Calling Babcia: Snails, Kidneys and Tai Chi

I love calling my Babcia.  I wish I could live near her and visit her often.  She is, to me, the definition of a wise woman.  A true Babcia.


This time, when I called her, I also had my Tato on the phone with her.


We talked about Christmas and the winding Pre-war stairs of my cousins apartment in Wroclaw.  The house was one of many which were once probably owned by nobility or merchants.  There is a courtyard with doors that, if you stop and just look, you could imagine a horse drawn carriage coming home from some event and entering the courtyard to prepare for night and rest.


My Babcia walked up the stairs with some of my family to celebrate Christmas together.  The building was once beautiful.  But it has fallen to some neglect.


My Tato and Babcia discussed politics and why the building is not being restored the way I dream it could be every time I visit. 


In my eyes, I envision discovering the original paint color under the current flaking layers.  I imagine the stairs being repaired and the banister re polished and properly attached to the walls.  Walls which probably once bore family portraits.

I imagine the rotting wooden family crest of whoever once owned the house being carefully researched and restored.


I imagine beautiful light fixtures bringing light to the dark corners that always make my breathe stop in fear.  Imagined figures always hide in those recesses waiting for me.


I imagine the house is made a historical site and so much more...


My Babcia tells me that she has mailed me two recipes for Kidneys which should be tasty.  She chuckles as she says this and I tell her how I traumatized my children with the last attempt.


The conversation leads to her time in France when her family tried to avoid WWII and it's atrocities.


She and my father both said that they could never imagine eating snails.  That perhaps it's because they have some sort of attachment to those green shelled garden residents that every Pole sees throughout the warm days of summer.


I told my Babcia that I have eaten snails.  Slimaki.  Hiding in a lot of garlic, butter and parsley.  At, of all places, a restaurant in Western Maryland called Old South Mountain Inn (I love that restaurant, by the way).

That my East Coast hippy husband, who had never eaten anything like it, had ordered it immediately thinking of me and that we had all really enjoyed it.  Even my then 2 year old older daughter.

That it tasted like... well, a garden.  There was something in the taste that reminded me of clams.  Wonderful.  I was pronounced an adventurous eater.


My Tato reminded me that the snails eaten in France are actually harvested in Poland.  I had once watched a television show discussing the snails of Poland and why the French could not raise and harvest their own snails.






My Babcia found that to be very funny and we talked about various dishes we loved and which we didn't. 


My Babcia told me that she missed doing Tai Chi everyday.  That she would go to the local park and do it with a group of other older residents and that it cleared her eczema.  I have decided that I would start doing Tai Chi again as well.


Na razie...

Our Life Changing Anniversary

It was evening.  The children were fed, bathed and playing together by me as I sat on my bed sorting paperwork.

My Tato came in.  He never really comes into my room.  My house is always open to him because that is just how Polish children are, their house is always open to their parents.

I looked at him, knowing he was going to say something important.

"Gęś*, do you know what Eleven ten eleven is?" with a smile that I know very well.  A smile that means "Guess, maybe you know, this is something very special to me."

I raked my mind.  It is noone's birthday as far as I can remember.  It isn't our anniversary coming to Amerika. 

"I don't know, Tato.  I know it's the day before Veteran's Day and the day before Poland's Independence Day and before eleven eleven eleven."

"On November 10, 2011, it will be 30 years ago we left Poland."

My Tato rarely talks about Poland and our departure.  I have begged him for years to share with me but I have been lucky to get slivers.

I paused and bit the bullet.  I asked questions.  Cautiously, because I know he might shut down his wall that he keeps to protect himself.  I can understand that feeling, even though my feelings are from a different perspective and most likely not as strong and full of memories as his and my Mamas.

"Tato, how did we leave?"

"You were just a little thing (stress on little).  You was not even 1 1/2 year old.  I drove us in a car to Austria."

I knew this much.  I wanted more.

"But how?  Did we sneak over in the night (like on those old spy movies)?  How did we get through the border?"

