Today, Tina’s brother still lives in their childhood home, which I feel like is such a universal thing—there’s always one sibling who stays and holds it down. Tina, on the other hand, moved to Rosoman when she got married and built her life here. She lives in a simple one-story brick house with a garage, right near the center of town. And when I say “near,” I mean everything is basically a 5-minute walk. Grocery store? 5 minutes. Work? 5 minutes. Running into someone you know and accidentally having a 20-minute conversation? Also guaranteed.
She lives one block away from me, which means I can’t leave my house without a very real chance of seeing her or another neighbor nearby—and honestly, I love that. It’s one of those small-town things that starts to feel normal really quickly.
Tina’s family is one of those big, spread-out-but-still-super-connected families.
She has an older brother and a younger sister, and they both still live in Viniča with their own families. So even though everyone has grown up and built their own lives, that original hometown is still kind of the anchor point for all of them. When Tina got married, she moved to Rosoman and started her own family here. She and her husband have two daughters: Brankiča (they call her Braka) and Stephanija, which, I’m not going to lie, are objectively very cool names.
