Tetka Eva’s

Into Tetka Eva’s humble wood-frame house we’d walk out of the drizzle.

A living room shining with laughter and shouts, it’s here that our Croatian

relatives swarm, partying it up good. Exuberance overflows from these Nashkis,

fills the space, like downtown at rush hour.

Aunt Sylvia plants a red lip-sticked kiss on my cheek as I reel and stagger

from a gust of perfume, then Uncle Frank bursts from the throng, thrusts

his half glass of brown whiskey my way, “Pe-ter try this. Pe-ter” he invites

me into forbidden territory. I’m more intrigued by his wooden leg,

his strange accent and yellowed fingers than by the warm booze he loves.

Dad’s aunt Eva wears an apron of blue flowers, smiling sweetly as she delivers plates

of meat, cabbage, bread and cakes to the dining room table, to her family. I bathe

for a secret moment in her brown eyes, sensing her quiet joy amidst all this happy clamor.

Excitement and mystery fill me as I wander from room to room in the small house.

It’s like crossing into a foreign county. Discovering my extended family

in a warren of delights, of tobacco smoke, and kids snaking through legs

of preoccupied grown-ups out into the backyard of fig and walnut trees,

a sagging clothesline and garage to hide behind, hoping Maryanne

might wander out here too.

The day is a bazaar revealing itself kiss by kiss in explosions of jokes

and sweet pinches, first crushes on girl cousins, plates of garlicky lamb,

olives and hleb, crunchy nutty and real, everything’s so real here at Tetka Eva’s.

‘Nashkis’—Croatian for ‘Our People’

‘Hleb’---homemade bread