polska 2013
Babcias's neighbor, a couple of houses up, has quite an impressive flower garden despite the fact that she's raising five kids while her husband provides for the family from abroad. I saw one of the older children, a teenager, in the garden and commented on its intensity and loveliness. "Thanks," she said, "but my mom does it all."
It's obvious almost instantly that you've crossed the border into Slovakia. Everything looks similar, but just different enough. The villages above all: stretched out along a single road, houses huddled up to the street, house after house looking quite similar.
Today's fieldtrip, Oravský Hrad -- Orawa Castle, just about forty kilometers inside Slovakia but a world away from the twenty-first century. Probably the third or fourth time I'd been there, but when I'd shown L pictures of the castle -- instant intrigue.
And who wouldn't be intrigued with a castle literally perched on the razor tip of a high cliff?
Yet I was a little worried about the legs of our smallest visitors: it begins with a climb and only grows steeper through the visit. Up, up, up -- anyone with any fear of heights needs not apply, nor anyone with weak legs.
Having seen for the first time a couple of years ago the film 1922 Nosferatu, I was particularly interested in the first couple of gates. While none of the interiors were used for the film, the exteriors framed the early adaptation of Dracula.
In 1922 none of the interiors had yet been renovated, but if they had, there are a few interiors that certainly would have served the film well.
As for today's visit, the interiors seemed less interesting than the exteriors. And most fascinating was the mannequin dressed as Count Orlok, the vampire antagonist from Nosferatu.
"Tata, is that real?" And it was a fairly terrifying sight.
"Why does he have claws?" little D asked.
"What is that?" S asked.
I explained to everyone about the film, and honestly, I thought they would continue to worry about it, to fret about it. But soon enough, they were crowded around the mannequin.
A small victory for adult common sense in children.
Lunch at a restaurant — a break for Babcia cooking. She won’t come with us, either.
“I’ll eat something or other. For me, a crumb of bread with some milk is just perfect.” She laughs, “After forty years of cooking, you’d be satisfied with it, too.”
We go to the first real restaurant opened in Jablonka. This of course doesn’t count the GS-owski restaurant that was often in even the smallest of villages, nor the bars that offered only microwaved frozen food.
K and I came here on dates back in the early 2000s. Wednesday nights, if I remember correctly. I took the 9:30 bus back to Lipnica and waited anxiously until next meeting. In the dead of winter, those minutes waiting for the bus were torturously cold.
And so ten years later, I sit at this restaurant in shorts and sandles, my daughter across from me and nieces and nephews all about, K and E still in the States.
It’s almost perfect. We’re just missing a few people, and non-blistered feet that require a bit of kombinowanie.
Dessert: a bowl of fresh cherries.
Like I said, almost perfect.
Babcia is not a fan of technology: she really doesn’t get along well with much of anything electronic. She once almost set fire to ginger snaps in the microwave when she and Dziadek first bought one because she didn’t know how long to set the timer and didn’t know she could stop the process in mid-course. She leaves the settings of the washing machine untouched and dares, simply dares, anyone to mess with it. She hates computers except for their usefulness in talking to family overseas.
Take Babcia to a forest, though, and she instantly becomes an unending source of information. There isn’t a tree, plant, or bush she can’t name. She’s forgotten more about wild mushrooms than I’ve ever known. She can point out a hundred and one herbs and explain what they’re good for, what they heal, what they taste like. She can show you where there should be mushrooms soon. She remembers where there were mushrooms last year, the year before, the year before, and so on, seemingly unendingly.
She is simply impressive.
And so yesterday, as we were planning our day’s events (for with four children in the house, everything needs to be planned), Babcia decided that, since we don’t have power again today (the fourth day in two weeks), we would go to the forest.
“Maybe we’ll find some mushrooms. There’ll probably be some blueberries,” she explained. “And if not, we’ll have a pleasant walk in the woods.”
We go to a small forest between Jabłonka and Lipnica Mała.
As we head out, Babcia explains that almost everyone in the family owns a bit of forest around here. “Over there is K’s bit,” she says, pointing vaguely to her right. “W’s forest of saplings is over there,” she says, waving her hand further to the right. But we head into a forest that belongs to someone whose last name begins with Ł. We know this because it’s painted on seemingly all the trees. Perhaps at some point there was a disagreement about who owned what, and Mr. Ł decided to take matters into his own hands.
