Baba's Breadcrumbs. Content Warning.
A person who shaped me with their love was my grandmother. This is her story and these are the breadcrumbs she left for me. Mila was born in 1938. She grew up in the “old country”—the former (former…former) Yugoslavia or the first iteration of Yugoslavia under a Serbian monarchy. She was one year old when WWII began, three when it began in Yugoslavia, and seven when it ended. She only received a third-grade education. (Had it not been for Tito's mandates, she would not have even been afforded that meager opportunity.) Growing up as a small child, she did not have shoes, running water or electricity. She could not cursive write, so she signed her name with an "X." As the second eldest, she was forced to work on her family's farm from a very early age while her two younger siblings were afforded the opportunity to attend school up to the 8th grade. As I was to find out, her lacking education was the least of her problems. My grandmother was born on the periphery of life, as a poor Serbian girl growing up in a Croatian dominant area--in an area infamous for its seemingly never-ending bloodbaths (genocides and ethnic cleansings.) This short excerpt highlights the very biggest one and strangely the one that never gets discussed.