I proved many times, not always with pleasant consequences, that certain skills, once learned, always stay somewhere in our brain-warehouse, maybe hidden and dusty, but easily reached and polished: bike riding, nursing, roller blading, skiing (on this one, my body knew exactly how to move, but my muscles refused to cooperate and time after time [...]
One of the most important lessons I learned in my childhood is the lesson on frugality. My parents were born just before World War II erupted and had to live through the years of scarcity and food shortages during the war and for several years after. The country was destroyed, having met with the destructive [...]
Most of my childhood memories are firmly tied to a yellow house built in the beginning of twentieth century in the Central European style. It had a double set of marble stairs flanked by a smooth stone handrail and a decorative balustrade. The two porches atop the stairs were connected with a big concrete slab [...]
When I go to a grocery store, I am faithful to my nature and I always carry a list in my pocket. Farmers’ market is a completely different story. I bring an oversized canvas bag, preferably equipped with wheels, and meander around the rows waiting for inspiration to hit me while I ogle all [...]
There are three big barrels at Father’s ranch full of sweet, ripe plums, languishing in their own juices, getting ready for the final process of distillation in a copper cauldron (“lampek”). In a month or two, there will dozens of bottles full of rakija, flavorful and awfully potent plum brandy. The plum trees have released [...]
I was fascinated by stories and storytelling from the moment my big eyes blinked for the first time encountering a sun’s ray. Mother was an insatiable source of tales and fables, anecdotes and jokes, poems and songs. I listened to her melodic voice mesmerized by the sound and cadence, not understanding a word in the [...]
Summer has exploded in the Eastern states and throughout the Midwest, celebrated by hordes of children suddenly free of the school routine and women relieved to pass on the kitchen tools to their men tending the grill. Our summer here in Southern California has been tip-toeing around us, offering mere moments of heat intermittently exchanged [...]
As the spring accelerated into summer, and the linden trees sent their sweet scent on the wayward wisps of a gentle breeze, we would get antsy. The days grew longer, the nights gradually lost the chill, and the smell of the warm asphalt under the noon sun sent us the message that school was almost [...]
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