Rain, ten degrees Celsius — you might say that it’s a perfect Polish summer, but that would be too pessimistic. Yet rain or shine, the cousins must swing.

And play in the small play house Dziadek built.

Yet there is a bit of frustration. L understands Polish perfectly; her willingness to speak it is a different situation entirely. As they’re swinging, S asks, “Dlaczego ciagle mowisz po angielsku?” “Why are you constantly speaking English?” “Dobra pytania” I respond, yet L says nothing. Instead she begins the international language of three-year-olds: she begins making as many odd sounds as possible.

In the end, the swing was the hit of the day. With aunt Dominika, Kinga, and I, the girls must have swung for ten hours straight. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.

In the meantime, Babcia chases the newest member of the family — a little mixed puppy — for digging up her flowers, for about the tenth time. “Ja cie dam!” cried babcia, half seriously, half in jest. “Ja cie dam!”

Poles would call such a day “dzien barowy” — a bar day. But we’re not here to sit in a bar. We’re here to visit, and visit with determination. And so we head to the school where I taught for seven years.

I meet several colleagues with whom I worked even in 1996, but we’re all a little older, a little more experienced. The exception is a young lady who was still in middle school when I arrived fourteen years ago (eighth grade) and now teaches high school. My replacement, one might say, but I guess one would be wrong. Time passes and replacement become irrelevant. All things being fluid in the twenty-first century, talk of replacements is useless.

As we wonder through the school, I begin thinking about how little has changed, which is the nature of teaching: one spends years in the same grade only to realize that, from a certain point of view, one has been running in place. I stay forever in eighth grade now; in Poland, I stayed forever in high school. The results are, more or less, the same.

There are some things, though, that can’t be replaced, like a virtual Mama. After dropping by the school, we stop by to visit the family with whom I lived for some time after returning to Poland in 2001. I’m greeted with hugs and “Synku!” It’s like a homecoming. It is a homecoming.

We meet the two chicks my Polish Mother (PM for future references) saved from certain death when they fell from the nest and made just enough noise for her to hear.

They’re the hit of the day.

A constant, consistent attraction during our visit.

“I want to see the birds!”

And as a result really get no rest during our visit.

But panic builds instincts and reaction. Or so I’m told.

So I’ve heard, but what do I know? That an evening of football (aka soccer) and assorted liquids makes one less than perfectly willing to blog at eleven o’clock…