Guns, Power and Love

I’ve been thinking a lot about mortality lately. My father-in-law was diagnosed with stage IV cancer right before the holidays, and my sister-in-law passed away last week after a long fight with cancer.  Meanwhile, my four-year-old Star Wars/Legos-loving-child is killing everything in sight with his weapon-laden Clone Troopers, and I’m constantly struggling to explain why guns really aren’t the coolest thing in the universe.  (This isn’t a new argument, of course, just one I’m beginning to address as the mother of two young boys.)  His preschool teacher helped me out a bit when I overheard her asking the kids what else could be powerful besides guns.  Love,  I later told my son, was immensely powerful.

At least I like to hope it is.  In the years since all those Columbine school kids were gunned down, I keep waiting for these senseless killings to stop.  Instead, we get tragedies like the recent shooting of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon to show us that there’s an entire universe of individuals out there who truly don’t respect life.   And the thing is: I just don’t get it.  How could anyone not respect life? Especially if you’ve been raised in the U.S., where for the most part, we don’t have to worry about being gunned down because of where we live or who we are.  At least not as much as most of the other countries out there.

What is it that pushes someone to the brink of violence? Is it really nothing more than a last-chance attempt at power?   Every time I learn of another killing, I have to wonder: have these people never lost someone close? Have they never had to say good-bye to someone they loved? Because if they’d watched a close family member or best friend die, I don’t see how anyone could walk out of such a situation without a serious respect for life.

But what does this have to do with Legos? I don’t know, honestly.  But I feel that it’s important we teach our children about love and responsibility, about valuing and respecting others, and about how terrible and destructive war and violence really are.  Not the romanticized versions that we’re constantly inundated with, but real life stories of what it’s like to lose your entire family and village because you happen to live in the wrong place or belong to the wrong ethnicity.  Real life stories of what it’s like to say good-bye to someone knowing you’ll never ever see them again.

I keep thinking of something I read after Giffords had been gunned down:

“These days,” her brother-in-law Scott Kelly said from his perch up in the International Space Station, “we are constantly reminded of the unspeakable acts of violence and damage we can inflict upon one another, not just with our actions but also with our irresponsible words.”

“We are better than this. We must do better,” he said.

We have to do better.

The Homeland

When people find out that I write about my Balkan heritage, it’s really interesting how many of them start telling me about their dream to one day visit their own homeland.  A cousin went back and you’re not going to believe what she found…because I’m hoping to go myself one day.  When I’m ready, you know….

I can’t help but wonder how many generations down the family tree until this desire finally disappears. Does it wait for the second or third generation before hardening into a rock deep within the ground, or does the desire simply remain dormant until the right heir comes along and picks up the flame?

I wonder this for my own kids as well.  It was easier for me, of course, because both of my parents came from the same country: Yugoslavia.  Never mind that Yugoslavia is now comprised of six new countries–back then, at least, I only had one country to work with.  My children will have two, Serbia and Japan, which for all practical purposes still seems relatively straight-forward.  But what about their kids? How much intermarrying does it take until some future little Hoops or Zubs drops their Serbian or Japanese heritage altogether, and simply becomes another born-and-bread Americano mix?  Who makes that final decision? For what purposes, and for whose gain?

Becoming a Peasant Person

I’m pretty sure you need some recent immigrant blood if you’re hoping to become a peasant, but in case that’s not an option, I’ll give you a quick tip on how to become more peasant-like: Start imitating people. That’s right!  Observe everything a peasant person says and does, and then incorporate those new mannerisms into your shtick.

It worked for my peasant-brother and me when we were kids, I’ll tell you that.  And just the other day, I was talking to a friend whose parents immigrated from South Africa and it turns out she and her sister did the same thing when they were little. Imitated their parents’ accents and mannerisms until it became an inside joke, a fun game to pull out on a gray day.

I think it has something to do with having parents who come from a different country, and who speak and act differently from the norm.  Growing up, this can be both wonderful and terrible at the same time–wonderful because you have a rich, new culture at your disposal, and terrible because there are still plenty of people out there who will give your parents shit for their different ways.  So one of the ways you make sense of these contradictory messages is by figuring out which accents and mannerisms work in any given situation.  Because, truly, accents can open and shut many a door.

 

Skyping the Homeland

I don’t know about this whole Skype thing.  Sure, it’s wonderful to see all your extended peoples and talk to them in an electronic face-to-face, but we’re missing something, too.

