Nina Writes

This is the summer to become diaper free. For the most part, except to sleep at night, the diapers are off and away from sight, but even a week later, the battle continues. Mostly, Ella forgets to go when she is watching a cartoon, drawing or playing. There simply isn’t any time to take a break to go to the toilet. Most of the time, she just takes the wet “big girl pants” off and continues playing while going commando. The other day not even the wetness bothered her, so when I confronted her about what happened to the Hello Kitty pants, she shook her head, “I no pee pee. Hello Kitty crying mama” with a straight face.

Pee pee is easily handled, cleaned up and hidden – a clean pair of big girl pants in my purse does the trick. It’s the poo poo that is stinking up the process.

For whatever reason, her biggest joy is to go once we are on the beach. As if the Adriatic Sea is her Metamucil. She puts her feet in the water and….well…goes. Fortunately, unlike California, Croatia hasn’t yet outlawed plastic bags – and I always happen to have one in my backpack. Like a dog owner, I pick up the pieces fallen on the pebbles and, under every beach-goer’s watchful eye and laughing grin, I carry them off to the nearest trashcan, while Ella makes a public service announcement in her triumphant voice: “I make a big poo-poo mommy. Vejiko gono I make!”  

She has done this three times already, on three different beaches, “christened them” as they say here.

The preschool where she is to start in August allows only three ”accidents” per week. Thankfully, we have another two months to practice and the preschool is not on the beach.

“Anyone who has ever revisited the place of his birth after years of absence is shocked by the differences between the way the place actually is, and the way he has remembered it. He may walk along old familiar streets and roads, but he is a stranger in a strange land. He has thought of this place as a home, but he finds he is no longer here in spirit. He has gone on to a new and different life, and in thinking longingly of the past, he has been giving thought and interest to something that no longer really exists.” – James McBride, The Color of Water

***

I am not from here. I am from a place different than this.

Where people greet me with a handshake, a kiss, on both cheeks, or a simple “O” and “E,” vowels that hide years of history, memory, and lazy repeats. Days repeat. Wake up to the fluorescent sky and closed shades, “pazi promaja je,” careful not to sit where the draft of slight wind can blow into your ovaries. Stroll the promenade looking for someone I may know, so that they can tell me “uvik si ista.” No I haven’t changed at all, not at all since I was 15 and left this town. I did not cut my hair, color it or grow it out, I did not gain or lose more than 5 lbs, I did not start wearing make up or heels. But 19 years (has it really been that long?) is a long time, longer than half my life, than all my life here. Long enough to finish college, have my heart broken, then mended, to write a book, get a masters, to move apartments 10 times, get married and have a kid, be someone’s favorite friend and someone’s least favorite teacher. Long long time to “stay the same” but it’s all the same, always the same. Nothing changes except what’s for lunch, and that makes all the nonchange worth the wait. With more banks and only the latest cell phones, more choices of diaper wipes and yogurts than even over there. Other than that, it’s the same.

After the morning coffee, the same old me returns home, sweaty from the sun and the stairs to my mom’s apartment, a cacoon of peace and comfort, flowers, wind chimes and overcrowded closets. Peace. Radio Split and dunked bread in olive oil. A mid-afternoon nap followed by the beach. Same old beach where we have gone for the last 10, 20, 30 years. Where the skeleton of a hotel  that carries my parents’ nostalgia stands tall yet toothless, where pebbles have washed out to the sea but where the dialect is familial and the sea clear.

Familiar sea is clearly home. Always the same.

And it is there that I, who is the same yet so much different, am here.

***

“Remembering is where we used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. It is emotional memory – what the nerves… and the skin rememberas well as how it appeared….Still, like water, I remember where I was before I was straightened out.” – Toni Morrison “The Site of Memory”

Ella understands Croatian/Dalmatian/Bosnian. She just refuses to speak it.

Thanks to Dora, she instead readily answers in Spanish:

“Di je brod?” (where is the boat?)

“It’s abajo,” pointing under her bed.

This is further complicated by the fact that my husband and I have three different words for “boat” – one I grew up speaking “barka” versus the one he uses “camac” vesus the proper, more generally used word “brod.” For everyone’s sake, mostly Ella’s, we agreed to drop our dialects when speaking to her and teach her proper Croatian or Bosnian, whatever “our” language can be called. So, hopefully, Ella will grow up speaking English, some Spanish and ”Ours.” Our increasing determination for Ella to learn “Ours” landed us in Croatia for the entire summer. We are here to soak up the rays, the waves, the tastes, but most of all, the words. Here’s a quick sample of what she picked up in a week:

Greetings: Dobar Dan, Dobro Jutro, Laku Noc, Vidimo Se, Cao, Adio

Wow, look at that. Teta Mirjana zivi in the biggest castle in the whole town.

My krpa has a rupa on it. Babi has to fix it.

I hot. I no need jaketa. I no need pokrit.

I want kruva.

I necu spavat yet.

I kupat se u more!!!! Yeeee moreeee.

Look, mama, Babi uvatila three ribas.

I make big poo-poo on the beach. Mammy said: “Don’t do veliko govno on the plaza!” I no make veliko govno on the plaza any more.

I setala Alisu to go piskit.

I bacila cep na pod by the big garbage.

I want to hodat to the kuca.

Nesto smrdi here. Did you prnila?

…to be continued…