We immediately stumble upon a patch of wild blueberries. Incredibly small and light blue, the berries taste unlike anything one could find in a store. There are a thousand and one flavors in each berry: a bit of sweetness rounded off with a tangy finish and a warm, earthy, slightly even metallic undertone. At first, the blueberry bucket remains completely empty: all berries to straight to eager mouths. As we continue deeper into the forest, though, we find a calizna — an area completely untouched, with berries simply everywhere. “O Boze, daj nam calizna!” Babcia declares as she begins pulling berry after berry from the seemingly endless bushes.
We continue through the forest, making discoveries along the way. The kids see how the forest, in its own dying, performs a natural miracle of self-resurrection. Death provides foundations for new life. Nature removes the weaker trees that then nourish new plants, stronger plants. And if not, nature will take care of them, too.
Still, though, an hour or so into the outing, we haven’t found a single mushroom. Suddenly, there it is, at the base of a tree — our first mushroom. Unfortunately, it’s just a common muchomorek. Edible, but only once. “All mushrooms are edible,” Dziadek once explained. “It’s just that some mushrooms are only edible once.”
Babcia patiently explains that even though the mushroom is inedible, it’s still useful. “It’s part of the forest, and it’s useful to other creatures. So leave it alone,” she instructs when a cousin suggests we could smash it for the fun of it.
In the end, we all have blue fingers from the berries but not a single mushroom.
Still, that’s not what the trip was about.
It was about the small surprises and discoveries that childhood can bring, the big and the small. Finding a Ladybug in a field.
Or seeing for the first time the square of forest your grandfather gave you.
It's always a highlight of any trip to Poland. To begin with, there are the views. As it's the highest parish in Poland and situated just above Zakopane and opposite the Tatra range, they're incredible. Then there is the virtual trip back in time. With people still literally using horse power, it sometimes feels like you're trapped between two centuries. So there's all that, but most importantly, there's family.
Babcia comes from Ząb and still has family there: her mother, a brother, a sister, and countless cousins. Any visit starts there. We always begin there.
The older girls arrive and discover a board game -- immediate obsession.
The littlest, though, heads straight for great-grandmother, who has a big -- an enormous -- bag of puffed corn.
We have lunch; we chat; Babcia has some quite moments with her mother. It's as it always is, as it always should be.
After a bit of food (what Polish visit would be complete without food?), coffee, and conversation, we had to Furmanowa, a field overlooking Zakopane directly across from the whole Tatra range. A visit to Ząb would never be complete without it, for the views are absolutely incredible.
As we approach, Babcia informs us that the weather is definitely going to change: "The mountains look so close we could touch them." Indeed, there's a clarity in the air that belies the fact that the weather for the past week and a half has been absolutely miserable.
But the recent change in weather -- although Babcia assures us that it's temporary -- has brought out the excitement and silliness and everyone.
But the views. It's hard to look away.
Today, though, we make some changes.
We head up by the fairly new church looking for Babcia's grandmother's house -- the Bobak homestead. In front of the house, an unknown babcia sits knitting socks (probably for later sale in Zakopane), and she asks with a certain clairvoyance, "Are you family?" She speaks the local dialect: at the same time thicker, heavier than standard Polish and somehow lighter at the same time. I struggle to keep up with the conversation -- same story as always.
She informs Babcia that there's someone around back working, so we head around the house to find Babcia's cousin raking hay.
They engage in the small talk that makes family family, but initially, the house steals everyone's attention.
"At one time," Babcia explains, "it was widely considered one of the most beautiful houses in the region." It's easy to see why.
And of course, the views from their back yard -- such as it is -- aren't bad either.
L and S have different things on their mind, though.
"Masz kota?" asks L. Fortunately, it's family, so it's not a big deal that L, as she always does, is speaking in the familiar voice when asking if they have a cat. Properly speaking, L should be speaking to adults in the third person to show respect, but the only people she's ever spoken to in Polish are family, so in a sense, it's not a big deal this time. However, she's been talking to strangers like this.
But this time, it's family, and I don't really feel the necessity to explain and correct. And besides, the girls have run off to the barn as Cousin A suggested, and I'm enchanted myself: the views, the people -- it's all a bit overwhelming as it always is.
We return to the main road and Babcia picks up the conversation where they left off. More introductions, explanations, history: it always comes back to who you know here, looking for that common ground. In Ząb, though, there are really no strangers.
"Who was she?" I ask.
"I've no idea," Babcia admits. She hasn't lived here in decades and doesn't remember everyone. "Ask Aunt Z when we get back," she suggests. I will, and Aunt Z will immediately recognize her; Babcia will recognize the name.