"No, we said we were going on vacation."  More gentle prying and I hear, "We each got passports to go separately when we apply to go to Austria for vacation.  You Dziadek went with us to take car back.  We just did not return."

We left on different pretenses than what we told the government.  In my mind, I think now about people who overstay their visas and wonder if they were in the same situation and if it is so wrong what they did.  And that people who judge them without ever having traveled anywhere have no idea, no clue.

My Tato continued to tell me how little I was and that we lived in Warth. 

I asked him if he regretted it.  Because I am ashamed to think (but would never tell him) that in some ways, I do.  He told me that in some ways he regrets it but in many ways no.  I knew I hit a nerve.  This was hard to him to talk about.

I cannot imagine being in a situation where no matter how hard you work, there is no food in the stores to feed your baby, there is no future that you can see for your child.  Having to hug your parents goodbye, cross yourself and sneak away to another country.  And hope beyond hope that you don't get sent back home, that you and your family are given a chance to try to make a life for yourselves in another country far far away with a different language, culture, government, values, food with no family to be your support there.

I cannot imagine how my parents found the strength to leave their Poland.

30 years ago today, my parents made the biggest decision of their lives and mine.

They hugged their friends and family, said goodbye, not knowing if they would see them again.  My parents wrapped me in a green blanket and my mother sat with me in the backseat of a maluszek that had no heat on a cold November day.  My Dziadek sat in the passengar seat.  And my Tato drove.

For our future.  To our future.

This weekend, besides celebrating Veterans Day and Poland's Independence Day, I will be showing my children photos from my family, calling my Babcia, and telling my children our story.

I wonder what will be, to my children, the biggest decision in their lives that my husband and I will make.  Will it be, as I see it something as small and trivial, as moving to Illinois from Maryland?  Or will it be something just as big?

Na razie...



*  Gęś (pronounced Gensh and meaning "goose" in Polish, my father's nickname for me)

Related Posts:  Writing Me:  Where I'm From
The Other Side of The Immigrant Question

The Love Story

My mother was about 17 or 18 years old living in Poland. 

She and her best friend decided to go to Paris, France for a vacation. 

Because of Poland's prime location in the center of Europe, my entire family has always been able to enjoy countless vacations in the Alps, Paris, Barcelona, London and countless other European locations that are far far out of my reach and always will be.

The two inseparable friends took a train over the borders and made their way to the City of Lights.  They strolled along thestreets of Paris, enjoyed coffee and cigarettes while people watching at Paris's numerous cafes, saw the Notre Dame and basked in the romance that is Paris.

One day, my mother's best friend met a Parisian.  He was suave, dark, macho, handsome, very French and proud of it. 

He swept my mother's best friend off her feet with his romantic gestures and words spoken in his french accent.

When it came time to leave Paris and return home to Wroclaw, my mother's best friend gave her this ring.

It was to remember her.

She would be staying in Paris to marry her handsome Frenchman.

Her name was Kasia.

Slimak, Slimak: Polish Children's Rhyme

My daughters love this rhyme and sign it every time they see a snail. 

One of the fondest memories I have of either of them singing it is from when I took my older daughter to Poland to bury my Dziadek.  At my cousin's garden, a mulch pile was covered in big fat snails.  They were the snails which are regularly harvested in Poland for the French.

My cousin's daughter quickly squatted down to be close to the snails and sang:

Ślimak, ślimak wystaw rogi,
Dam ci sera na pierogi,
Jak nie sera, to kapusty,
Od kapusty będziesz tłusty

My older glanced at me and I translated for her:

Snail, Snail, show your horns,
I'll give you cheese for pierogi,
If not cheese, then cabbage,
From cabbage you'll be fat...

She promptly squatted down next to her cousin and they chanted the rhyme together again.

I turned my pregnant eyes from the snails after whispering, "You be glad I have no butter and garlic on me right now."



Another Polish Children's Nursery Rhyme About a Miscu...

Mom Photographer's Slimak post which originally inspired me