It is usually when I am sad that I get inspiration to write. The first draft of this blog post was written one day before my daughter and I returned from our summer holiday in Belgrade. My greatest feelings of sadness always come whenever I have to leave my Belgrade home and family.
Les Voyageurs
When I mentioned this sadness to my cousin she told me about a sculptor, Bruno Catalano, who is the artist behind sculptures called ‘Les Voyageurs‘ (The Travellers). The Travellers are ten bronze life-sized statues, each with a suitcase in hand and a section of their body missing. Catalano was a sailor and so familiar with being away from home and the feelings of incompleteness that go with it. Now that I am aware of Catalano and his work, I can say that I feel like his ‘Travellers’ every time I am due to leave my family and Belgrade behind. This time was no exception.
To go or not to go
This summer, due to Covid 19, there were many reasons not to go to Serbia. Serious accusations emerged saying that the real numbers of Covid cases were hidden from the public in late spring, coinciding with the parliamentary elections. Consequently, citizens’ mistrust in Government rose and they eventually took the streets which contributed to resurgence in the numbers of Covid cases back to high levels.
The idea of not seeing my family at all didn’t agree with me very well. I have always cared deeply about visiting home often, but the need to be home with family intensified since I became a mum – I naturally want my daughter to spend as much time as possible with my mum and my brother.
So, I carefully weighed reasons to go and not to go.
Only one option really
On one side there was a long list of ‘not to go’ reasons such as: don’t take Klara to such Corona hotspot; don’t infect mama and nana with the Corona you can pick up on the journey; don’t infect mama and nana with Corona you can pick up anywhere in Belgrade; don’t go in case the president introduces a curfew again and so on. On the other side, there was one ‘to go’ reason that overweighed all ‘not to go’ reasons: Go (and take all Corona precautionary measures) because both you and Klara need to spend some quality time with your family FULL STOP.
The best decision
What a good decision this was. In London, we live without any close family near by, so it was great for Klara to finally receive lots of love and cuddles from her grandma, uncle, aunt and many other family members. Watching them play, laugh and bond was the highlight of my year so far. Her current favourite characters, apart from my mum, are her uncle and aunt. I am amazed by how much time she is keen to spend with them, constantly repeating their names and skipping the daily nap when with them.
She developed her own, strong relationships with them. She also visibly grew and developed and her Serbian progressed a long way. It must be that being surrounded by more people and interacting with them made a huge difference for her development.
Switching between homes
After three weeks of pure fun in Belgrade and two weeks of quarantine in London, she will return to her London life. She will once again have to go through settling back into nursery. As her mum, I cannot help but feel for her, but she will adapt and get used to it all. I know I will too.
When you effectively have two homes, for me the ‘old’ being Belgrade and the ‘new’ being London, it’s remarkable how easily you switch from one life to the other. For example, I am my Belgrade self in Belgrade, usually spending last few days of the visit lamenting because we are due to go back to London. However, the second we land my new London personality automatically switches on: different soil, different story, different tempo.
Write to remember
Very soon (after the quarantine) we will be back into our London routine and my ‘Travellers’ feeling will fade. And this is why I am writing this now, to remember: how good being surrounded by family is; how good for Klara’s emotional and intellectual development it was to interact with her wider family; how happy I felt when I heard her start making simple sentences in Serbian; how perfectly happy she was for my mum to put her to bed (usually this is only done by me or her dad).
Will she forget?
I honestly freak out at the thought of her forgetting the above mentioned people and moments, as well as the language she learned so well, but I know it is true when people tell me she will remind herself very quickly of all these things next time she is there. She always does.
My real home
Instead of worrying about Klara I should probably have bigger concerns about myself, whose nostalgia and wish to return home will only get bigger as I grow older. What Branka Katić (Serbian actress who has been living in London for 20 years) said in one of her recent interviews for Serbian national television resonated with me so well: ‘Belgrade is always my real home… I love everything about Belgrade, even things I consider to be wrong’.
Therapeutic effect
At this precise moment, I know I should be grateful for having been able to spend three weeks in Belgrade this summer. Being at home had a therapeutic effect on me. As I told my husband back when we were there: ‘I am here saturating myself with love and family and I intend to live from this positive energy until we come back again’.