On Coffee and Cafe Culture

These days, I see children as young as six or seven sipping on sweet Dunkin' Donuts coffee beverages.   I'm always shocked.  Why would children need coffee?  They can't be tired.  I always had energy (too much, my parents might say) as a child.  You almost never see a child with a cup of regular coffee, either--it's usually a frappuccino or an iced vanilla latte.  Why are such young children getting coffee on their way to school?  I suspect it's because coffee-on-the-go has become an integral part of our culture.

When we lived in Fresno, my mother would take my sister and me with her when she did her Saturday morning shopping at the lovely La Boulangerie in Fig Garden Village.  La Boulangerie is a French-style bakery in the middle of a small shopping center.  We always bought bread there because they had dozens of different types of loaves of bread and my mom could find whatever kind of bread she needed.  It was baked every day, and so you never got a stale or pre-sliced and pre-wrapped loaf.  It was always bustling and loud inside, where you would pull a ticket and wait until your number was called.  Bread was almost the only thing I would eat until I was about ten, so I loved being surrounded by the smell of freshly-baked breads, pastries, and rolls coming out of the oven, as well as by the cheerful noise of people chattering while they waited for their bread.

Sourdough loaves (my favorite) at La Boulangerie

Even more exciting than waiting for the bread, though, was getting to pick out a special treat, or even better, getting to eat our breakfast or lunch there.  If we were in a hurry, I would ask for a French roll and then swipe a few packets of salted butter to take home with me.  Sometimes I'd ask for a coconut macaroon or two.  On occasion, my mom would decide that she had enough time for us to sit at a table and actually eat at the cafe.  If the weather was nice, we would sit outside. I always ordered Earl Gray, a cup of soup, and of course, a roll.  This is what it's like in Paris, I would tell myself, as I munched happily away.  (I was by this point--thanks to the Madeleine books and the movie My Father's Glory--a self-proclaimed Francophile, although Paris-ophile might be more accurate).  Once in awhile, my mother would take work to grade, in which case my sister and I would bring whatever books we were reading at the time and sit peacefully reading as she graded.

I don't remember when the first Starbucks opened in Fresno, nor do I remember where the first one was located.  But I remember the first time I went to one.  It was the one in Fig Garden Village, a few buildings away from La Boulangerie.  A friend and I, feeling very grown up, agreed to meet at Starbucks to sit and talk.  It seemed the height of cosmopolitanism to arrive separately, order our own too-sweet frappuccinos, and chat while we gulped them down.

For years, Starbucks would be a meeting place, no matter which part of Fresno we were in and no matter what our eventual destination was.  There were about a dozen Starbucks in town: a big one in River Park, a small one across the street from Fresno State, and one near the freeway entrance, among others.  It was the most logical place to suggest.  They were everywhere, everyone knew where each one was, and everybody loved coffee.  Or at least, everybody loved the sugary, frilled drinks that claimed to have a few splashes of coffee in them.

When I went to college at UC Irvine, I was surprised--and then delighted--to discover that the coffee shop attached to the university bookstore was not, in fact, a Starbucks.  It was instead an independent coffee shop (whose name, unfortunately, escapes me.  Needless to say, the story of the UCI cafe is not a story with a happy ending) that was not technically affiliated with the wonderful university bookstore, but happily served people who visited the bookstore to buy non-textbook books.  I spent many a happy morning there, reading a book or studying over a cappuccino or sandwich.  During finals week, the cafe was open all night, meaning that even if I was not staying up all night to study, I inevitably went at 2 a.m. purely for the thrill of being in my favorite place at an odd hour.

The fall I studied abroad in Florence, Italy, I made sure to find a local cafe to frequent.  There was a lovely one toward the end of my street, Via de Benci.  For awhile, I tried to be as Italian as possible by ordering my espresso or cappuccino at the bar and guzzling it down right there.  But as I had no urgent place to go from there, I eventually paid the extra euro to have my coffee brought to me.  Unless it was raining, I always sat outside, no matter how cold it was.  I loved studying for my art history course and being able to look up and see the top of Palazzo Vecchio.

I was horrified upon my return to UCI to discover that the little cafe had been replaced by a Starbucks.  It was a nice Starbucks, to be sure, with indoor and outdoor seating, but gone were the special iced teas and specialty sandwiches I'd so loved.  Instead of the old, mismatched patio furniture, there were typical Starbucks leather armchairs and ottomans.  (For me, the cafe change also signaled the start of the bookstore's downward spiral.  When I was trying to decide where to go to college, the bookstore was the primary selling point.  It was a real bookstore, not just a university bookstore, with an excellent reading series.  It has since stopped the reading series, and I suspect it is just a step away from becoming a Barnes and Noble.  Here is a link to an article about some of these changes: UCI bookstore ends author reading series).

