Home is Where the Heart is

The old adage to be careful for what you wish comes to mind when I think of our recent trip to Belgrade and the Dalmatian Coast. When I decided that little one and I would accompany Big Daughter to Belgrade this summer, my focus was on seeing Big Daughter and her father, the Big N, in his natural setting. It was time for her to be with both parents and her sibling in his home. After all, the Big N had traveled frequently to NYC during the past 10 years. What I did not expect was to feel like I'd finally come home during this trip. As an adult, it had been 10 years since I last traveled to Paris to collect Big Daughter from one of her summer vacations. After that adventure, for a good period of time, I hunkered down in NYC and stopped moving around so much - and even became too anxious to fly. I'm glad to report those days are officially over. There were several large tour contingents on our flight to Paris. After someone gave away our assigned seats, the three of us were literally the last to board. The airline staff worked hard to seat us together -but Big Daughter ended up squashed between a Nigerian woman who grabbed her every five seconds, due to fear of flying. As we flew across the Atlantic, I thought of numerous family trips to Europe throughout my childhood and adolesence. Our family was always en route to a new destination. My father's summer sabbaticals -at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana and the University of Nigeria at Insukka- were invariably spent in Europe. We visited London, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Zurich, Salzburg and Vienna. On the flight from Paris to Belgrade, I peered out of the window when the pilot mentioned that we were flying over Zurich and the Austrian Alps and remembered our month-long stay in the sweet and beautiful town of Mittendorf in the Austrian Alps. The train ride from Zurich to Vienna and Salzburg was exciting, and I can still see the Swiss flags fluttering in the air. It was good to be back in Europe and I felt completely at home. After returning to NYC this past Saturday evening, I am a fish out of water. My heart feels dislocated and my center of gravity is out of whack. Carl is being gentle with me. So far, he's agreed to us going with his mother on a sheep-cheese trip this Sunday and bought tickets, spur of the moment, to a Malian music concert at Avery Fisher Hall this Saturday. He knows these are not traditional after-vacation-blues. I think often of Zaton, the town that Big Daughter and Big N have been staying for the past 8 summers. Big N began visiting Zaton with his ex-wife, the Lovely Lady K. She has land there -her family's summer house was bombed during the war and she is planning to rebuild. For generations, Serbs summered in Zaton, now they are a minority, but still welcome. Just 20 minutes from Dubrovnik, Zaton is truly special and in it's own orbit. Stone houses with orange roofs, sloping down to the seaside surrounded by profusions of brilliantly colored flowers, flowering cacti, lemon, fig and orange trees and the scent of Thyme and Marjoram and Pine perfuming the air. In the early morning, while Big Daughter slept and Big N. drank coffee and read, I would take little one and meander down on a five minute walk to the dock. Once there, I would buy her a breakfast snack and we would cross the street to the beach to sit in swings while she ate, watching the boats bobbing in the sea. The walk back up the steep, narrow roads would make us laugh and little one would beg me to pick her up when it was too steep. I would distract her with the scent of thyme leaves and lemon trees. When we returned, Big Daughter would be up and drinking coffee. We would read and rest a little and then head back out to the beach around 12. The water was a piercing blue/green and clear to the bottom with little fishes swimming around our feet. The pebble beach gently massaged our backs and we would jump in and out of the water all afternoon. It was hot in Zaton. The Mediterranean sun is intense, and in the water it was heaven. Big Daughter and Big N swam all over the place -he swam steadily for two hours daily -she made large circles from the beach to the dock and back. Around 4p.m., we'd head home, shower and make dinner. Big N had brought an electric grill and one morning he took us to the market in Dubrovnik and bought prawns and fresh tuna. I'd seen a huge tuna wheeled by covered with ice. We had a piece of that for dinner along with the prawns. A few evenings, we drove into Dubrovnik for dinner. The high ramparts were imposing and once in the city, it was glistening white stone and filled with light, just as I remembered. Our last night, the family who hosted us, invited us to dinner. We were served their homemade goat cheese, olive oil and wine accompanied by a salad of fresh mussels and calamari. We sat outside by the garden and they told us about a prior visit with long-lost relatives who'd moved to Chile, and recently reconnected with them. Earlier in the evening, little one and I were taken to see the goats, the olive grove and the old Olive press at the family home in the hills, just a few minutes from there. Even the fifteen hour drive from Belgrade to Dubrovnik was spectacular. We twisted and turned on two lane highways carved out of the side of a mountain, with just a guardrail between the car and the mountainside. During the last third of the drive, the mountains met the sea and the horizon was limitless. There was a spiritual quality to the air and light. I could understand why monasteries were carved out of stone in remote settings overlooking the sea -a true homage to something beyond the human spirit. Big N was amazed that little one was calm and contented for the entire 15 hour drive. Big Daughter had made enough mixed Cds to get us through 15 hours. When he couldn't take hip hop anymore, Big N put on Johnny Cash. We stopped in Montenegro at a restaurant owned by a friend of Big N and ate obscenely rich calamari with spinach and potatoes. Big N connected with Zenya, a Russian journalist friend and his family. They had recently hosted the Big N at the family dacha outside of Moscow and were avidly discussing South Ossettia. It was truly a mix of cultures. I had a cramp in my leg (due to a wrongly-executed exercise) and needed to stretch it out. I wandered around a small marketplace of fruits and vegetables while waiting for dinner end ended up buying some ripe green figs for Big Daughter and raspberries. Little one found a Strawberry Shortcake beach towel and Big N went over to haggle. Belgrade had changed in many ways, and yet in other ways, it was completely the same. Despite my 21 year absence, I found that our family had come full circle and reconstituted. After a week with the Big N, little one said of his pending fall trip to NYC,"how will I deal with two daddies in NYC?" As Big N's father said to me, "you've changed but you're still Roni." But that's for the next post.