You can see the approval and support in their eyes when they greet you, smile at your baby and hold the door for you to drive your pram through without hesitation. In fact, cars are more likely to stop at a pedestrian crossing if you are standing there with a pushchair, and wait patiently for you to cross the road.
All of this is a whole new world for me in the last year and a half, and a further indication of how good people are at heart, even if we don't notice it too often. But sometimes, just sometimes, along with all those kind greetings and little nice gestures, you are surprised by a seemingly equally small act that carries a universe of love.
Shortly after my partner and I brought home our helpless newborn and started getting used to our new, most important roles in the world - mum and dad - and were not really ready to welcome anyone else into our home, except for the people closest to us, the doorbell rang. I looked through the peephole. We live in a block of flats on the outskirts of Žalec, and at the door I saw my now ex-neighbour from the flat opposite ours. She was older and pleasant, though not particularly polite, and time had not spared her.
Her face is tired and lined with wrinkles that tell many stories. The eyes are tired, but warm and kind. Her voice is squeaky. Her words echo the Balkan accent that is so familiar to me. She always greets kindly. She can barely walk and her hands are gnarled, her once raven black hair glistening with a myriad of grey hairs. I know her only fleetingly, from the street or from the block. Although I have known her for a very long time, it seems to me that she is already telling her difficult life story by her very appearance.
I opened the door without hesitation, assuming that she must need something if she came to see us. But in reality, she didn't need anything. She just wanted to help us and, in her own way, to welcome a new member of our household.
She held out to me the dark blue knitted slippers she had knitted with her own hands. "Here, for your son," she said without greeting and walked away. I barely had time to thank her. When I closed the door, I was surprised, but at the same time I felt immense gratitude. Gratitude that my newborn son meant so much to an old woman, or that I meant so much to her, even if she knows me more fleetingly, that she thought it worth an hour to wiggle her clumsy, aged fingers, strain her tired eyes and knit slippers for a new inhabitant of the Earth. Wonderful!
Maja Horvat, 1. 7. 2025
English (UK) 
Slovenščina 
Italiano 
Magyar