Dinka Koričić
A beautiful spring day
I walk…I examine a picture of a city in Sestina, bathed by the sun.
I am going on a camp visit.
What kind of gift will I give the people whom I am visiting today?
Talk.
Today I wish to give the gift of a story to people who know how to tell wonderful stories.
The war estranged them from beautiful things, but remain in memories.
I ponder. Pictures are words.
Words are pictures.
They are dying.
Pictures are a moment of love with the world around us.
A moment cast into eternity forever.
I sense time passing. Moments.
I come through the hallway to Pika’s door, a woman from the support group, which during one occasion said that with Daniel’s birth a new life began for her in that torrid war, destruction, exile and the death of her eighteen-year old daughter.
I knock. Pika opens the door as her neighbour is sitting on the bed, holding little Daniel in her arms.
I sit.
We begin our conversation.
Pika’s husband had lost his job and is looking for another through the newspapers. They are talking about Vukovar. Yesterday they watched a video that was taped when they still lived there. In the video they are at a party celebration together with their neighbours, Serbs. All together.
I start the story.
Love does not die, nor do pictures.
I remember…the beautiful hand of the Universe.
The hand of my grandfather.
Holding me in his arms…we are going to a garden.
We approach a large tree full of ripe plums.
Grandfather picks some plums.
He shows me how to do that.
And I will know. I will know how to pick a plum, large, like the sun is yellow.
I raise my arms high and higher.
I see my fingers, my arm.
I pick my first plum. The first touch of the sun.
Pika and her husband begin to tell their stories.
From the window of their house, one could see the field.
Prior to four years ago, in the summer, grain fields were spread with thousands of poppy seeds.
I feel fulfilled, a feeling that I did not recognize often.
Fulfilled in receiving and giving, fulfilled in pictures and moments stored in eternity.