K is a cartographer. As such, she has an abiding interest in maps. As such, we have a very nice map of the region of Poland where she comes from (and where I lived for seven years) hanging in our forayer.
L is turning into a smiler. It’s gone from “Honey, come quick! She’s smiling!” to a many-times-a-day occurrence. In fact, she smiles on-cue now. Sort of.
Whenever we hold L so that she can see our forayer map, she smiles — 99% of the time. We’ve caught it on video a couple of times.
The question is, what is so fascinating for her about that map? It has nothing but muted earth-tones; it is extremely low-contrast; it is very detailed — all the things a baby L’s age are not supposed to find particularly interesting. But she loves it — she comes closest to laughing when looking at it.
Maybe she senses that mom’s a cartographer. Maybe she senses that its a representation of her roots. Maybe she just gets off on low-contrast images…
We have several Polish friends in the area, and a surprising number are in mixed marriages: a Pole and a Bulgarian; a Pole and a Czech; a Pole and an American. We went to a house-warming party at the Pole/Czech couple’s house, and as always happens at such parties, I got to thinking about the effects of the English language’s relative isolation. Last night, the Czechs spoke Czech, the Poles spoke Polish, and everyone was mutually intelligible. And a Slovak couple been there, they could have spoken Slovakian as well and we’d all get along fine.
I try to imagine what it would be like to experience something similar: to hear someone speaking Dutch, for example, and understand enough of it to be communicative. Poles understand Slovaks; Urdu speakers understand a sizable portion of Hindi; someone fluent in Spanish would make a bit of sense out of Portuguese — but there’s no equivalent in English, that I know of. Sure, German has “gut,” and there are a lot of English/French cognates thanks to 1066, but nothing approaching the level of intelligibility speakers of Slavic languages experience.
More images of the party, including the inevitable table tennis tournament, at our Flickr account.
For me, it can be a bit of a nightmare. I understand a lot of Czech, but it’s a stretch to get a real sense of what’s being said.
Of course the real winners in such a situation are the children. Growing up speaking three languages — what a gift to give your child. But I know of situation slightly more linguistically advantageous: a former Polish student of mine married a Spaniard. They live in Vienna and speak English to each other. Now if they could only get a, say, Chinese babysitter…
It really began some weeks ago — the first smile, K says, was when L was six weeks old. I didn’t see it for some time, because L would smile once one day, give it a couple day’s rest, then smile again — usually when I wasn’t home.
And then she began smiling often enough that I saw L with her eyes sparkling above a toothless grin.
But it took some time to be able to capture that on film memory card.
Now, we can cause her to smile — if she’s in the right mood. All we have to do is flash (and hold) an exaggerated smile and within seconds, she joins in.
The best time to get a smile out of her is after a bath. L absolutely loves being bathed, so much so that it is actually an effective calming mechanism.
And when she’s calm and smiling, we’re calm and smiling.
It seems to be as ubiquitous in rural Poland as the headscarf. Walk into a Polish home and you’re likely to see the matriarch in an apron. Whether cooking or not; whether cleaning or not; the only thing that matters is whether or not you’re out of bed.
And if you’re going to visit family for an extended period of time, you take them with you.
My mother-in-law wears aprons all the time. As I write this, I can look over and see her working crossword puzzles, wearing the apron she was wearing when she emerged from her room at 6:30 this morning.
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