Mom’s Sixty

One day, eight years ago, I was ironing. Thinking about my mom’s big anniversary approaching. She is a woman who has taught me so much, not just how to be modest in life. But she’s done that too. I knew that even though she would look pleased, deep down she would not be really happy to receive an expensive gift of any sort. So I had to do a different kind of brainstorming about what I should get her.

She would certainly enjoy a big surprise party, I was thinking, as I was ironing, my brain in idle running. But where would this party be? Not just at home, even though our lawn full of surprise guest stars rappers would please her immensely… especially if they’d invite her to rap with them (what can I say… my mom is… a lot of things), and as for some restaurant, that’s boring, and expensive.

Let’s see… Can I draw ideas from real life? Where do I go every day?

I go on a hike with my dog, for example. To the woods, in the middle of the city. Next to the ZOO from where the female lynx escaped last month (The secret). In these woods there is something called a trim track, more or less a running track with different stations, twenty in all, where the runner performs depicted exercises, such as lift a provided log, press-downs, crunch-ups, and this concludes my arsenal of English fitness words.

The path is very solitary, very natural, far from the city crowds. It runs around and around and ends where it started, by a lovely little brook where my ex dog (unlike the present one who doesn’t enjoy getting wet) regularly ended our daily walk so that he could roll in the leaves after and end up in the car very wet and dirty.

The woods, then. When I thought of it as the location for my mom’s surprise party, everything started to come together nicely. Yes!

Here is how it shall happen: One unassuming day before her actual birthday I order her a taxi (the same driver who often drives her around so she trusts him), and he gives her an envelope with instructions to just relax and surrender.

When he drops her off by the brook, the first thing she sees is our dog tied to the START board of the trim track. She was always afraid to unleash him, you see. And now there is a notice stuck to the board saying: Unleash me. She does that and the dog automatically runs down the track to the first station where I’m hiding. I sing her a song from my favourite children’s film Happiness on a leash which she took me to see so many times. The next station is my sister, banging on a drum, all shaman-like. The third one is dad, her first husband, as she likes to say, in a little cove, overgrown with greenery and trees, and he’s singing opera for her.

This is where she melts for the first time.

Then follows her cousin with her husband, performing a little orienteering routine, for this is something they do. A jogger in a woolly cap runs by and nobody pays him much attention until he comes by the second time and then my mom looks at him, and lo, it’s her brother-in-law.

We pass some people sitting on a bench, and now her alertness is up, she realises she better has another look at them, and indeed, it’s her team mates from the times she was a basketball forward hitting three-pointers before they were invented. Now she’s melting all over.

I didn’t invite her most usual friend suspects, on purpose, I knew they would celebrate her birthday together at another time. Instead, at every station our little growing party is greeted by their children or grandchildren, certain special people with whom she doesn’t have regular contacts, and assorted friends of me and my sister who have grown to be her friends too.

Our friend, who is a puppeteer, gives a little puppet show from behind a tree. Another poet friend, who couldn’t attend since he was out of the country at the time, is represented by his book of poetry laid on a tree trunk. I press play on a cassette player and his voice reads out a poem entitled Happy birthday to me.

Her co-workers from her first job at an airport duty-free shop are another melting highlight. She had not seen them for quite a while. My mom doesn’t know how many stations there are left, it seems never-ending, people keep appearing out of nowhere. Her favourite boss from the big company where she worked most of her life, planning a visit by Gorbachev among other things, is a big surprise. He’s elderly so I designated him a station close to the brook where the terrain is flat.

I wonder now where I found all these people… How nice of them to take time for it. I just remember I’d told each that I didn’t wish to know in advance what their act would be. I wished to be surprised too. All I gave them was the number of the station where they were supposed to wait for our party.

At the start of our march a chronically disorganised friend of mine called informing me that he was lost and couldn’t find his post. And just then my phone died. So now, as we’re nearing his designated spot, I have no idea if he managed to find it or not. We turn the corner – and there he is: he placed a wine bottle and two glasses on a log, together with a wooden board with cut salami and cheese, and olives in a little bowl. Always a charmer.

And then, one station before the last, as we gather in a clearing, the amazing low-pitched hum by a singer friend is heard through the leaves, the nature goes quiet, and we stand there in reverie, realising we shall never be together like this again, in such a number.

