Rats! or The Best Love Story Ever Told?

The receiver of our beige rotary dial phone seemed unusually heavy in my hand. The porcelain felt cold on my ear. My heart was beating hard with fear and excitement. What if I don't understand him?

As if she heard my thoughts, my sister said from across the ocean - "Listen, you don't have this in Serbia. It's three-way calling.” She went on describing this ‘advanced’ technology. “So worry not, if you don't understand something I will translate it for you. OK?"

Once prestigious red passport

What ensued was a clear and concise conversation that changed the course of our lives. The third person calling in was a famed immigration lawyer whose fees I would only be able to afford to pay many years later. But my payment was never necessary. The bill for the consult was paid in full by my sister's employer. 

The information learned on that call led to a day that resembled a spy movie. At the wee morning hours I was to line up in front of the Canadian Embassy in Belgrade which was rumoured to have already started packing for evacuation. It was imperative that I was amongst the first in line - they accepted only a select few ‘consults'. The trouble was, the embassy was located directly across from the home where I had lived with my in-laws and first husband  - the one who had left me for his mistress 10 days before our baby was born. The one who refused to sign the document allowing my son to immigrate without going through... Well, you can read that in the memoir when it comes out! 

When the doors opened, my task was to recite my immigration file number and change the profession registered on my file from  'retail pharmacist' to 'industrial pharmacist'. Both of these were listed on the degree I had earned with honours 5 years previously, however the allocated space on the visa application form only allowed for a single entry. Bureaucracy the Beautiful!

This is Inflation

This power-house lawyer in Ontario's Immigration Law office taught me on this most important three-way call of my life that the vocation of retail pharmacist that I had listed two years earlier at the time I started the process now carried zero (0) points in contrast to the previous ten (10). The designation of industrial pharmacist however now carried ten points as opposed to zero previously. The math was simple: 0 points for previously-listed vocation x 10 points for fluent in English x 10 points for fluent in French x 10 points for having a close relative in Canada x10 points for having a child under the age of 3 still equals = ZERO. In that way my visa application had been suspended indefinitely due to insufficient points. After two years of waiting, I no longer qualified to be granted landed immigrant status. 

And just as in a good spy movie, the time was ticking. I was cold, a bit hungry, dead tired, and very apprehensive that the ex's parents - he himself having been long gone to the Lone Star state - would perhaps be standing on the balcony smoking and drinking the world's worst coffee and would see me line up for immigration thereby jeopardizing my whole chance of getting out. Damp with adrenaline, I was still able to remember my file number and the vocation code when a woman named Jacynthe asked me for it in French. Soon after I emerged back onto the street, my step swift, gaze focused on the ground, clutching a little yellow slip as proof my file was again deemed active.  

A chapter of my memoir-in-the-making "Marina Has Son" has the precise account of our heart-stopping exit from a war-torn Serbia whose borders were becoming tighter in the months and weeks that led to the 78 days of NATO bombing. My son and I and my parents narrowly managed to escape, courtesy of a North American corporate employer that had met me only twice before during interviews.

Passport photo - Attempt #9 

The day my visa arrived was a Friday and I worked the afternoon shift at the pharmacy. I hugged my colleagues Daca and Sneža tightly at the end of the work day, feeling I would never see them again. My three closest friends Tanja, Vladimir and another Vladimir were the only people other than my family who knew of my plan to leave. "Defectors" were not viewed with sympathy even if the reason was survival. On Saturday while Tanja played with Filip, the two boys helped me pack, duct taping shut all of my worldly possessions. Our flight left the following day and not counting the brief stop-over in Paris, the journey was 17 hours.

We arrived in Canada on a crisp and cold grey Monday morning. My not-yet three-year-old son was cranky, disoriented and confused - where were we? Where was grandma and grandpa? Why was it so cold? Where were his toys? Who was this woman? 

My visibly-shaken sister, who was in disbelief that we were really standing in front of her having actually made it out of the war zone, was a total stranger to him. After all, she had only seen him once at 6 months old when she had visited. He cried inconsolably as I left him with his aunt and went - jaw tensed and white-knuckled - to my first day of work. With 6h jet-lag and a new pair of glasses that somehow made the ground look farther away.

