Coming Home.

My mom in Krakow, circa 1960's.


Me in Krakow, 2007.

Yesterday over a pierogi dinner, Philip asked me what it felt to be in Poland, my "homeland." The question stumped me. Here in Poland, I am a foreigner. My home is in America. But I cannot deny that this country stirs something deep inside of me.

On the plane in Dublin going to Warsaw, I remember watching the people board, immediately recognizing the Polish faces. There are faces that are round and flushed, some which are long and gaunt, but all with the same haunted eyes, the look that unspeakably says that "I am Polish." When I got off the plane, I said to my mother that if she told me that all the people on board were related to me, I would believe her. I recognize a familiarity in each and every one of them.

Yesterday I walked through Cloth Hall, which is in the center of the Rynek and is a marketplace where they sell souvenirs. Walking from stand to stand felt like walking through an attic filled with items from my past. There were the dolls dressed in traditional Polish costume. My grandmother actually sewed me one of these costumes to wear. The rows and rows of brown boxes, which I remember using to hold my change when I was a little girl. The fine crystal etched with flowers and abstract shapes that still sit in my mother's cabinet. The lacy curtains and doily place mats that decorated my childhood home. These items are not at all American, but they occupy a big part of my memories, my life, my identity--in the United States.

Before I left for my trip to Poland, my mother told me a story about my grandfather. During the second World War, he was a prisoner in Germany. He was forced to work on a farm, but luckily the owner of the work camp was kind. So he managed okay, but he was heartsick for his homeland and his family.

After the war, he returned to Poland. My grandmother, an American citizen who had moved to Poland as a child, had the opportunity to go back to United States and take the family along with her. Most of her family, including her mother and brothers, opted to go. But my grandfather insisted they stay. He loved Poland, had missed it so much when he in Germany, that he never wanted to leave again.

And so they stayed, and soon the country turned communist under the Soviet rule, and they did not have the option to leave for a long time.

My grandfather was true to his word and never left Poland. Even when my grandmother and mother came to the United States in the 1960s, he stayed. Finally, he agreed to come visit, but he died before he ever made it.

I never knew my grandfather, and quite honestly, do not know much about him. But hearing this story drew a sketch in my mind--albeit a small one--of the type of man he was. He sounds a bit stubborn, but also loyal and sentimental, someone who I can identify with, which makes him feel like a real person to me, not just some name I hear in conversation, a portrait in a photo album.

I am in the country that my grandfather adored. I will never have the chance to ask him why it meant so much to him--what is it about the Polish land, the people, the culture that he pined for as a prisoner, that made him so determined never to leave. The answer to that I have to discover on my own. The more I learn, the more I feel at home.

Things from my Polish-American past: Polish dolls...



brown boxes...



crystal glassware...


decorative plates.