Have you ever wanted to drop a fat cheque on something completely unreasonable (but emotionally vital)?
Like, see-photos-of-your-dad-in-his-1980s-dance-group vital.
I would’ve paid big.
Drop-out-of-my-phone-plan big.
Live-in-a-questionably-sanitary-garden-run-by-a-medieval-peasant-for-a-week big
(the peasant actually shows up, and I wrote about it here)
You might be thinking: “wait, didn’t I time travel in one of my other blog posts to find stuff like this?”
Not this time. I had a paper due and zero emotional bandwidth for interdimensional travel.
So I did something much simpler.
I sent an email. In very broken Croatian. To a dance group I wasn’t even sure still existed.
And somehow, that email opened a door to an entire archive.
But you, my dear reader, deserve a bit of time travel (again). So here you go: My childhood self will show you around a Bosnian village.
The village is nestled deep in the hills, where everything feels soft, overgrown, and alive. Rooftops peak through branches of plum trees, which lean heavily with fruit. The grass grows in thick, tangled waves, blanketing the earth like a worn quilt. There’s a plushness to it all —like the land itself is padded, inviting you to sink in.
Cows wander lazily through the meadows, swatting flies with their tails. A brick barn, weathered and warm in the afternoon sun, sits just below the ridge, its roof made of uneven wooden planks that creak with the wind. Inside, hay is stacked high, and kittens tumble through it like it’s a playground built just for them.
Vines crawl up the balconies, wrapping around wooden beams and draping themselves over the railings like green curtains. The grape leaves are wide and generous, shielding you from the sun while allowing little pockets of golden light to pass through.
And always, above it all, that striking mountain. Its shadow touches everything, like a quiet witness to the village’s routines.
I remember lying in the grass, sun-drunk and breathless from running wild through the fields with my cousin. No schedule. No phone signal. Just dirt roads, open skies, and the smell of dust rising right before the rain. Sometimes, if someone on another hill caught a better view of the storm rolling in from the mountains, you’d hear your name carried across the valley, stretched out thin by the wind. It wasn’t urgent. Just someone calling, gently, to let you know the world was shifting. It felt like magic. Like the land itself knew who you were, and where to find you.
When the afternoon storms rolled in, we’d retreat to the balcony. That was our shelter, our little fortress in the sky. We’d pull the Turkish rugs out from inside the house and lay them on the balcony’s cool cement floor. Their fibres were thick and sun-warmed, faded. We’d stretch out on them and watch the clouds roll in.
You could lie right at the edge, your face just a foot from the downpour, but still dry. Still safe. The rain would roar just beyond the railing, but inside, you were wrapped in the scent of the wet earth rising from below.
…
In that same beautiful, yet bruised country, something else had survived too.
My dad’s dance group.
Below the hill, in the town nearby, the same dance company still existed. Different faces now, but the rhythm remained. Their website listed a contact email.
So I wrote to them. In my best broken Croatian.
A few days later, a reply came in.
She was lovely. One of those people who makes you feel like the world can be soft sometimes. She said she’d check the archives. And then, just like that, they arrived. Dozens of photos. Smiling dancers. Costumes bright with embroidery. And my dad —right there in the middle of it all.
Somewhere on the hill, tucked between soft, overgrown fields and sleepy plum trees, my dad once lived in a house filled with photo albums. That house was invaded during the war. His albums were burned.
He used to describe the lost photos —what he wore, how the group posed, and the little captions he’d written beneath each image. Knowing him, I can imagine how neatly everything was labelled.
And that’s when the guilt started to creep in.
The emotional hinge where gratitude, joy, and guilt all collide. I had recovered something beautiful, but it also forced me to confront the quiet cost of safety and generational distance.
It’s a very particular kind of guilt. The kind that hits you as the child of immigrants. You grow up surrounded by your parents’ stories of survival. Meanwhile, you’re busy collecting hobbies, degrees, and passport stamps. It feels like you’ve inherited peace without having earned it.
I used to think I loved dance for the rhythm, the costumes, the stage lights. But I’ve come to realize that what I actually love is everything that surrounds the dance. The quiet rituals. The shared history. The feeling of moving through time, not just space.
I’ve also always appreciated cultural history, how people lived, moved, dressed, and made meaning out of the ordinary. That curiosity lights me up, and now I see how it connects to the way I love tradition, texture, and stories that are older than me.
The coolest part? My whole life I wasn’t doing any of it alone. My dad was there the whole time.
Even when I didn’t realize it, I was learning through him.
Once again, this blog is helping me reconnect with the parts of myself I used to treat like side hobbies. My love for traditional music, for old textiles, for the rhythm of rituals that don’t need an audience.
This is the life I live!
A life where I get to dance for joy, not just survival.
A life where I get to write songs instead of writing home during a war.
Enjoying it with my dad is healing.
So no, there are no photos attached to this post.
Because closure for generational guilt doesn’t fit in a JPEG.
But an email? An email was a good place to start.
Digital Dugme 