09-VI-1964.
This is also when I went with obdanište the 2nd time to Dobrota. Took me a while to find out which years were these, for I remember that the first time was before elementary school, and that the 2nd time was after 2nd grade or perhaps in 1962.... something with a two. Now I found one of the pictures from this trip, the one the upbringer* sent to all parents, and she dutifully wrote the greetings (in our names) and this date. So that's my firm datum.
The two trips are completely mixed in my head, so I don't remember which happened two years ago and which now:
- earning that bump on my head
- buying a piece of cork with fishing line and hook, and catching a (probably already dead) little fish which was lying on a stone, about a hand's breadth below surface, with its mouth jutting out over the stone's edge just about enough
- learning to swim, on my own, without anyone's instruction (I sort of remember this was on the first trip), and to jump dive head first
- accidentally having our gate key with me and not knowing what to do with it, so at least I imagined I'd be here once more so I tossed it in the shallows on the left edge of our beach and memorized the position and the whole scene. Memorizing worked, I clearly see the place, and that it was dusk, it's the years that I'm not sure of. These two trips happened in 1960 and 1962, or 1961 and 1963. (see note in the first paragraph... I got so confused)
This being the beginning of june, I'm amazed how overdressed we all are, what with caps and jackets. Okay, we'd have to travel all night, and that through the bosnian mountains, but it's near summer. Even the upbringer had a light sweater over her blouse, and a thick long pleated skirt. The serbian fear of flu, draft and any kind of cold.
On one of the pictures (from 1962) I recognized M.A., who is probably the only friend I had there. Smart, we played well, and somehow found things to talk about - with most of the others it was that they'd all be about what they saw in the movies, so mostly trying to play cowboys vs Indians, or partisans vs Germans, or running around and just generally screaming with imaginary weapons in their hands. This girl was somehow different.
Then she became frequently absent, during the next year, and then we never saw her again. I heard she died of leukemia.
On this picture, in the Kotor port, I'm almost the tallest, being a year older, except the upbringer's older son, who was two years older and a tall guy anyway. She took care to have them on equal footing with everybody else, their only privilege was that they called her „mama“.
There were actually two other girls that I remember. One was T., of darker complexion, something brownish to olive shaded, who was huge, compared to us. I think she weighed about one third more than I, and thus enjoyed an advantage in horseplay or wrestling (which we did often, there was a stack of leather mats). That's all, she was with us perhaps one year.
The other is D., who was there the last year or two. She lived in a tiny house by the railroad, the other side of bager, next to the overpass. Possibly her father worked at the station. Her I did meet once more, in 1991. She was an engineer in a factory, some metalworks, which was a customer. We somehow recognized each other - at least her face and rich hair haven't changed much.
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* teacher but without a curriculum - in kindergarten, juvenile prison, orphanage...
Mentions: bager, obdanište, in serbian