Resolutions

Although I don't set much store in New Year's resolutions, this year I've decided to make a few.  My primary objective is to have resolutions that I can realistically follow.  (For example, I know I won't exercise every day, so resolving to get daily aerobics in would be pointless, and the year I resolved to grow taller also didn't work out ).  I think I've come up with a mostly manageable list this time around.

1.  Keep my pantry organized.  It's fairly organized as is, because I can be obsessive about things, but I've decided to keep a list on the inside door of the things we should regularly have in our pantry, like pasta, rice, canned tomatoes, and flour.

2.  Exercise two times a week.  When I don't have to worry about ice, I like to go running, but winter shouldn't be an excuse for not exercising.  I'm lucky in having a very fast metabolism, so I don't worry too much about weight gain, but for the brief time in my adult life that I belonged to a gym, I definitely felt like I had more energy.

3.  Incorporate more vegetables into my dinners.  I tend to make elaborate pasta dishes most days of the week and often neglect having an actual vegetable side dish.  I am going to try to change this.

4.  Nap less.

5.  Learn Russian.

6.  Keep in better touch with friends.  I have a handful of friends with whom I text and exchange phone calls regularly, but I've gotten shamefully bad at writing actual e-mails to people.

7.  Read more.

8.  Give up soda.  This one I'm not totally decided on yet.  Mercifully, my parents never really let us drink sodas when we were little, so they were really only a special-occasion-kind-of-thing.  Unfortunately, as a working adult, I frequently feel like I need a "special drink" after work, so I've begun drinking them more often than I would like.  This resolution seems the least realistic of all of them, actually (even less realistic than #5), so it may become just limit soda, and only drink soda from Whole Foods.

9.  Continue making things.  As a child, I was always terrible at doing anything with my hands, whether it was cutting something out, drawing in the lines, or putting things together.  I'm still pretty terrible with scissors, but my husband has shown me that with a little imagination, a lot of things are more doable than I might initially think.  Together, we made a lot of the furniture for our apartment, and I even made a spice rack on my own for our kitchen.  I want to continue these kinds of projects in 2014.

10.  Practice my Polish.  I worked so hard to maintain my Polish and I am determined not to regress into a horrible Americanized-sounding Polish.

11.  Follow a strict budget.

Beetroot Soup and Carp: or, How we Celebrate Christmas in my Family

When I was little, Christmas was not my favorite holiday.  In fact, it was probably my least favorite.  I liked Halloween for the opportunity to dress up and Thanksgiving meant we got to spend the whole day with my parents’ closest friends.  Christmas, on the other hand, was a holiday we celebrated—as far as I knew—differently from everyone else, and we never had family over.  You could say that Christmas was a source of minor embarrassment for me as a child. While other kids would be excited about eating a huge turkey again and seeing relatives, I had fish and pink soup to look forward to.

As I’ve become older, however, I’ve become more and more attached to my family’s traditions.  Now, of course, I realize that my family’s method of celebrating Christmas is hardly that strange.  It’s not the American way, that’s for sure, but across the ocean in the country of Poland, there are thousands of families sipping on their beetroot soup and eating carp quite happily.

The Christmas of 2009, my parents bought me a ticket to fly back from Poland to Boston for our first East coast Christmas.  The following year, they again wanted to fly me back, but my then new-boyfriend, Gordon, was not going to be visiting his family in South Africa for the holiday and I couldn’t bear the thought of his being alone.  Instead, each of us would prepare a few things for Christmas that were special for our family.  Many South Africans celebrate Christmas in the English style, with some sort of roast meat on the 25^th and lots of side veggies.  In my family, the 24^th was the important day.  It was Wigilia.  We fasted for the whole day and in the evening had twelve courses.  (I’ve always assumed there was one course for each apostle, but I’m actually not sure).  Either way, I wrote to my mom and her friend Magda to ask for recipes.  With Gordon’s help, I more or less successfully prepared some of the main dishes, like the pierogi and the salatka jarzynowa (the Polish version of potato salad, there are many varieties, but ours was with potatoes, peas, carrots, ogorki kiszone, and apples).  Others—like the barszcz—were less successful.  The next day, Gordon roasted his first Polish chicken, stewed ratatouille, and sautéed carrots and potatoes.  Although we’d both lived on our own for some time at that point, I think we felt like we'd reached a new level of adulthood, making our own Christmas food.

