I didn’t have the cool clothes, I didn’t understand the American sayings or American culture, so I got made fun of at school. But I felt like I couldn’t complain, because my friends back home were dealing with so much worse than teasing. In Croatia, my friends worried whether their homes would still be standing after the next air raid, or if their dad, who was fighting for his country, would survive the next battle. Here, my friends complained when their mothers shrank their favorite sweater in the dryer or when a concert was scheduled for the same night as the school dance.
Humans adapt to the good just as quickly and easily as we adapt to the bad, so it wasn’t long before American excess that shocked me when I first arrived became something I took for granted. But when I caught myself actually enjoying my new life, I struggled with survivor’s guilt. Why did I get to have it so good when so many people were suffering? I didn’t know how to express my many complicated feelings or to whom to express them. So I just held a lot of stuff in.
Luckily, there is a place in American high schools for misfits and weirdos with big, complicated feelings: theater club. On stage, I found a safe space to both explore my emotions and escape them. I made friends and worked really hard to lose my Croatian accent. As I learned how to disappear into characters, I also got better at blending into this new culture, and the teasing at school lightened up. And, fueled by a desire to take on bigger roles, my English comprehension improved rapidly.
When I was sixteen years old, just as I was finally settled into my new life in the United States, my former babysitter invited me to play piano at her wedding back in Croatia. I’m not a great pianist. I’d give myself a C− at best. There were other, more accomplished pianists she could have chosen, but we had really bonded when I was growing up and I think the spirit of the performance mattered more to her than my skill.
Going back to Croatia wasn’t unusual for us, even with all of the war-related tensions. We visited every summer during my high school years. It’s strange now to think that we kept returning even though parts of Croatia were occupied, forcing us to fly into Budapest, Hungary, and then drive the rest of the way home—four long hours crammed in a van with my family, news radio on full blast the entire ride, and no AC.
On the day of my former babysitter’s wedding, the city suffered one of its worst attacks. I was certain the wedding would be called off and rescheduled, but the bride and groom decided to go through with their special day. They were sick of the war. Everyone was. They were tired of hate controlling their everyday lives, so they made the decision that fear was not going to win this time.
Instead of sitting in a basement that night, terrified, I found myself sitting in the beautiful, old church I had attended my entire childhood, in front of a shiny black piano, playing a very mediocre version of a gospel song. Despite, or perhaps because of, the chaos and violence outside, there was a lot of joy in the church.
After the ceremony, the wedding festivities continued with a reception in the basement cafeteria. Many guests hadn’t made it to the wedding, including the best man, who was called up to report for duty and fight just that morning. Still, the party went on. The bakeries were closed, so some of the wedding guests prepared the food and desserts, and we dined on delicious homemade sarma and more varieties of cookies and cakes than I can name.
The windows of the building had long ago been blocked by sandbags, making the church basement as good a bomb shelter as any. I spent that night sleeping there with some of the other wedding guests, all of us lined up on the floor like sardines. What I remember most from that wedding isn’t the grenades or fear, but the laughter and singing and the celebration of love.
What we didn’t know at the time was that the day of my babysitter’s wedding would mark the last major battle of the war. More than two hundred thousand Croatian soldiers fought along the four-hundred-mile front in what was the largest European land battle since World War II. Operation Storm began on August 4, 1995, and by 10:00 a.m. on August 5, Croatian soldiers raised the flag and declared victory.
As would any couple getting married, my former babysitter and her fiancé had a clear vision of what they wanted for their wedding. They put a lot of time and effort into planning it all out, wanting it to be just perfect. When war disrupted their fantasy, instead of giving up and canceling the festivities, instead of pining for what they wished could be, they accepted what was and made the absolute best of it.
I, too, have had specific plans. Plans for my life, my marriage, plans for the type of mother I would be. The way I dreamed it, I was going to get married and have a bunch of kids. Motherhood was going to fulfill me completely, and I’d be eternally grateful. My children would be well mannered and better listeners than all the brats I had babysat for a measly three to five dollars an hour. My children’s father and I would have an ever-romantic, lifelong Romeo and Juliet type of love affair (minus the family drama and that whole death-pact part). We’d raise our children in a large, loving, stable home with well-trained dogs. And we’d all get at least nine hours of sleep each night. And we’d have a housekeeper. And maybe a live-in masseuse. And no stretch marks. Or chin hairs.
My postwar fantasies weren’t disrupted by literal bombs, but there were certainly some figurative ones thrown my way. After surviving the bomb of my marriage falling apart while parenting two young kids, I dealt with stress bombs, barely-making-ends-meet bombs, the depression bomb, a weight-gain bomb, and the I-feel-worthless bomb. Bomb after bomb after bomb left me wondering if maybe, just maybe, everyone, including my children, would be happier and better off if I’d just disappear. For good.
I got so down on myself for not being able to provide my kids with everything that their friends’ parents could. The children my kids had playdates with lived in bedrooms that looked as if Pottery Barn had vomited all over them. I’d hear other parents talk about planning vacations and family trips to amusement parks or signing up their kids for dance lessons, and I could barely contain my self-hatred. It all left me feeling like everyone else was living my fantasy, while my life spiraled out of control.
That year, I showed up to Luka’s Halloween parade at school after a few hours spent beating myself up for throwing my kids’ costumes together using whatever random things I could find around our house. Matea had really curly blond hair, so I took some old fuzzy white fabric, pinned it to her clothes because I didn’t know how to sew, and said she was a sheep. I put Luka in a thrift-store vest and tie, and added a pin made of paper that said “#1 Teacher” to make sure everyone knew he wasn’t just a kid in a worn-out fancy outfit.
I stood there alongside all of these parents whose kids were parading around in perfect store-bought costumes or elaborate homemade costumes, stewing in my own shame. But then Luka walked by, and I could see him searching the crowd of parents, looking at every face. And as soon as he saw me, his eyes lit up with joy and a huge smile spread across his little face. He wasn’t searching the crowd for the perfect mom. He was searching for me, just me. Nothing more. Nothing better. Nothing different. Just me.