Until I officially moved to Krakow, I never articulated (or really thought about) the importance of cafes to me.  They were more comfortable in to study than the library, and you could talk at them, so they made for good meeting places.  That was it.

When I moved to Poland, however, the plethora of cafes quickly deepened my appreciation of this kind of space.

At one of the many cafes lining Rynek Glowny in the summer

Krakow, like most Polish cities, is teeming with cafes.  Regardless of what neighborhood you are visiting, you will find numerous cafes.  It is almost impossible to choose your favorite; it makes more sense instead to pick your favorite on this street or in that square.  The first few weeks that I lived in Krakow, I felt lonely all the time, and thus never went to cafes, self-consciously fearing that my being there alone would broadcast to everybody the depths of my loneliness.  Eventually, I learned not to let this fear stop me.  One of my co-workers introduced me to Bunkier, which remained my favorite place in Krakow.  Bunkier was a cafe (attached to an art gallery) that was right in the Planty, the 2.5 mile park that surrounds the city center like a moat (which is what it was, centuries ago).  In the summer, there was an outdoor terrace with wicker chairs and small wooden or glass tables.  In the winter, there was still an outdoor terrace, but with plastic fabric covering the sides and heaters hanging above the tables.  Like most Polish cafes, it served both coffee and beer.  You could go to Bunkier, order a cappuccino, and stay there for hours without anyone bothering you or shooing you away.  I loved sitting outside and watching people walk through Planty or carry on conversations inside the cafe.  Bunkier's close proximity to some of the Jagiellonian University buildings made it a popular spot with students.  You could often see students poring over heavy textbooks.  It is also a favorite spot among Krakow's literary figures, and I would make a game out of trying to guess which customers might be poets or translators or writers, discussing Wislawa Szymborska's death or Adam Zagajewski's newest collection or the Milosz Festival.

My dad with a book and beer at Bunkier

Although Bunkier was my favorite cafe, there were dozens of other charming little places I went while I lived in Krakow.  Prowincja, for example, was a shabby, dimly-lit cafe on Bracka street.  It was always crowded and cozy, possibly due to its famous hot chocolate.  It was also owned by the Polish singer Grzegorz Turnau, and people would whisper excitedly when he came through the doors.  Jama Michalika, on Florianska street, is one of the oldest cafes in Poland (it opened in 1895).  It became a popular place with Krakow's artists and bohemians and housed a cabaret known as Zielony Balonik (the little green balloon).  It is full of plush green furniture, dark wood, and mirrors.  I would sometimes take my journal to Jama Michalika and imagine I was a writer myself.  In the summer, cafes would open up their outdoor sections, and the main Square (the Rynek Glowny) would be full of tourists, enjoying a cold beer and the sights of Europe's largest Medieval square.

Prowincja

Many of the cafes in Krakow have been there for years.  When my mother's friend, my Ciocia Magda, visited with her husband and daughter, she wanted to go to Noworolski, a cafe she had gone to when she was a student in Poland.  Noworolski, like Jama Michalika, had been popular with artists, and had had a rather dramatic history of its own.  (It had been a Nazi hotspot during the Occupation, and was later taken over by  Communists.  After the fall of Communism, it was given back to its rightful owners).  Although Noworolski's cakes were no longer as delicious as they had been (nor were the prices as reasonable), the Baroque atmosphere and the trip down memory lane made the visit enjoyable nevertheless.

Wujek Mike, Lucienne, Ciocia Magda, and Gordon at Noworolski

One of the reasons I loved these cafes was precisely that they had been around for so long.  If you meet anyone who has lived in Krakow before, they will inevitably tell you of their favorite cafe.  Almost always, the cafe is still there.  The servers may have changed, but the atmosphere and recipes remain intact.

