SLOVENIA'S 5 CORE VALUES

It was more self-contained. A little hard, a little soft, but always reserved. When you hugged her, you smelled Nivea cream, and her clothes always smelled of Marseille soap.

She had a habit of always having everything in its place. Even things she no longer needed were put away neatly and with feeling. The drawers were full of buttons, old postcards, rubber bands and twisted ribbons, but everything was tidy. She didn't like clutter or loud people. She said that noise makes your head restless.

When she came to visit us, she was (always) quieter. She didn't talk much, but you could still feel the presence of her beautiful and calm energy. On that day, she was sitting at the table, wearing a long white shirt blouse that reached over her trousers. She put her bag at her feet and rubbed her hands together, as if checking that she had everything with her. She took a lollipop from her pocket. A red one, wrapped in shiny paper and glued a little. "Here you go," she said, "but don't eat it all at once."

I unwrapped it immediately. The paper cracked a little and my aunt looked up. "Slowly," she said. At that moment, Mum pulled her camera out of her bag - the old yellow Kodak one that rattled when you pressed the button. She captured the moment with a lollipop in her mouth, and my aunt looked at me with that full smile of hers, as if to say, "Well, let's see if you can hold on."

I finished the lollipop. I put the stick in my grandmother's drawer, where the old buttons and strings were. My aunt looked at it to see if I had really eaten it and just said, "Now you know it was sweet."

Aunt Rozika was not one of those people who talked too much about emotions. She never said "I love you", but you felt it when she put the last piece of cake on your plate or fixed your collar before you got up from the table. She always expressed her love quietly - through the little things, through order, through care that refused to be noticed.

But when she was in the house, everything calmed down. Her manner was quiet and moderate. She did everything with moderation, as if it were an integral part of every cell of her body.

When I grew up, after a long time, I opened that drawer at my grandmother's. The lollipop paper was still there. Wrinkled, slightly sticky, but still smelling of a time that never comes back. When I grabbed it, I remembered it all exactly: how she smelled of Nivea, how she spoke slowly and how everything was just right in every word she said - nothing superfluous.

My mother still has that photo. When I look at it, I see a little me with a lollipop in my mouth and her - with a look that had more warmth than I could recognise at the time.

Today I know that Aunt Rozika taught me silently. That it was not about a lollipop or a sweet, but about life. It was about not having to hurry, not needing much, having peace, order and someone who understands you in your silence.

And if I could ask her again what she meant when she said to me, "Don't eat it all at once", she would probably just wink and add, "What lasts gets sweeter."

Zala Krupljan, 3. 9. 2025