07-VIII-2005.

Returning from Škrba's place, after breakfast and lunch and more drinking.

Hey, I recognized this street. Back in 1991 we had a customer right there, middle of the right side. Well that's how Škrba and I physically met, by DBA having customers in his neighborhood, namely the hospital - his place is in the back street behind it.

Boća drove us to oma's place, where they were waiting (Piton stayed in Kikinda), and then they went somewhere to take pictures of the last ferry on Tisa.

Lena and I went to my parents, and then Tejka came to see me. She was somewhat stronger in the neck, if not more overall fat, than what I remember when I last saw her in Bangro's building. She wore crutches, having still not fully recovered from the car crash. We drank some, and I knew she was already a thorough alcoholic at the time. She could outdrink me in no time, so I didn't even try to keep pace. We just talked. All of her nervous habits were there, the faces she'd make, no nails to bite anymore, the "you're naive, I know it all" attitude, just samer than before.

That was the last time I saw her.

Dad has a pet neighbor, the little girl called Zina, whose name I'll learn some day. Considers her his fourth granddaughter. Well she is sweet and cute, why not.

Before we went to beds, mom went into an oration of the kind where I don't know what's going on and who's doing stuff behind my back, how my wife is to blame for our leaving for the states, plus a cautionary tale about Tejka's grandfather, whose four sons all refused to take him in when he was too old to live on his own, and how the fate of each of their families was disastrous later. I passed all of it through the other ear, nodded in the right places and just let her finish. Last seven years, since granma died, mom was not even close to her previous self, she's in permanent sour mood and doesn't poke much fun anymore, and what she does is now often malicious and alludes to... somehow some blame being shifted to us. This time it's that we abandoned them. I reminded her what I said upon leaving - „you led your child out to the road*, and I have three, it's my turn now“.

(... 29 words...)

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* literal translation, means what it sounds like, „and now he can travel on his own“. Usually means some capital - education, or land.

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Mentions: Bangro, Božidar Sokolović (Boća), DBA, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), oma, Piton, Slavica Tejin (Tejka), Zina, in serbian