The second, more important reason is that I associate these Krakow cafes with books and writing.  Anybody who has ever looked at a Buzzfeed post about irony or watched an episode of "Sex and the City" knows to mock the skinny, turtlenecked person in the corner of a Starbucks with his or her laptop for being a pretentious writer.  Walk into any Starbucks or Peets, and you will inevitably find at least one person hunched over a laptop, clearly writing the next Great American Novel, or a Screenplay, or a Beat-style Poem (the capital letters are necessary).  Krakow, often referred to as the cultural capital of Poland, undoubtedly has a similarly high proportion of would-be artists.  But they are harder to see amongst the others.  You seldom see a laptop at any cafe (although this is probably changing and will probably soon cease to be the case).  You will see people hunched over leather-bound journals or yellow legal pads.  People will be reading paperbacks, not kindles.  Writers, translators, artists, and musicians have their favorite cafes where they can sit incognito, reading or working for hours at a time.  In the United States, writers may have a preference for Starbucks or Peets or Dunkin' Donuts.  But more often than not, they are probably getting coffee to go, on their way to teach a class or meet with their agent.  Only in the case of celebrity authors, like B.J. Novak or James Franco, might it matter which coffee shop they choose.  (Tabloids are filled with proclamations that "Stars are just like us!  They get coffee to go!").    On Monday, the first day of my spring vacation, I walked to Brookline and decided I would sit in a cafe for a few hours, reading Paris to the Moon.  Once I'd finished my coffee, however, I was subject to glares from new customers coming in, looking for a place to sit and eat their lunch.  Why, if I was finished, was I still there?

I know there are real cafes and coffee shops in the United States, of course.  But the accusation that non-Americans often make--that we are a busy, hurried nation--often seems to be true, at least when it comes to coffee.  Many people still go and sit in cafes, especially in the morning (and even more especially if they are students studying for exams).  But the majority will grab their coffee to go, on their way to work or class (and to be clear, I am often one of these people, and I often lamented the fact that it is impossible to get good coffee-to-go in Poland).  This perhaps explains the monopoly Starbucks has on the coffee world.  When it comes to making drinkable coffee and serving it quickly and efficiently, nobody is better.  But suffice it to say, if anyone has a favorite Starbucks, it probably has more to do with how long the line usually is and less to do with how warm and inviting the atmosphere is.

For awhile, I thought I would never feel all that comfortable in Boston because there is no local cafe within walking distance of my apartment.  But one of my happiest days in recent weeks was discovering L.A. Burdick's, just down the street from where I work.  This small, intimate chocolate shop also serves coffee and tea (in real ceramic cups), along with beautiful cakes and tarts and pastries.  I was able to sit there for an hour in the morning, quietly reading, with nobody rushing me.  I decided that every month, on the last day of the session, when I have no work left to do, I will treat myself to a coffee and cake at this little cafe.  I will sit there, quietly reading, sipping, and munching, enjoying the solitude, and thinking about my book, just like I did so many years ago, on those trips to La Boulangerie with my mom.

L.A. Burdick's in Cambridge

Roots and Rootlessness

If you do a google search for the word "root," you get two main definitions.  The first says: "the part of a plant that attaches it to the ground or to a support, typically underground, conveying water and nourishment to the rest of the plant via numerous branches and fibers."  The second definition is more vague: "the basic cause, source, or origin of something."

It seems logical--and fair--to give our parents (or families) a lot of credit for providing us with roots.  After all, they provide nourishment, and certainly are the cause of our being around in the first place.  If we are lucky, they not only bring us into existence, but continue to foster our blooming throughout the years.

One of the traits I have my father to thank for cultivating is my love of music that might broadly be classified as Americana.  I don't know how a professional musicologist would describe Americana, but my definition includes folk music (from Cajun to Appalachian), bluegrass, and blues.  As might be guessed from the general theme of this post, I would also call this genre American "roots" music.  I suppose one reason we sometimes think of folk music as a root of our culture has to do with its going back a long way--it's an old tradition, and if we trace our folk music's roots, we would eventually end up at the origins of music from all over the world (we know, for example, that a lot of our music has been influenced by African traditional music, which was introduced by African slaves forced to come here).  Paradoxically, although folk music generally does go a long way back, the United States has not existed for all that long.  It's a difficult country to describe or pin down because of its short history and its melting pot qualities.  (A student once told me I didn't "look American."  "What," I asked him, "does an American look like?")  Perhaps part of our interest in our history stems from the fact that it is so short, and maybe this explains our desire to pinpoint cultural roots and influences.  Unlike some other cultures, which can trace their origins a millennium or two back and often have multiple founding mythologies, the United States culture is pretty murky.  (Of course, Native Americans are the original Americans, but it's tragically undeniable that the settlers' abuses of them diminished their influence on what is now American culture).