When I first reconnected with my extended peasant Balkan folk in 2001, I had to board a plane and fly to the motherland to do it.  Track everyone down the old fashioned way–which meant waiting until I was actually in town (or village! we are peasants, after all) before anyone would call or see me.  Nobody back then was into this American idea of making a plan.  Which explains why, when I was unable to track down a family friend in her Croatian city, it was because she was in Italy.

Nowadays, Facebook has pretty much eradicated the need to physically travel anywhere if you’re trying to put together the missing pieces from your past.  But it’s a bittersweet reunion to trade a few words with that lost someone before moving on to the next to-do of your day.  And while a FB post might update me on your status (What’s that? You’re downing a giganormous latte while your baby heads into traffic?), the thrill of the chase hollows pretty quickly.  There’s no patting someone on the back when you’re catching up in cyberspace, no sizing up a decade’s worth of changes over a smokin’ Turkish coffee or leisurely meal, no lingering hug to be gotten upon departure.

And what do you do when the news isn’t so great? When you find out that someone’s sick, battling cancer or divorce, a lost child or job? Do you walk away, or find a way to crawl closer?  If it’s a friend from FB, would you even know?  And if you do find them on Skype, will the distance crumble when you finally call? Video hiccuping as the static mirrors a space inside you, pause of your heart.

Mennonite, Schmennonite

So I’ve been reading Mennonite in a Little Black Dress and, honestly, who says Mennonites have all the fun? I mean, damn, this Rhoda Janzen could be my immigrant soul-sister with her crazy  family rituals, strange childhood foods and tales of embarrassment.  Not to mention her wonderful childhood shame and how it all  morphs into a great adult humor.  Bring it on, Rhoda!  Shed some light on your family craziness!

I was so inspired by her ridiculous tales that I decided it was time to jump-start this sucker again.  Which is no small beans on my part now that we’ve had ourselves another kiddo.  Worlds have ripped apart and been reborn since I last posted — hell, the Red Sea probably re-parted.   In good news, we’re finally starting to come out of the craziest bout of sleep deprivation… which has been a good 10-20 times worse with this child.  What the hell were we complaining about before?

So that’s our big news. In addition to losing copious amount of gray matter these past couple of years, we’ve welcomed the sweet and fiery little Hoops into our Balkan-Japanese-American lives.  Yes, yes, the child is absolutely obsessed with hoops and basketball.

So please join me in a belated welcome to this most passionate little Hoop-man!  He truly is a dear, sweet, funny little one.

E-gads

The problem, of course, is trying to kick-start a blog after many months of neglect. Where do you start? Do you start by commenting on the huge amount of spam you’ve been getting? Or maybe start up with the lighter (and more humanitarian) story of how the blog actually put you in touch with a childhood friend you hadn’t seen in over 20 years.
A few months back, I got an email from a family friend who contacted me after he’d chanced across this tiny little blog. How’s that for serendipity? (I suppose serendipity has another name these days, with the all-out accessibility the web provides, but hey….) It was really great to hear from this family friend/cousin-in-waiting–and somewhat sad to know that so many years had gone by with us not being in touch.
It’s always those years-going-by that kills me in the end, I have to admit. I’m a Serb after all, a member of one of the most stuck-in-the-past peoples who still inhabit the earth, and as much as I’d like to say that I can leave the past in the past, hey, who am I kidding? I can do it about 85% of the time, and the rest of the time, I’m toast. This despite the fact that having a kid has catapulted me pretty damn firmly into the here-and-now, where, as most of us know, life happens to be a-happening. But every once in a while, don’t you wish you could turn back the clock so that you could go back and fix a few things (otherwise known as major life mistakes, ha). On that melancholy note, it’s nice to be back!

Yikes

Yikes, I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted anything! Apologies. I’ve been recuperating from a terrible haircut, cut so short that I was looking (and even acting) like a cancer victim for a while.
Now that it’s grown out a bit, it’s much more malleable. On a bad day, I look like the Incredible Hulk. Or a 13-year-old boy. Maybe even a punk rocker, if I’m lucky. On a good day, my husband tells me, I look like Mia Farrow when she was younger. Ha. As if! He must mean a Balkan Mia Farrow.