1st day of work: Fresh off the boat 

This was the day I signed my first contract with the employer that had invested in me through care and that hefty celebrity immigration lawyer's fee before I had even earned enough to buy a bottle of water. The date was December 7. It was a Monday. Alongside my children's birthdays, it has been the most significant date of my existence. Because it meant existence. 

North American corporations are often viewed as greedy, ruthless and impersonal. The career ladder is expected to be treacherous, infested with master-liars, manipulators and backstabbers. Commonly it's referred to as a rat race. 

Well, not for me and mine. Because this particular rat is genetically predisposed to outlast. It is fully infused with inspiration. Roaring with resilience. Leaping into learnings. Wired for wonder. And bound to blog about it.

Today is Monday, December 7 and we are celebrating a crystal anniversary together. I wonder why is it called crystal?  Perhaps because by now one's vision is crystal clear? Or because it is so fragile it can break into smithereens with the slightest blow?

Looking back, it's been just like a real relationship - fulfilling and rewarding for the most part, yet sometimes turbulent. One brief break-up followed by a sweet make-up! Nothing that a few sessions of couple's counselling can't fix - which actually comes as part of the offering under the heading of  'resilience training'. I'm in, so sign me up! 

Malcolm X said: "The future belongs to those who prepare for it today" - and I couldn't have been more prepared. 

But for today, it is still the best (career)love-story ever told.

Good Dad, Bad Dad, No Dad

The best thing my father ever did for me wasn't teaching me how to swim.

One summer in Greece when I was five, on a Papalimani Beach - the name even contains the root for "father" - my dad threw me off a dock and straight into water that was well above my head. The first thing I remember was the sea water burning my nostrils. The second, that as soon as my head bobbed up, I began raging accusations at him including the epic: "You crazy man, you tried to drown your very own child!" Our party burst into laughter. My tata (dad) told and retold this as a joke for many years. But by the time I ended my furious rant, I was a swimmer.

My father, sister and I, Belgrade 1969

Father's Day did not exist in Belgrade of my childhood. Dads I knew: my tata, my amazing uncle Zoran - a second father to me who I still lovingly call Koka, my friends' dads and our neighbours were a rarely-appreciated bunch - at least publicly. They went to work, they fixed our toys, bikes and each other's cars, they mastered the art of making "pljeskavica" (famous Serbian burger) on a charcoal barbecue. They stood up to a bully, no matter whose child was being hurt. They watched soccer, dividing themselves between being the die-hard fans of either Red Star or Partizan and cursing the missed opportunities to score a goal, all the while remaining good friends. And they would get up at wee hours, coats over their PJs to come fetch us from a party. My sister knew if she were to run downstairs, all flushed from dancing and sweetly beg: "Tajkane, it's now the best part, could you come back in, say, an hour and a half?"  that he would.

In all of my childhood I only remember one bad dad. There was a boy in my class who was often getting into fights. He was fearless and fast and dangerous. He lived with his single father who would show up to a parent-teacher meeting in an un-ironed shirt, dark wrinkly circles around his eyes. He smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. He would listen to the teachers’ concerns over his son's violent behaviour with only a silent nod, gaze hidden under puffy eyelids, far too calm for the list of offences. Then, my classmate would show up in school the next day with bruises. Before the day ended, he was in yet another school fight covering the home-made bruises with more honourable ones he earned while deliberately picking on a much older and stronger opponent. Years later we learned that his mother had barely escaped getting killed after one of the countless violent domestic disputes. Women's shelters were unknown. She fled to Germany, working as a gastarbeiter stealing moments to see her son while we were on overnight school-trips, twice a year.

This was my definition of a bad father. He was an addicted, sick man. It sounded like he had an excuse. Affliction comes conveniently to bad dads.