I think a lot of this rootlessness that is inherently American is part of what draws me to American folk music.  I am constantly trying to find common themes running through these songs, searching for what makes them still appealing today, hoping to recognize prototypes.  What is about the fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and guitar that lends itself so easily to certain chord progressions and narratives?  How did some of these songs provide comfort or entertainment for such different eras?

Although it would be nice and intellectual of me to suggest my interest in this music is the result of some great desire to help America create an origin story out of songs, I think it's much more my own sense of rootlessness that repeatedly pulls me toward American folk music.

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I think it's safe to say that many people who live in California do not come from families that have always lived in California.  My parents, of course, hail from Mississippi and Poland.  My mother's closest friend from college, my ciocia Magda, ended up in the same city, while her husband comes from New England (and, before that, Taiwan).  Another pair of my parents' closest friends were from Utah, while still others came from Germany, Michigan, and Georgia.  Instead of celebrating holidays with extended family, we celebrated with other wanderers who had made their way to California serendipitously or accidentally. Growing up, some of my friends hoped to live in California forever, but many others assumed they would one day live elsewhere.  California was just a stepping stone.  My parents, although attached to their friends and our house and some other aspects of California life (like fresh produce year-round), always hoped they'd one day go elsewhere.  I, too, felt that something more glamorous must lie in store for me.

But it was more than not being crazy about the town in which I was growing up.  I felt very alienated from other kids my age.  Looking back, I realize there were a lot of different factors that played into my being a bit of an oddball, but at the time, it seemed easiest to blame it on being Polish.  These days, people are often surprised by the extent to which I identify as Polish, given that a good 70% of my life has been spent on American soil.  But as a child, the only difference I could discern between myself and others was the fact that I had a strange Polish name and always spent my summers in Poland.  Countless children at my schools had parents who were immigrants, but I was the only half-Polish student in my classes, and so instead of seeing that we were all from part-immigrant families, I focused on being the sole Pole in the group.  Initially, I was resentful of my Polishness.  I would go up to substitute teachers before they called roll and insist they call me "Tosha," not Antonina, not anything else.  I would hiss at my mom if she tried to speak to me in Polish in public.  I practiced my American accent until it became second nature.

Later, though, I defiantly decided to be proud of my Polish heritage.  I practiced reading to my mom out loud  in Polish, played Chopin on the piano, and wrote to my cousin every few months.  I would brag to anybody who cared (or who didn't) about being fluent in two languages.

Then again, when I went to summer camp for the first time (in Poland), I realized I wasn't really Polish, after all.  The kids there wanted to hear all about California.  One girl would routinely stroke my hair, pleased that I was blonde, like all California girls should be (I'm not sure what she made of my brunette sister).  If I made a grammar mistake, everyone was very happy to point it out and correct me, all the while reassuring me that I had the best Polish of any American they'd met.

So I was not Polish, after all.

But I never felt as American as when I was abroad, either.

And my sense of home has only become more complicated as I've gotten older.  When I was studying abroad in Florence, Italy, I was delighted to see a Polish stall set up at the Christmas market in Santa Croce.  I went to speak to the gentleman working at the booth in Polish.  I was so happy to find someone who spoke Polish that I stayed for an hour chatting to him.  My roommates were all American.  But it took speaking to someone in Polish to make me feel both homesick and comforted.  The next semester, I studied abroad in Krakow (a city I'd been to two or three times since my parents bought an apartment there).  I lived with two flatmates on the opposite side of town, and Krakow never felt that familiar to me.  Sometimes I would go to the wonderful farmers' market near my parents' apartment, but there were few places that I felt attached to.  (After all, I'd only ever been there with my parents).  The closest to comfort I could find was the lovely bookstore Massolit, which we always visited in the summer, and which in 2008 was quite different from what it is now.  

While I loved my study abroad experiences, I was relieved to return to Irvine for my senior year of college.  I was overjoyed to see my friends again, to visit my favorite parts of the campus, to walk in the foothills early in the morning, to go to the beach for bonfires, to drive into LA to go dancing.  It was all so beautifully familiar, especially after I'd been away.

In a writing seminar I took in my last quarter, structured around the themes of transnational identities, we read two texts that struck a chord with me.  One was Zadie Smith's White Teeth.  I have to confess to having disliked Smith's book, but I appreciated the struggles each character faced in trying to establish themselves within one cultural context or another.  More poignant for me was Edward Said's essay "Between Worlds."  I felt a physical shock of recognition as I read.  In the essay, he describes feeling torn between two cultures, and thus never firmly grounded in either.  I think it was at this point that I realized my mother felt this way, too, much more strongly than I did.