Bread

You can definitely tell Mali Zub’s got some Balkan DNA by the way he eats bread. Loves it, can’t get enough! Which is how you can tell he’s got Serbian blood coursing though his veins, for the Serbs eat bread like it’s going out of style: bread with breakfast, bread with lunch, bread with bread. Whatever the occasion, it’s not a meal if it’s not served with bread.
Bread is to the Serbs like rice to the ____ (fill in the blank).
Japanese. Which just happens to make up the other half of Mali Zub’s ethnic heritage, as evidenced by his copious eating of rice. Zubs loooooves rice (although maybe possibly he might just love bread a little bit better).
Just as long as he’s got a starch in front of him, I guess. Which makes me wonder: is there an ethnic group out there that doesn’t have some form of starch as a dietary mainstay? My Mexican friend eats tortillas like they’re going out of style, and the stereotype of the Irish potato… well, you know that one. But what about others?

Double Lives

I was out to dinner at a local Italian restaurant when a familiar-looking couple walked in the door. “That looks like my accountant,” I said, delving into a load of bread.
“You’re kidding,” my friend B. said. “Those people? I hear they’re the best sex therapists in Boulder.”
I swiveled around to get another look. “Well, that’s definitely my accountant and his wife,” I said. “But sex therapists. Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“Shit,” I said. “Nobody tells me anything.”
When I got home, I relayed this information to Kimo, who, like B., already knew about the apparently-not-so-secret double lives of our accountant and his wife. I guess I was the only one who was taking things at face value, putting stock into those tiny little type-written titles that appear on business cards.
But it got me thinking: how many of us lead secret or not-so-secret double lives? And is it just an American thing, or is it a world-wide phenomenon?

Lord of the Flies, Revisited

After a relaxing (and unplugged) week in Kauai, Kimo, Mali Zub and I were at the Lihue airport Sunday night when we learned our flight back was canceled due to technical difficulties.
Well, as you might guess, that didn’t exactly please a lot of people. All the passengers, most of whom were cranky from waiting, tired from the late hour (11:30 p.m.) and sand-covered (because they’d been kicked out of their hotel long ago), began to short-circuit. Meanwhile, one lone airline representative battled her way through the increasingly irate crowd to announce that shuttles would soon be arriving to take us to a hotel, and, by the way, here’s the number to call so that you can rebook your flight and hopefully get out tomorrow.
Mayhem. People began rushing the representative while she shouted for us to settle down, Please let the families with children through first! I picked up Mali Zubs and got to my feet while people pushed from behind, jockeying for space.
“Hurry!” a young woman to my left yelled at her husband. “Get up there, get to the front of the damn line!”
Similar rally cries surrounded us while Kimo, Mali Zub and I struggled to pack up all the baby toys that had been keeping Zubs at bay for the past hour. A young woman rushed past us with a baby stroller, her two-year-old daughter startled into a high-pitched sob from all the action.
“Families with children first!” the rep yelled, over and over. Somehow, it didn’t really seem to make any difference: we were surrounded by singles and couples demanding, Goddammit, to be the first ones served.
I was so shocked by the anger and vicissitude around me that I just stood and watched while Kimo waited our families-with-children-turn. People who minutes before had been quietly reading or napping or staring off into space were now yelling, red-faced, at anyone they could find.
“She said families with children first,” boomed a voice behind me.
“This is my child,” a woman said.
“What! He must be at least 24!”
And on and on it went. One boisterous young woman and her husband (who were duking it out with the airlines via matching iPod phones) continued complaining at the top of their voices until the ticketing agent couldn’t take it anymore and finally gave in. Never mind that the elderly passengers, who were next in line for the shuttle, continued to wait patiently while the youngest children screamed and cried out of exhaustion and fear.
And all the while, I couldn’t help but think how horrible it was to see so many adults acting this way. Never mind that we were in Kauai–gorgeous, relaxing Kauai of all places–where food and lodging were just a shuttle ride away. The way people were acting, you’d have thought we were stuck in the desert or some Survivor-type island where there wasn’t enough food or water to go around. Instead, we’d been given an extra day of vacation, put up in a gorgeous $380-a-night hotel, and given a $40/day food reimbursement.
In the middle of all this craziness, two separate families asked if we needed any help, since we were traveling with a baby. The kindness of those two gestures have stayed with me these past few days, past another red-eye and into the jet-lagged haze of adjusting to post-vacation life. Still, it’s frightening to realize how quickly our society could break down if something were really wrong. All the social norms as we know it, out the window.