Throughout my life I have met many remarkable fathers. True heroes. The father who promptly RSVPs to his twins' tea parties. And those ones sporting glitter on their toe nails. The one who flew to the other side of the continent as fast as he could to watch over his baby girl while the socialite mom – whose turn for custody it was - was drunk, stoned and unaware that a 2-year-old can't survive if left alone at the poolside. The father whose yearly tradition was to take his kids camping in Algonquin Park in the middle of January, teaching them how to love, protect and befriend nature at -40 C. The father who welds half a year in the cold Canadian North and the rest of the time makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the world, showering his family with care and affection. And two fathers, a dad and a tata, who are masterfully raising their son with abundant love, teaching him the very essence of freedom. A dad, the soccer coach, instilling army-like discipline and precision in second graders, only to break all of his own rules as he ran victoriously across a field in East York, grin visible from the moon - with his step-son hoisted triumphantly high above his head in one arm, after the (accidentally) scored goal! Step-father? No way! Only a real father can be this amazing!

For the last several years I've been basking in the feeling of finally having back-to-back-to-back perfect Father's Days. School-made gifts I harbour for days at a time, while two sets of little feet keep anxiously stomping around them, revealing my hiding place well in advance of the Sunday morning's pancake breakfast. And the cheerful screams of "Aba, Aba!" fighting for my husband's attention as we map out the fun-filled day. This year, it was our first piano recital in a downtown Toronto gallery that our amazing teacher Viktoria holds deliberately on Father's Day. All throughout the audience I observed the beaming, glowing fathers with glint in their eyes who don't even attempt to hide how deeply moved they are by their offspring's performance, my man among them. So sexy!

But the duality of life wouldn't be complete without the bad dads, right? 

The decorated police officer who after verbally abusing mom in front of their child at the end of his weekend asks: What are you going to do? Call the police? - I am the police!

And the top-notch lawyer who sinks himself into his work during a 90-hour work week only to sink into his phone for the remainder of any possible family time.

Or the oil business white-collar executive who on Father's Day writes e-mails to the son he's never met in an attempt to weasel out of paying adequate child support yet one more time.

What "bad dads" don't understand is that kids are resilient. Their kids will grow up whether they abuse or blackmail or ignore or weasel out. They will actually be better for knowing who they don't want to be when they grow up. What will become clear one day, maybe only on his deathbed, is that despite the fact that he might have been a decent father to a dozen other kids, it is all worthless if he has been a bastard to one. That’s just how it is.

And while I'm at it, a huge bow down to the single mothers doing double duty on Father's Day and every other day. I've been one and I'm in awe of you - those I don't know and those I do and am privileged to serve. One good parent is more than enough! No dad - no damage. Not bad!

The best thing my father ever did for me was to get me a signature. Mr.Popović, a Belgrade lawyer, had the power of signing a document that would forever end a year of my greatest anguish. But he refused - he was too busy. He was leaving on vacation. Cottage-bound. The office is now closed and will re-open in two weeks. Please leave a message. Beep.

I will never know how my dad did this 19 years ago, but somewhere in Serbia's cottage country the two men met. They sat down and had a glass of šljivovica my father brought. Talked about fatherhood and their daughters. And when decency and common sense finally crumbled the arrogant air of a hardened divorce attorney, Mr.Popović looked at my father earnestly and said: "I get it. What happened to your daughter is disgusting. I would have done the same thing for my child. I would gladly draft the final divorce, but this is a cottage. I don't have a computer and printer here". My father silently reached into a bag and pulled out a leather box that stored a Hermes original manual typewriter. Three crisp white sheets were already inserted, sandwiched with deep indigo blue copy paper. Mr.Popović, took a sip of šljivovica and started typing. He finished just after midnight. Pulling the papers out, the old lawyer said - "Damn! I have my stamp with me, but unfortunately no ink pad". Then he looked at my father. The moist purple cushion had already materialized in front of him. 

My father was a humble, quiet man. Although he was proud of us three girls - our mom, my sister and I - he kept his praise private. And he never asked for much back.

The following morning after feeding my baby boy, I joined my parents in the kitchen for our ritual of coffee and conversation before work started at the pharmacy, and they turned into my daycare.

My mom said: Good morning darling. We have news - you divorced yesterday. You can apply for a Canadian visa now. You are free.

Happy Father's Day, Tata. Thank you!