As we come back to the brook, my mom’s brother, who just got home from his holidays in Turkey, steps up from behind the bush and recites his poem for her. It’s a sonnet. But it’s not just a sonnet, it’s the sonnet of sonnets with an acrostic. And yes, in Turkey he also wrote her the 14 corresponding sonnets, each beginning with a line from the first one.

The tour is thus complete.

The evening closes with a selected few, mom and the singer included, crooning under the moon in front of a nearby inn, long closed. I love to watch my mom singing. She gives it her all.

She has told me many times since what a memorable day I prepared for her. And as she’s saying this she looks at me as if I was a witch, knowing exactly what she’d most have liked. And this makes me feel really good.

≈ Manja Maksimovič ≈

The last time she gave me the witch look was when she tried on these shoes on her last visit: “But how did you know they would fit?” Cinderella, mom, or chick pea gland. Photo: MM & BM (middle)

Da beach house. Photo: MM

Parole

Meta+baza. Photo: Zedd

How a language is learned:

You take an assortment of vegetables with telling names – you may never encounter fave in your life, but it’s a favourite around here in early May and they eat it raw; carciofi can be found everywhere as well; bieda (or bietola) is for sick people; cicoria is eaten like spinach, at the end of the meal; they only trust the green part of sedano; and my favourite, deceiving finocchio (also eaten raw for a snack, smart Italians, healthy despite themselves).

There are fruits with female names, albicocca, pesca, mela, growing on their manly father trees albicocco, pesco, melo. Beware of figo or figa in mixed company. Ribes sounds exactly the same in my language too, I love it when there is no work involved. Gelso is one of the tastes of gelato (it is mulberry and I had to google it, in my country nobody takes time to pick them off trees).

Then there is senape, which is mustard of all things.

And when you wish to make a child laugh, you peek from behind a wall and say Settette!

You add a black and white bird named after a soccer player – gazza, and a gufo, must be the smart gufo. Luigi is a neighbour and a carrot-eating friend and he’s an asino. There are plenty of fish names which are confusing (branzino and spigola are the same!) and moscardino which is not mascarpone neither maraschino but a little octopussy.

And then you’re almost half way there.

≈ Manja Maksimovič ≈

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling… their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.

On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

—Arundhati Roy

The Peugeots

(This story has 1000 words. I said to myself before starting it that I want a millennium and ended, without looking, at 999. I think I might have found my natural format of expression.)

((None of the photos or cars in the links are mine, just the colour and type are the same: forest green for 404, light yellow for 504. The only thing mine are the remains on the wall.))

________________________________________________________________________________________

First there was this one, 404.

I travelled to the coast with my ex-ex-boyfriend to buy it. It was his idea. When we got there, the whole family greeted us, the kids were sad to see it go. It was so cheap. I was thinking how big the need must have been that they were selling something they loved so much, so cheap.

The car was a blast from the past, I felt like in a movie. The rockets and all. I placed some pillows on the back leather seats, it was that kind of car. Yet, i only remember one kiss in it. From a friend. A peck on the cheek that got me all flustered and thinking what-if thoughts.

I went to do the annual check-up an hour before closing time for Christmas. I needed merry mechanics. When I drove the car over the garage pit to be checked, I almost dropped it right into the pit, on purpose. I needed a certain degree of lenience. Indeed, my car passed the test, even though after the rain some rainwater splashed over my feet on every turn, and as I was leaving the mechanic smiled at me and said: “Just be sure you don’t use the hand brake too often”.

And then a friend spotted it. He and his cousin do Peugeots, it’s their sport. They know them. They travel all over Europe to bring one or two home. Or better, they used to. Nothing is old-car friendly anymore, unless you have veterans and do shows. But they were just driving them. And now they found my car to fix, which meant drink and smoke and get all dirty and blast out some Osibisa and drink some more. I liked it.

When my first Peugeot was not likely to pass any more tests,

Photo: MM

one of the cousins told me about my potential new car. 504, an upgrade.

The boyfriend was not there to witness it any more. I was alone and I was about to buy my first car on my own. The freedom which I was feeling as I was driving it home was all-inclusive. I can still smell it. And that interior too.

This was the car I was driving around the island of Crete for a month. The cousin was driving the other Peugeot, a newer one, 505, with an inflatable boat on the roof.

