh air. When Stefanica started the car, we realized we were almost entirely out of gas.

"At least its downhill from here," I said. Before Heda could translate, I looked at Stefanica and made a downward sloping hand motion and a thumbs up.

"Da," she said laughing, and away we went.