SLOVENIA'S 5 CORE VALUES

I am writing down her memories, which she shared with me with a deep measure of sincerity and love:

"When I think of my childhood, the first thing that comes to me is the smell of old wood and homemade soup cooking on the stove. Those were different years. In those very humble times, when you were hungry more often than you were full, we had someone to brighten up even the greyest days. That was Sister Dorothea.

I remember her like it was yesterday - her gentle hands that could do everything; sew, knead dough, mend torn school bags and improve moods. She was a nun, but for me she was first and foremost a human being. A heart that knew how to listen and that never judged. Every child, every parent, every lonely person in the city or in the surrounding village, we all felt safe with her. She was the silent strength of our parish.

She could walk so quietly that you smelled her homemade soap before you heard her. Her steps were not light, but they were always calm. We all knew that when Sister Dorothea came, something would change - not necessarily the world, but the day. At least that day.

She was a teacher, a cook, a counsellor of sorts, and a psychologist, although we didn't know that word at the time. She knew everything. Seriously. Not because she wanted to be smart, but because she wanted to help everyone. And to be able to help, you have to know.

She used to sit at the piano in the parish hall. If you were a child, you thought that every nun could play the piano. But she played differently. Not for an audience - she played as if those who had already left, or those who no one else had heard, could hear her. She was Guiltythat I later became a piano teacher myself.

But I remember her most for her dolls. Not the ones from the shop - the ones anyway there was none. Cloth dolls with hand-sewn eyes; often one eye was bigger than the other. And strange hands; one long, one short, but to us they were the most beautiful toys. She taught us to sew. We made the dolls ourselves. Sometimes it was the only toy you had. And you would proudly take a doll like that home, show it to your mother and go to sleep with it. Every December, under her guidance, we children sewed them for those children whose parents could not buy toys.

And the choir. In rehearsal we sang in a cold room, where you first blew into your hands to warm them up. There was no sound system, no microphones. Just voices. And then we went to perform - sometimes in a barn, sometimes at a village festival. People would bring food or give us a thaler, but sometimes they just had tears in their eyes. Doroteja never said it was charity, although it was. Everything she did was for others. The food and money collected always went to the needy.

When you went to see her - whether you were a child, a mother with three jobs or an old lady without a pension - she always asked how you were. And she knew how to ask in a way that told the truth. Not because she was forcing you, but because you wanted her to know.

She never raised her voice. She never judged. Even when she saw someone stumbling in life, she said nothing. She just kept quiet.

Today, it is no more. Her dolls, embroidered with childish clumsiness, can still be found in some attic box of now grown-up people. Perhaps somewhere in the church the sound of her piano playing remains - inaudible, but sensual. And the former choir of children is now grown up, scattered, but when one of them sings an old song, something inside it shimmers.

When people talk today about community, about how we should be more connected to each other - yes, we had that. Because of it."

Zala Krupljan, 18 May 2025