Needless to say, by Christmas 2010 we had fine-tuned some of our recipes.  I began souring my beets well ahead of time and my barszcz came out quite nicely.  My aunt expressed horror that I was souring the beets on my own, instead of buying pre-made concentrate, but by this time, I was determined to be as traditional as I possibly could be.  If I could have gone to the Wisla to fish out my own carp, I would have.

For those who don’t know, one of the most emblematic of Polish dishes is the barszcz.  From what I’ve understood, many regions have their own take on this soup, but it’s always prepared with soured beets.  You peel several beets (and should definitely keep in mind that your hands will be stained a murderous red for at least a day, no matter how much you scrub them) and slice them so they’re maybe half an inch thick or so.  Place them in a large glass jar, pour warm water over them, add some minced garlic, and place some slices of dark bread over the top of the beets.  Cover the jar with a paper towel and wrap a rubber band around it.  Carry the jar to a warmish place and leave it there for a few days.  It sounds straightforward enough, but as I learned the first year I tried it, souring beets can go surprisingly wrong.

Since moving back to the States for graduate school, I’ve remained determined to follow the traditions as faithfully as possible.  I had thought while I lived abroad that copying my mom’s recipes was a way to feel like I was back at home for the holidays, and in a way I suppose it’s still about that. We follow the Polish traditions for Wigilia that my mom’s family followed when she was a child, but my parents have added their own traditions to the mix.  We always have deviled eggs for Wigilia, which is definitely not a standard Polish Christmas Eve meal, and we always listen to a specific CD of Polish Christmas carols—koledy—when we first sit down to eat.  Now with the addition of my husband to our family, our traditions have continued to change.  Although we still have Wigilia, instead of eating only leftovers or a baked ham on the 25^th, we now embrace Gordon’s roast chicken.  I think because, unlike many Americans, I didn’t have extended family that lived close enough to celebrate holidays with us, the rituals involved in the holiday have become even more important to me.  Because I don’t have a huge family reunion to look forward to (or perhaps dread) every year, I look forward to observing the traditions.  This year was a sad Christmas, because our family dog of 13 years passed away on the 20^th, and my sister went to her boyfriend’s family.  It was only my parents, my husband, and I who came together.  But as I carefully shaped pierogi with my dad and consulted with my mom about the uszka for the barszcz, I felt, again, that I was home for the holidays.

Przyjaciele i Znajomi - March 13th, 2010

With my  year here slowly coming to an end, I find myself preoccupied daily with the pros and cons of staying for another year or heading back to the States.  The best word to describe what I’m doing, actually, comes from the Polish: waham sie.  One could translate this as “I’m wavering,” or “I’m going back and forth,” but somehow I feel neither of those quite conveys the meaning as well as waham sie.

Semantics aside, I can justify both courses of action.  I miss home a lot, and while I perhaps feel less foreign than some of my friends here, who struggle with the language or with some of the customs, I am nevertheless conscious of not being truly Polish.  (Of course, at home this can also be a problem.  My sister and I agreed long ago that when we are in Poland, we feel more American, but when we are in America, we feel more Polish).  I came here with the intent of finding my “passion,” that is, what I wanted to spend my lifetime doing, but in the fall I worked too much to devote much time to exploring this, and this spring I’m too poor.

I think I can probably come up with many more arguments to head back to the States.

The most convincing argument regarding either option, however, falls on the side of staying here: I’ve met some of the most colorful, wonderful people any fiction writer could imagine here, and I’m not sure I’m ready to part with them.