I am not an immigrant, although I lived in Poland for three years.  But for some inexplicable reason, I don't feel firmly cemented into any one culture.  There are so many things about me that are American, in the deepest sense of the word.  My whole consciousness is American.  My way of thinking is the product of American culture and education.  My expectations of society are American.  These are undeniable facts of who I am.

But in a more definite way, it's difficult for me to feel like I am American.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm now living in Boston, which is as foreign a city to me as Zurich might be.  Boston is in America, but it's worlds away from Irvine or Fresno.  It's often described as the "most European American city," but very little about it reminds me of any European cities I've been to.  I feel more at home in the South, where I've visited dozens of time, than on the East coast.  But I'm not southern, and it's not only my accent that makes me stick out.  I was born in North Carolina, but have visited only once since I was a baby.  I haven't lived in California in five years, and if I moved back now, nobody in my family would be there.  Part of my rootlessness may have a lot to do with this figurative homelessness.

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I'm slowly coming to accept that I may never feel entirely at home anywhere.  Conveniently, my husband is similar in this regard, having grown up in two different cities in South Africa, then having lived and studied in England, Poland, and now the United States.  His family, like mine, has moved all over the world and currently also lives spread out.  It seems more than enough to be happy together, with our two cats, wherever we are living and wherever our families are living.

I know I don't want to live in Boston forever.  Of all the places I've lived, it feels the least like home to me.  It's not easy to say where the most like home might be, however.  Most days, I think I can wait to find out.

In the meantime, looking for those moments that make me feel that flash of recognition Edward Said's essay did is a good way to get by.  Memories can make you feel at home.  Anytime I smell a tomato fresh off the vine, I'm reminded of visits to my Mississippi grandfather's garden, where he would proudly show me the huge tomatoes he was growing and let me pick one if I was lucky.  The taste of raspberries reminds me of walking through the Mazurian forests with my mom in the summer.  The smell of the ocean--whatever ocean it is--reminds me of cool afternoons spent on the California coast with my family.  My childhood books remind me of the hundreds of different settings I've read in, safe in the knowledge that my family was nearby.  Beautiful cozy cafes make me recall my first real winter, spent living alone in Krakow.  And bluegrass and folk music--the first kind of music I remember having ever listened to, in the car with my dad, driving through the underpass onto Wishon in Fresno--has been an unchanging constant in my life.  It will forever remind me of every home, everywhere.

Alison Krauss (my favorite singer) with Dan Tyminski and Jeff White at the Copley Arts Festival, summer 2013

Holidays Abroad, or How I Met my Husband

Whenever I tell people that my favorite holiday is Easter, there's always a pause, during which I know they're quickly running through everything they know about me--am I a secret, crazy religious Catholic?  Could I be joking?  Do I not know about Christmas or Thanksgiving, infinitely superior holidays?  But beyond its being the holiday that signals spring is coming (or already here), Easter remains for me a special day to look forward to.

My whole life, I have thought of my mother as the perfect hostess.  She has always been an excellent cook (countless people have told her she should open a restaurant), but there's more to being a hostess than culinary skills, of course.  Her dinner parties are always beautifully planned, with each course being perfectly suited to the one that preceded it.  Dietary restrictions are always taken into consideration, and wines are carefully paired beforehand.  The tablecloth and candles are always coordinated, but not in an overt or kitschy way.  Even when my parents hosted large parties, they were never catered, and those pre-made sandwich wraps were never, ever present on one of our tables.  My high school graduation party didn't include a few boxes of pizzas and bags of chips; my father personally grilled about 50 drumsticks and hamburgers for my friends, and my mom made lemonade, a cake, and various dips by hand.

When I got to college, however, it turned out that I couldn't cook.  Not at all.  I couldn't even make pasta properly for many months.  Eventually, my dinners consisted of Lean Cuisine meals or cooked noodles with grated cheese sprinkled over them.

In 2008, I studied abroad in Italy, and it was there that I discovered for the first time that people my age could and did cook.  My roommate Sari could concoct delicious meals out of whatever was lying around the fridge.  She was not only supremely competent, but she also genuinely enjoyed cooking, even for six hungry roommates.  I was inspired, and very slowly began experimenting on my own.  I quickly learned how useful (and satisfying) it was to be able to make your own dinner, but I was confident that that would be the extent of my cuisine.