One time I was attempting to climb a terrain a bit too steep and the car slid back and got hooked on its hook. This was the only thing resembling an accident.

Sometimes it wouldn’t start and I had to open the hood and slam a beer bottle down on a particular spot.

Sometimes when it rained, all the electricity died and I had to drive it… quietly. But not a cloud was seen over the Crete for that entire August. It was hot, and I had to drive it with the heating on, or it would overheat. But nobody noticed that, the windows were always open anyway.

One time, parked for the night next to a precipice, the cousin tied his and my open doors together, to make a nice shelter from the wind which never stops in the south of Crete, so that we could boil some potatoes. I was cutting the cabbage for a salad. It was one of those moments when the happiness descends slowly and you can almost grab it. Even though during the night the wind won and a couple of armaflex beds were swept down into the abyss.

I remember the present my friend got me for a birthday. Original Peugeot yellow headlight bulbs. Not strictly within the local regulations, but still.

Here let me explore my perception of me as GF (which I used to think meant gender-fucked). I mean, show me a girl who would cherish such a gift and remember it better than all the cutie-girlie-sparkly-kitty stuff. Show me a girl who would wilfully walk a couple of miles to the basketball arena, alone, buy herself a beer, root for the home team and go back home, alone.

I remember the time when I owned more vests than skirts, most often used ones that dad discarded or was just about to when I pounced. To apply lipstick and eye-shadow was hard. To balance the heels was harder. But to slip on my father’s white scarf and hat was effortless. And the coat, oh, a long dark blue one. First I only wore it to concerts.

I remember the time in the 2nd year of high-school, vividly. Before, I wore mom’s red silky shirts to school, struggled with earrings, make-up, whorish result. And then I bought myself some boots, my first. Not the elegant style. These were light brown genderless efficient kind. They changed everything. Wearing them, I slipped into jeans, coats, vests next, instead. My style was born. I was so happy.

Gender comes late when I assess a person. I can immerse myself in a writing not knowing what gender the author is, and I couldn’t care less.

When battling my fellowmen in card tournaments, I often said that there was no sex in cards (because, of course, everything was fucking). Sometimes I would rave against giving out the best female awards at tournaments (admittedly, not rejecting them, shaaaaame on me). One time I came first, another female came second, and we joked that we would give out the award to the best male after careful consideration and possibly a lapdance.

It can be hard to go through life looking beyond gender, beyond sex, but it is the only way for me.

And as for the Peugeots, it’s my friend’s birthday one of these days. Nourishing, woman-loving, slightly reckless Aries. He has taught me a lot about maintenance, not just cars. He has taught me about relativity. He was dating my sister for many years but fathered a child elsewhere. Possibly, a shame, this. I’d love you in my family.

≈ Manja Maksimovič ≈

August

A peugeot 504 off the net, but this is how it was, just light yellow.

There was an August, years and years ago, that I spent on the island of Crete. In my Peugeot 504 (with yellow headlights!) and with another car-full of friends, in my heavenly blue one-piece swimsuit which I practically only took off to sleep, sleeping on beaches all together on a big black spread, not a roof above my head for the whole month if you don’t count brief visits to shops for food and the car roof and a tree when we found one.

The most peaceful month of my life. As it was coming to a close, my friends were getting jittery, missing this and that, anxious to return home. Not me, I could have had it forever: figs, blackberries, lamb, fish (= psarì, psomì = bread, krasì = wine, most useful Greek words), the sea!, the hot wind from Africa in the south of the island that dries up your mouth, the sensation of a return to civilization after spending a few days in a bay without a soul in sight, and as you near a city you realise your swimsuit will not quite suffice, and you hop in the car to change into your long blue-on-blue dress which you bought in a hippie shop in the previous town (NO SIZE) and leather sandals and your sea-wild hair turn you into an instant goddess.

There is a little island, to the left of Crete, Elefonisi. A little ferry took our cars there. We made it to the top of the tiny island and laid out our spread next to some sleeping turkeys. I made pasta with beans and some dried meat which may have been the reason for my upset stomach and troubled sleep. I remember taking a bit of every medicine I had with me: a black carbon pill, a pill against heartburn, one for sore throat and one aspirin. I never take pills so as I was popping them I discussed it with my body, imploring it to take them seriously and calm the fuck down as I’m on holidays.

