Matching Tracksuits

Maciej Gębacz – Heimdall Fotografia

The little deposit book I carried with me everywhere and could use to withdraw money from some banks and almost any post offices…

E will be working on a Veterans’ Day Project that pays tribute to Papa and his service in the Navy. I got to wondering what old pictures we have of Papa, so I began searching. One thing led to another and I was on ancestry.com, checking on the family tree I’d worked on in the past. And I noticed a few pictures I could add to flesh out the Polish side of our family tree.

My friend Tom and I had to go to Krakow on the same day, both of us having ridiculously early appointments (before eight, I believe).

We did the obvious: took the same bus, took care of our business, then met back up at the rynek for coffee and conversation.

I finished a little earlier than Tom, so I took a few early-morning Krakow pictures. It was probably the only time I was in the Old Town that early. K, who studied in Krakow, insisted that there was no better time to photograph the city.

I got one picture that’s especially significant now: the waiting room in the Krakow train station, which is no longer the waiting room for the train station as the whole station has moved. Not photographing the whole ticket area, waiting room, and platforms is one of several photographic regrets.

Most of the everyday places that made up my reality in Poland during my first stay (96-99) exist now only in memory. I have few photographs of the apartment I had — in fact, only one that I know of. I have only a handful of images of the Nowy Targ bus station, where I spent countless hours waiting for hundreds of busses. The Krakow bus station is the same — gone.

That’s probably why I have so many pictures of our children that are seemingly everyday events — nothing special. Because in a few years, they will be special: reminders of what a normal, say, Tuesday looked like in our family.