I am pleased to welcome you all to my brand [spanking] new blog. Even though it is the same blog website and blog that I have been writing in for the past two or so years, I still would like to think of this as something completely new and different. I welcome you all again to my first entry.
First, I’d like to start off by saying I planned on writing something quite intelligent and interesting; something that would grab the reader by the collar and pull them [and hopefully, a couple of their friends] in faster than any of them could say, “Abecedarian” [which is a funky word I just found while perusing thought the inter-web]. Sadly, when I began writing, I immediately drew a blank, every thoughtful idea that had come to me in the past few weeks had suddenly vacated; I was just an empty shell, void of any intelligent thoughts just the way I was at the end of my last group of blog entries. It drove me to insanity and I fear I’m already traveling down that road again.
Eventually I’ve noticed that I had a good idea to write on for a first entry, me. There are plenty of people out there who believe that I have had an interesting life, to these people I tell you that you are wrong. I know that while in my childhood at Scribner Road Elementary I told a grand story of how my family and I escaped the clutches of the Serbs who wished us all dead. I know that this story piqued the interest of plenty of people that heard it and they continued to show that interest on into my high school years. I’m sorry to say that this story is not so much an autobiography of the facts I faced as a child but more of a story I told with bits of fact littered across it. I want everyone to know that I did tell the story as I knew it, what happened to us really happened as I told it but what I want to say is that I filled in the blanks that I didn’t know with exaggerations and jokes which didn’t change the story on a whole but still is something that I’d like to get off my chest. I know someone out there feels betrayed and feels that I’ve lied to them well, I want you to know that I haven’t lied to you in any way and there’s no reason to feel betrayed, everything I told you was completely and utterly true so don’t worry about it.
Everyone who wasn’t fortune enough to hear the story of harrowing deeds and pure heroics from my childhood, you guys missed out. It was a tale based on what my mother told me in a series of short stories that I combined into one large one for my schools immigration day. In this grand story I spoke about how my mother solely carried my infant body across a barren war zone which was littered with soldiers, angry militia, and camps all bent on my personal and my people’s destruction. The story began in my home city of Brcko which was on the border of the newly formed Bosnian nation which caused a whole load of problems.
We wandered across the countryside, my sister, my mother, and I, my father decided to stay home for a multitude of reasons. My mother waited until I was older to tell me that my mother forced our family to stay as long as we did because my father was being held in a concentration camp. She believed the old world ideals that a woman was nothing without a man to make the money, buy the land, and all that good stuff. Eventually we left our father behind when he was released from the camp and told us of how he didn’t want to go with us. This is an idea that was rattling around my head for years and years as a child. Why wouldn’t a father want to leave a war ridden country with his family? I always assumed the best of him, he didn’t want to leave out of some nationalistic pride or the fact that he had a bullet in his leg [forgot to mention that, sorry]. I thought about this for ages until my mother told me the truth, he had remarried and didn’t care for us anymore.
Well, while my mother, sister and, I traveled across the country, we were forced to witness and survive through a lot of grotesque things which I [thankfully] cannot remember because of my age. There is one story that my mother told me of how we needed to cross an active battlefield to come that much closer to freedom. A large group of us were forced to get into a bus to travel across a battle field. Once we had passed through the battle area we finally came upon the opposing side where there was a long mountain road that we were dropped off at, we were forced to walk in freezing temperatures; even infant me was forced to walk when no one had the energy to carry me any longer. We traveled along the road and some of us fell into large mortar holes which had frozen over which slowed us even more. Eventually we made it to our destination; we were free people to go where we were safe from persecution thanks to a series of charities that got my family out of there.
We were taken in by a Christian charity organization that took us from our broken home and country to the great nation of the United States of America. My mother took credit for us getting to the U.S. but I still think it was a random selection. I’m happy though that we were put in such a great nation and we given an opportunity to live here and eventually help out that nation. I personally feel a great debt not only to the sponsor that took care of my family, the others that helped us, and the nation that took us in and hope that one day I become a man of such greatness that I can repay all of them.
I feel that I’ve written enough for one night, I’ll continue this at another date and time. Good night and good luck to all.
“I have found that if you love life that life will love you back.”
- Arthur Rubinstein (1886 – 1982)
