The Day Childhood Ended

How quickly 43 years have flown by.
The night between April 26 and 27 (1982) taught me one of life’s hardest and most enduring lessons: happiness and sorrow are sisters.

On this day so many years ago, I graduated during my eighth semester — ahead of my class — eager to seize my diploma from the Faculty of Law. Yet, barely a day later, I was wrapped in mourning. I lost my father, suddenly, overnight.
One day brought joy and pride; the next, disbelief and helplessness. It was as if my adulthood truly began that night — the phase where learning ceases to be the sole priority and the full weight of life falls onto your shoulders. My parents could no longer shield me from it. I had to step into the world on my own.

I had no time to celebrate my early graduation. I had lost the man who had been my idol, and who, at just 52 years old, left too soon.

From him, I inherited a treasure trove of values: the love of books, the devotion to work, the fierce belief that we, born of the working class, must build our own world with our own hands — because no one else will do it for us.

My father had little formal education, but he was a true autodidact. He completed only four years of elementary school before his rascal father pulled him out, despite his excellence. Yet he never stopped learning. Every free moment he spent reading — anything he could get his hands on. I still remember his stories about military service: how, upon discovering a modest library during his posting, he devoured every book on the shelves as if attending a university.

He was one of the most brilliant minds I have ever encountered.
Of course, as a child, I loved him unconditionally; it was only later, through the lens of maturity and experience — after meeting many brilliant people across the world — that I truly realized his exceptional nature.

He was a workaholic, like I am now — often working 20-hour shifts beside the linotype machine’s cauldron of lead at the Nova Makedonija printing press. Yet even then, he found time to write the most beautiful verses when inspiration struck — sometimes scribbling them on the back of a cigarette box if no paper was at hand.

He made the greatest sacrifice for us, his children and family.
He gave up the chance to study, even after passing the entrance exam at the Faculty of Philology. He turned away from the poets and the literary circles he once dreamed of joining. We were more important to him than anything else.
Still, he hoped and dreamed that once he retired, he would finally enter his true creative phase.

Thanks to the benefits of his profession, he retired early enough for that dream to seem possible. But he never lived to see his third pension check.

And now, through this prism — as I, too, stand on the threshold of retirement — I remember it all. I see how much I resemble him, especially in this quiet hope: that finally, I will have the time to dedicate myself to what I love most.

And though he is no longer here, I know that 43 years later, he would be proud and happy — to see that his daughter, a worker’s child without privilege, had walked the long road from modest beginnings to become a professor and a public intellectual.

As for me, I will always carry within me boundless love and gratitude for the man who first believed I was something special — and who, by believing, made it true.