Cres & my father
This is sort of an extension of the previous post, but ended up being too much to just add at the end. The memory of my dad is always linked to Cres for several reasons. He seems to have been the driving force behind us getting a house there (my mother will correct me if I'm wrong) and then the driving force behind us going there all the time (because he loved it so much) and then the driving force behind buying a boat and then a new boat about every decade or so (to my mother's continuous shock and dismay) and then driving us (and a good portion of my relatives) to all the beaches within - for the current sized boat - acceptable distance.
My father bought the fourth and last boat last summer. It was the biggest and fastest yet. I don't think anyone of us would have imagined him owning something like this. When he decided to get it (Against my mother's wishes of course, by now this was a tradition and part of the pricetag.) he was already pretty sick. It was probably not a smart move for a 70-year-old man without a stomach and a shaky immune system, because having a boat is not exactly like having car. There is so much involved. Getting it ready, prepping the motor... not to mention the hassle when your brand new boat ist delivered undrivable because of shoddy manufacturing. But my father loved this stuff. Messing with the boat and "improving" it, spending days covered in sticky polyester and motor oil and lugging around rocks on rickety homemade dollys was what made him happy. He was energized by the thought of how many people would take a trip on his boat and how happy they would be and how he was going to make all that happen, with his own hands! Even if it killed him! And sadly... some might say it did, in part at least. I don't think so.
Sometimes in life there's a point where things can't be fixed anymore one way or another and your choices are between keeping health or keeping joy. You can have one or the other and there is no right answer in what is the right thing to do. Maybe lugging around rocks sped up my dad's physical decline. But maybe not doing it would have meant losing the one thing that he could always count on making him happy.
We rode on the boat this year. All his big plans did pan out in the end and while he wasn't here to drive it, he was still very much present. I don't think I'll ever be able to ride that boat without a slight chill down my spine. But I don't want it any other way.
Posted at 02:56 PM on August 27, 2009 | Comments (3)So. Cres.
Somehow I had it in my mind I'd written about Cres before and I was just going to repeat myself, but a quick archive search shows, I really didn't. Nevertheless, sometimes what holds me back from writing the most is the feeling that certainly what I have to say has no relevance for anyone else. And it's not that I need an audience or imagine one, but this is a public blog, so... I just don't want to be that idiot that mistakes the ability to reach people with the ability to say something useful. Well, relevant or not, here goes regardless. (What was the point of this intro? I wonder.)
During our four-week-vacation we managed to drive to Croatia for a week, to the island of Cres, where my family has vacationed since I was 5 or 3 or 2, depending on when you start counting. The coast of Croatia is extraordinarily beautiful and I say this now with a tiny bit less bias than years ago, just because I've seen a few more beaches since and feel that the Mediterranean in general but the Croatian Adriatic in particular has a certain something that I have not seen anywhere else. The insanity is that I spent basically every single summer of my childhood on this island up to two months at a time and took it all for granted in a way only a clueless child can. And now, decades later I am so grateful for it because I realized what role it played in my life. That's the only way it works. You can only recognize the experience once it's over.
My parents bought this old, old house in the town of Cres and so did virtually all my dad's siblings and then some friends, too. The houses were initially in bad shape, no running water, no public sewage. Then everybody fixed them up, sort of, but it didn't matter, we really didn't need to be in the house most of the time, so they are basically bedrooms with a kitchen and a bathroom (Cue Veronika this year: "Mama, this house is weird! It has a basement, a kitchen and beds! Where is the living room??").
On the ferry, the kids & me, 2009
On the ferry, my sisters & me, 1980?
We went to the beach every day and then for a long walk at night (oh, the mandatory walk!) and on Sundays we went to church and then had ice cream afterwards. And sometimes we had birthday parties and sat around singing songs with one of my (many) cousins playing the guitar. If this sounds like a sappy movie to you, well it really was that way, except with real people who are also really annoying at times and occasionally boring and in general not at all Hollywood-y. We repeated this every.single.year. I only started getting tired of it when I reached adulthood, but never completely. The miracle of going to the same (incredibly beautiful) place every year is that it takes out all the logistical problems out of vacation - you always know where everything is, you sleep in a familiar bed, you can count on familiar company etc. In addition to that the feeling of relaxation and peace is instantly restored, as soon as you smell the air and set foot on the cracked rocks. It was a little like an alternative life with all major life stresses removed. I see now that even though I never mistook it for "real life" it did teach me to just be and enjoy what we are given on earth in the most authentic and powerful - and non-dramatic way possible.
Me, 1978?
Ivan, 2009
After church in Sunday best, my cousins and me, 1979
After church in Sunday best, Veronika and her cousins (one, once removed), 2009
Visiting this time around I benefitted from not having been there every year recently. The impact is much more vivid, much more new. Coming back with my own children is even better and makes me relive the past from its most favorable angle. And even though we had a wonderful time, I realize I don't feel the need to go back every single time like I used to. Not because I wouldn't enjoy it, but because by now those memories are so ingrained and the lesson about joy so well learned that I can recall it in other places, but most of all in myself. I truly hope my children get to have something of that sort. It's bad enough to know that children will have to cope with disillusionment one way or another in life, I want them to have had an experience of undisturbed joy they can draw from their entire life.
Freibad Gumpoldskirchen
One of the best things of childhood are the acuteness of the senses. Years later you can conjure up complete images of the past, including smells, sounds, light and sensations on your skin. As adults we seem to have lost a great deal of that ability to be so aware of our surroundings. Distractions and responsibilities take over that almost time-less space of just "being".
When I was little, living in Gumpoldskirchen, summer would come and inevitably I would find myself at the local public pool, like most everyone else living there. I remember the feel of the lawn on my feet and the occasionally chilly breeze on my chlorine-smelling skin, the sound of the diving board bouncing in the background, kids yelling, the smell of fried dough from the snack kiosk doubling as the check-in counter. Immediately I am transported into my 10-year-old self feeling relief that school was over and that only a few days and a long car ride were separating me from my month (or two-month) stay in Croatia.
There is not much other point to this story except that this year I got to repeat this for the very first time with my children (!). My three (!) children! I have written about this before, how when, like me, you change countries with (almost) every phase of your life, then returning to those places is like visiting yourself in prior years. But now, not only was I thrown back into my own childhood, I was at the same time watching my children repeat the experience. It was a little surreal, confusing for my brain and also exhilarating. It might be normal for most parents to watch their children roam the same streets that they grew up on, but for me, this is a highly unusual experience. It makes me feel all those years inbetween at once. Not in a bad way, luckily. And so while my kids were loving the pool, I kept remembering the little girl I was and how not in a million years would I have been able to imagine this day.
Posted at 02:11 PM on August 05, 2009 | Comments (1)