For example, I have a friend here, who’s half Italian, half Polish.  He has a thick accent when he speaks Polish, and has even more trouble communicating in English, but somehow, we manage.  Whenever he’s at a loss for a word in either Polish or English, he holds up his hand and says “aspetta, aspetta” until he remembers.  Another friend and I recently tried to teach him the word “game,” in the wild animal sense.  We had trouble explaining it to him, but a few minutes later, when describing a catering job, he told us “We had to use the animal the family hunting,” and then his face lit up and he proudly said “the games, we use only the games they hunting.”  He’s handsome, in a distinguished sort of way, but his heavy smoking and drinking show, and often he seems older than his 38 years, especially after a gruelling day at work–along with a friend, he owns an Italian restaurant just off the main square here, and though he seems to enjoy his work most of the time, it takes its toll.  One of the best nights I’ve had here was at his restaurant.  A colleague and I were leaving the school at which we worked, he with his girlfriend, and I on my way to meet another friend, when our restaurateur friend saw us passing and beckoned us in.  He proceeded to ply us with food (bruschetta, pizza, and prosciutto he said had been massaged by hand–to this day, I’m still uncertain whether he meant the pig itself was massaged before being sent to the slaughter, or if he meant the meat, once it had been removed from the pig) and alcohol (multiple glasses of red and white wine, sambucca, limoncello, and grappa; he kept claiming each new drink was “strzemienny,” which loosely translated means “one for the road”).  His generosity and hospitality certainly do nothing to discredit the (positive) stereotype that Poles and Italians are among the best hosts in the world.

Another one of my close friends here hails from Finland.  My first meeting with her is a bit hazy–we were celebrating a mutual friend’s band’s first concert–and originally I was convinced she was from Poland.  Now I’m aware of her accent, but even so, can’t help but be in awe of her Polish.  Considering that no one in her family is Polish, and all the Polish she knows she picked up in the last year and a half, she’s worthy of admiration.  Because so many of my friends are ex-patriates from English-speaking countries, my Polish has not improved anywhere near as much as I’d hoped, and this Finnish friend of mine remains one of the few people with whom I can practise.  Neither of us is very good at opening up to people, and so we both have many, many acquaintances here, but very few friends (another idea well-expressed in Polish–mamy wielu znajomych, ale malo przyjaciol).  Perhaps as a result of being the only girls amongst our group of male friends, we’ve bonded, nonetheless, and she’s now the first person I call whenever I need not to be alone.  A few days ago she asked me to help her set up a photo exhibit, and this ended up being another one of those wonderful, memorable days I’m loath to leave behind.  We met around noon and, as her fellow exhibit-coordinators hadn’t yet arrived, went to a cukiernia (sweet shop) for “breakfast.”  While there, we amused ourselves and probably annoyed the other customers (probably on their way home from church) by looking through the various cake decorations and laughing about the more ridiculous choices.  Just as I was about to finish my fruit tart, a sickly, small child wandered by with her mother, and right as I was about to take another bite, turned her head to sneeze directly onto my breakfast.  The child’s mother looked embarrassed and cautioned Zosia to cover her mouth so as not to infect other people.  My friend and I burst into riotous laughter.  Though I might normally be annoyed at having my breakfast ruined by germs, this morning it just seemed hilarious.  Perhaps it was the company I was in.  After our laughter-filled breakfast, we headed back to the bar where we were setting up.  In spite of a few setbacks (like dirty frames), we managed to set everything up just in time for the official opening, and I left the event feeling like I could never leave a place that draws such wonderful people.

In addition to having made several very close, unique friends here, I have a gazillion “acquaintances” (or “znajomy”) here, with whom I’d also hate to part.  In some ways, it seems even harder to part with this category of acquaintances, because they are the ones who have made an impression on me but with whom I won’t stay in touch.

For example, I’ve met a young musician here from Bielsko-Biala.  He’s best described as earnest–earnest in everything he does or says.  He works and is a student and is so passionate about music that he makes time for three different bands.  One of these bands, which he says is his “dream” plays what they call “retro circus music.”  One of my favourite of their pieces gets its name from a dingy, old Communist-style store near my flat,  Hala Targowa.  I attended a music high school, and yet I’ve met very few people quite so talented or driven.  I never tire of listening to this musician talk about music.  He’s introduced me to some new composers, like Krzysztof Komeda and Michal Lorenc, and one hungover afternoon he cooked dinner for us and played some of his favourite songs.

