Writer's Block

When I started this blog about our trip, it never occurred to me that I would have too much to say and no time to say it. Since we boarded the plane in Italy, I have been accumulating experiences faster than I could ever write them down. Each one deserves it's own entry, complete with pictures, YouTube uploads, and links to websites, not only for your benefit but for mine.

In the twenty-four hours that we have been in Zagreb, my heart has been broken by what I see and uplifted by the warmth and love of strangers. Everything has more impact than I can process without stopping to write, but there is no time to do it, and I fear that the emotional impact will be forgotten under the weight of the next moment's unexpected event. It's like having 10 important people in your life telling you their most intimate secrets all at once. Croatia is rushing to tell me my story and I can barely keep up.

So, do I take this time to tell you about how people are reacting to the introductory letter I brought with me? (I made up a flyer explaining why I was here, including a picture of my grandparents and our contact information). I wish you could see how their hearts melt in front of us as they begin to understand that one of their own has come home. From the woman in the airport who helped us when our luggage missed the plane (no worries - we got it later), to the Croatian Historical Museum curator (who plans to help us in the search), there is a universal reaction to us, a reaching out to welcome us home. As one person told me "You are a Croatian Woman!", as if to let me know for sure that I had come to the right place.

I could tell you about our meeting with Lidija, the Croatian genealogist who spent two hours with us this morning, explaining what the next steps in our search will be, how to get around in the country, what quirks we should expect to find in the process of dealing with small town record offices and government agencies. She warned us that seeing our family gravesites will make us cry. "Your family will speak to you there", she promised us. Apparently, they speak to her, even when she isn't related to them.

The Museum of Naive Art certainly deserves some commentary, but I was captured by the Museum of Broken Hearts (winner of the Most Innovative Museum in Europe award in 2011). Basically, this was a quirky idea that went global: set up a museum where people can bring artifacts of, and commentary about, their broken and failed relationships. The intent is to provide a place for closure, a site to leave that hat he left when he walked out, or the book of poetry you read together, or any other meaningful and painful reminder of the two of you - and move on. It was so touching and sometimes heartbreaking that I couldn’t look at it all. The girl at the desk loved that I loved it there, and I introduced her to Burning Man in return. (note: the artifacts were international, but most of the US ones came from San Francisco).

Our next stop, the Museum of Croatian History, which had a special installation on the Croatian War for Independence in 1991, could, and probably will someday, take up more than one blog post. The images of the underdog band of unarmed, unfunded Croatian fighters struggling against the Serb’s to protect their homeland brought both Gary and I to tears. With Dire Strait’s “Brother’s in Arms” and heartwrenching classical requiem music on a loop throughout the building, you couldn’t escape the human suffering that happened while you and I were at home, pretty much unaware. (That was the time of the first Iraq war, and I guess the US only had line space for one war at a time…kind of like how we managed to overlook what happened in Rwanda). The curator there spent almost two hours explaining every exhibit, desperately wanting us to understand that these soldiers were common people – teachers, bus drivers, students – using guns their fathers had used in WWII or ‘borrowed’ from museums. She told us the personal stories of faces in exhibits. “This man enlisted and stopped 33 tanks with no weapons until he was finally killed”. “This man was in the Serbian airforce, but couldn’t bomb him own hometown and came over to our side.” For me, Croatian woman that I apparently am, I felt an urgency to call Jade and Cody and the girls and remind them that this is our homeland, and that this happened to our own people while we were going about our business in America. Our losses, our success, Croatian determination of the heart. Us.

As we walked home from Upper Zagreb (the historic old town that houses most of the museums), we passed through the Stone Gate that leads to Lower Zagreb. It is a dark alcove with names and dates inscribed in stones on the wall. The large gated altar stands at one end, just as you make the curve to go down, and you are immediately aware that this is a holy place. We were told that people came here to pray for their dead loved ones, to thank them for their life. I bought a candle and lit it for Tom, but I could barely leave it there with the others, as if I was leaving a part of him in Croatia somehow.

So, which one of these stories do I write about in a blog when I have about an hour to do it? When something wants to be written, it races around in my head. I don’t get any peace until I do it. Am I going to be frustrated every day? Will I always be choosing between having these experiences and writing about them?