But in the meantime, we're still exploring.
"Let's go to the John Paul II memorial," Babcia suggests, and we find it easily enough: we'd walked right by it searching for L's great-great-grandmother's house but somehow not even noticed it.
One thing, though doesn't escape any of the cousins' notice as we approach: the small kisok to the right that promises ice cream.
"Masz czekoladowy?" asks L. The salesman is just out of his teens, but he's an adult, and L should be talking to him in the formal third person. I whisper "Czy Pan ma..." in her ear, and she reframes the question. Still, he's now busy preparing four ice cream cones, none of them chocolate.
"Let's go a little further," Babcia suggests. "I'll show you the path we all took when we wanted to go to Zakopane. There were no buses, no taxis -- everywhere we went, we went on foot." It takes us a little while to find the path, though. "None of these houses were here," Babcia explains.
One false start leads though a mine field of dung and past a couple of sheep grazing.
"No, no, I don't think this is it," Babcia explains. We walk a little further and suddenly, "Oh! There! There it is."
"It looks just the same -- just the same -- as when we walked there. Of course, I stayed in a dorm during high school, so I only made the trip on the weekends."
"You stayed in a dorm?" asks W incredulously. "And you only came home once a week?"
"It was the best time of my life!" Babcia explains. "I had my own bed, my own closet! It was paradise."
We wander about a bit more, then finally return to Aunt Z's house. Great-grandmother is waiting. Babcia sits with her mother, listening to the radio, commenting about the recent developments in the country.
"We'll come back again soon!" Babcia promises a few minutes later as we're leaving. "Soon!" she reassures everyone.
"Why even leave?" I want to ask. But the temporary nature of such small tastes of heaven only intensifies the sweetness, and so perhaps it's best that we leave it all behind for a week or two.
Morning: Uncle B and Aunt K drop in on their way up north. B’s and K’s son is the current national ski jumping champion, but for everyone in the family, of course, they’re just B and K, with their son K.
We drink coffee, eat cookies, chat about a little of everything.
Babcia decides she needs to take a picture of us. It takes a little while.
“What do I press?” It’s a fair enough question: our camera has buttons everywhere, probably too many for the job most of the time.
“Where do I look?” More time. Sweet Babcia — technology is just not her thing. She’d live in the nineteenth century if she could.
We’re all set: Babcia presses the shutter release . . . and holds it down. Flash! Flash! Flash! Flash! Flash! Five quick pictures, and by the last one, we’re all laughing, even Babcia.
Afternoon, D and A bring the three cousins. L, S, and D are soon holed up together watching cartoons. What else is there to do when it’s eleven degrees Celsius (51.8 Fahrenheit) outside?
After lunch, we all take turns talking to K and E via Skype. It’s a bitter-sweet moment: K and E should certainly be here with us, but vacation and such being what it is, it’s just not possible this time.
Evening: the three girls put on a show for Babcia. There’s acting.
There’s singing and smiling.
And of course with L there, dancing.
And thus begin three weeks together with the cousins.
Lunch with Aunties who have maintained Dziadek’s family home. Since neither had seen L in close to two years, there was a lot of doting.
“Does she understand Polish?” asked Aunt A.
“Of course!” Babcia answered. “Every word. And since she went to pre-school these last two weeks, she’s begun speaking it very well also.”
And yet the Girl buried her face in my arms for the first few minutes.
But equally as inevitable was the change that came as soon as cousin R began tickling, chasing, and generally goofing with the Girl.
“You can’t get me while I’m with ciocia!” she squealed every time R approached.
Ciocia became the great hero, always defending L with hugs and little tickles of her own. When she gave L seconds on ice cream, she certainly moved into Most Favored Auntie status.
Yet it was not all tickles and giggles: R is getting married in a week, which means L will experience her first Polish wedding party.
“Do you know how we’re going to dance and sing!” Most Favored Aunt reminded L regularly. Indeed. The wedding is one of the things I’ve been most looking forward to about this visit. There are of course the usual happiness for R that he’s getting married, but there’s more to it than that.
A Polish wedding party is so unlike its American counterpart. It’s a celebration at full power, an all-night adventure in food, love, music, laughing, dancing, libation, chatting, and everything else that makes life wonderful.
And every visit with family and friends, we get some little taste of some portion of that fast-approaching evening.
Take a six-year-old, some puddles, and a pair of gum boots and what do you have? An obsession with every (and I mean every) mud puddle.