Another interesting character I’ve met is a poet/journalist/translator/professor.  She periodically hosts what she calls “kitchen sessions,” where a bunch of her friends gather in her large, beautiful flat to cook dinner and then play and sing music.  Her flat is beautiful–it’s one of those old buildings just off Karmelicka, one of the most beautiful streets in Krakow–and the best part is that there’s a piano in the kitchen.  Though compared to her usual guests I have nothing to offer in the way of music, I was lucky enough to get to tag along with a friend once to one of these sessions.  I learned how to make placki ziemniaczane (latkes) and found myself surprisingly at ease with a host of artists (musicians, singers, actors, poets).  It was a thrill to be participating in such an event, and though the night ended with our being denied entrance to some trendy bar because of the shoes two in our party were wearing, I consider my memory of this evening among my most prized from this year.

And the list goes on…

Pickles and Chlodnik - March 12th, 2010

An incurable sentimentalist, I can never refrain from thinking to myself “one week ago, one month ago, one year ago from today, what was I doing?”  I’m not entirely sure if this habit stems merely from wanting to look back and compare my life then and now, or if it’s more an attempt to reassure myself that my life hasn’t remained static, that it’s somehow changed, for better or for worse.  I suspect the latter.

So one year ago, what was I doing?  Most likely dreaming of returning to Krakow.  I studied here a few years ago for a semester abroad, and never was I happier than then.  I’d visited here before, as my mother is Polish and most of her family still lives here, but as a child and then “tweenager,” I’d resented being dragged away from home each summer to spend time with relatives who force-fed me pickles and chlodnik (a cold soup that is the exact shade of pepto-bismol, which more or less explains, I think, my reluctance to eat it), or made me go raspberry-picking in the woods (and did nothing to alleviate my concerns that it was un-safe to eat these berries without washing them first, as a rabbit may have peed on them).

As I got older, though, I became more and more appreciative of my mother’s background.  When I was little, everything that marked me as “different” from anyone else–my name, the way my family celebrated Christmas, my mother’s accent–all made me feel like a little alien.  I knew many of my classmates came from “different” backgrounds, as well, but they had the comfort of numbers.  In central California, there are many Hispanic families, many Asian families, but I never once encountered another Polish person my own age.  I think a sort of turning-point for me was beginning high school.  I went to a high school that only self-described nerds attended–music classes were mandatory, as were Latin and college science classes.  Here, nobody was “normal,” and suddenly, not fitting in became “cool.”

Perhaps more than that, though, it has to do with growing up.  I’d never liked my own name, and remember a mortifying day when a substitute teacher mis-read it as “Anthony.”  Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter anymore, though.  When I pronounced the name correctly for teachers, they always asked where it came from, and I realised that even if I didn’t like it, other people thought it was a beautiful name.  I was also particularly fortunate in that I’d never lost my ability to communicate in Polish, and this became something else I realised was special.

And so I decided to study abroad in Poland.  It seemed like a great way to improve my Polish further, and more importantly, become more aware of what my mother’s life may have been like.  She grew up in a different region, and under Communism, and so there’s no way I’ll ever truly be able to know what her life before coming to the States was like.  But there were times during that semester, like when I went to a cafe and received my tea in a glass instead of a mug (just like my grandmother and great-grandmother had always served it), or when I went to church the day before Easter to have a basket of food blessed, that I’d think, twenty years ago, my mother might have done this exact same thing.  Leaving to head back to California broke my heart, for many reasons, and I was determined to come back.

I’m not sure if my determination to familiarise myself with my mother’s culture is the result of a natural curiosity in one’s parents’ history, or if it can better be explained by a perverse desire to immerse myself in that which I felt made me foreign when I was small, but either way, it was perhaps the single biggest factor in my investigating all paths which led back to Krakow.

So I suspect this time a year ago today, I was perusing pages of private language schools in Krakow to which I could write and ask if they had positions for native speakers.

Looking back, I suppose I feel both a bit bitter and a lot grateful that I’m here now.  Bitter because in most ways my experiences here have not lived up to the expectations and hopes I’d had then.  Admittedly, my hopes were high and unrealistic, but I can be a painfully hopeful person, and each time any of my dreams aren’t met I feel it deeply.  Grateful, though, because I can’t imagine ever looking back on this year, or on any of my experiences here, with any kind of regret.  From the personal to the professional, each experience has–to employ several hideous cliches–taught me something, taught me something about myself, helped me grow, helped form my ever-changing identity.

What, exactly, have I learned or experienced?