As I stirred from sleep the next morning, I heard voices whispering as if trying hard not to wake us. I peeked towards the group of villagers standing by the turkeys, looking at us, chirping among themselves. I thought: Oh, well, let’s do this. I stood up in my Kelly’s family night dress (as a friend considerately nicknamed it) and slowly moved towards the group.

When they saw me approaching, their expressions lit up. A woman extended her hands and said in broken, efficient, Greek English which I came to love so much and use it now with the Italians: “Thank you for choosing our village to sleep in.”

Another August is approaching. Cicadas are the same. The wind is less strong and less hot, neither is heat as fierce, but it’s breezy and scorching all the same. The greenery is more but the produce is similar and tastes so good. The Italians are not the same as Greeks, but their pride is similar. Olive oil too. The calm is here (until it’s not and ferragosto starts).

The pack is different, and this time it’s mine. I have the roof, and the car too (not a thirsty old peugeot but a sensible diesel one). I’ve yet to sleep on the beach but I sleep every night in the arms of the man I love.

And I have it, eternal holidays, eternal August. It could have never happened, easily. Thank you for giving it to me.

(Written in July 2013.)

≈ Manja Maksimovič ≈

In Duba. Photo: Zedd

I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

—Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

The secret

On February 2, apart from cutting electricity and water supply from roughly 75% of households nationwide, causing most of the schools to shut down, turning the country into a post-apocalyptic scary place, making woods into killers, and killing so many trees and some people who fell on ice or used the aggregates wrongly, the sleet and snow in Slovenia destroyed the fence of that part of the ZOO in my ex city where the lynxes and wolves and mountain goats lived.

The ZOO keepers said: “Oh, nobody will escape, we FEED them, you see, they prefer to stick with us.” Still – the wolves, they put them to sleep and transfer, but not the lynxes. They are not a danger to humans, they said. Father informed me of all this via mail. I wrote him back saying that I was very sad for the suffering of the people, as for the lynxes though I was sure they would be all right.

In that night, the two lynxes, a couple, killed a ZOO mountain goat and disappeared. The keepers said they were still within the ZOO, rather than in the wild, and in two days a title on a news site read: “Tonight, the decision – which animal will be killed next?” Somebody must have told the journalists that the lynxes kill every second night. The article expressed most fear for the power panda couple who look like they might become parents soon.

Dragon tree near the ZOO. Photo: MM

(Some say, NATO did it with their planes, the weather. Some say it’s all fabricated because the lynx was the mascot of our Olympic ice-hockey team who in the group with the USA, Russia and Slovakia could only hope that their opponents get brainwashed and forget how to skate, but lo, they went and beat Slovakia, eliminated poveri Austrians in the next round and were only destroyed by cocky Swedes. Some say it was to take our minds away from the Olympics because our athletes were going to suck so much – but lo, they went and won 8 medals, ranking 12th among the countries on the medal table!)

The keepers set live traps (the non-hurting kind) around the goats should the couple return. Sure enough, the male lynx was caught. But she was nowhere to be found.

A variety and quantity of false alarms was tremendous. Every bigger cat turned out to be a lynx. Media issued paw prints, comparing those of the dog, the lynx and the cat. An account was made to her name on twitter. And then finally, a walker took a photo of her chilling in a tree, outside of the ZOO, next to a path where I used to walk my first dog, in all weather, even doing some Marine-like exercises when in the mood. The area is serene, a little hill above the city, wooded, quite large, but not for a lynx.

The trap was waiting for her in the ZOO, should she return for more capricorns, or for her mate. And then, lo, a goat got trapped in it instead of the sly lynx.

As for her, she was still out there… Father told me the territory of lynxes is vast, huge, up to 1000 km.

The country would soon prove too small for her should she start to wander, I thought. So she could easily cross the border and come to me, to Toscana. No border patrol any more.

As it is, the story has a bad, sad and mad ending.

She didn’t get far. They got her with a supposedly safe, sleeping rifle, right there in the city woods. The bullet hit her thigh bone, most unfortunately, and the bone broke. She needed a surgery. And from it she never woke up.

She knew what freedom was though. She was tasting it, for a whole month. Her secret. And she didn’t tell.

≈ Manja Maksimovič ≈