Vanessa the Chef on Via de Benci 14

Then came Thanksgiving.  Four of the girls with whom I lived were traveling with family who was visiting during the week of Thanksgiving.  Only three of us were left.  By this point, all of us were homesick, and the thought of Thanksgiving without our families was depressing.  One of the three of us, Vanessa, decided that we should have our own small Thanksgiving.  She would do all the cooking if Amanda and I could provide the wine.  Although it wasn't possible to get turkey in Florence in November, we had duck, which Vanessa cooked beautifully, and some semblance of the other traditional dishes.  Maybe we weren't with our families, but we were together.  (And if you think about, the Pilgrims were pretty far from home, and, like us, had set up camp somewhere that they may not have been entirely welcome.  It seemed fitting).  Most importantly, this Thanksgiving--my first one without my family--was the first time I realized that while family would always be the most important part of holidays, the traditions were also a pretty crucial part.

The following spring, I was studying abroad in Poland, and my roommates and I conscientiously prepared our own Easter brunch, following most of the major Polish traditions.  We even got our basket blessed at the Dominican church in the Town Square.

Mary, Kat, Anna, and I after our Easter breakfast

But then, in the fall of 2009, I was living alone in Poland, without roommates, and without too many very close friends.  The prospect of Thanksgiving alone was, again, terrible.  I had to work on the actual day, but I finally decided that I would host my own Thanksgiving.  I knew two other Americans living in Krakow, and had some other acquaintances who would surely be happy to sit around a table eating.  Along with my co-worker, we planned out the dishes and e-mailed our mothers to ask for recipes.  (Who ever knew that it was possible to prepare your own cranberries?)  We went on a big shopping trip to Tesco at the crack of dawn on Sunday (having been too hungover on Saturday to go) and started cooking.  Our friend Dan, an Australian, arrived nice and early, having apparently realized we might need help with the turkey part.  With other pots sizzling away on the stove, we put the bird into the oven, only to have a fuse get overloaded and all the power go out.

As we frantically tried to make the power come back on, we ate the chips we'd bought for our vegan friend.

It was certainly not a meal I was all that excited to eat, but the company was excellent, and there was something about hosting my first holiday away from home that made me feel especially grown up.

My first Krakow Thanksgiving

I went home for Christmas that year, but when spring rolled around, I knew I would be hosting an Easter brunch for all my friends who couldn't (or wouldn't) go home for the holiday.

Having one holiday under my belt, I decided to go bolder.  More guests.  Better decorations.  A cleaner floor.  Etc.

For various reasons, I was not terribly happy at that point in time, and I thought the Easter party might be one of the last days I would spend in Poland.  I had quit my job, had had my purse stolen, and had had a falling out with a friend (the Thanksgiving co-host).  I was ready to go home to be taken care of by my parents.  Easter would be my last hurrah.

To make matters worse, the Monday before Easter, I went home from dinner with friends and then became violently sick with a horrific stomach flu that was going around town.  I lived all alone and wanted nothing more than my mom to come make me chicken soup.  The next morning, a student and a friend both stopped by with various home remedies and snacks.  They both called every day to see how I was doing, and by Friday I felt a bit better. I went to a friend's house for Easter egg painting, and that made me determined to go through with my plans.

Saturday, I woke up very early to start cleaning my apartment (which was, to put it delicately, in a God-awful state).  I went to the farmer's market to pick up all the vegetables I needed, as well as flowers and traditional painted wooden eggs.  I dropped my loot off at home, then went to the supermarket to get the other things I needed.  I cleaned all day and even ate a yogurt (I'd spent the week avoiding anything besides plain rice or wafers).  I hid plastic Easter eggs around the house for my Finnish friend Susanna (who had informed me that she wanted an American Easter egg hunt).  I did all the food preparation I could, and finally collapsed into bed, exhausted, at 2 a.m.

Still fragile from the flu, but determined to be the most elegant and classy hostess ever

By about 10 a.m. Easter Sunday morning, there were substantially more guests coming than I had originally invited.  Susanna had some friends staying with her, and two other people she knew happened to live nearby.  My American friend Dominic was bringing a South African friend he'd met at an open mic a few weeks before, and my friend Helena had decided to bring her sister with her since their parents were traveling during the Easter weekend.

My beautiful Easter table

Dan, again being an angel, arrived early to help me move tables around and finish decorating.  Other people slowly started to arrive.  I was very proud of how the table looked, and especially touched by all the extra goodies Susanna and Helena had brought with them to make sure my table wouldn't run out of anything, what with all the guests.  Dominic was responsible for bringing the CD player, and when he arrived almost an hour late, I was a bit peeved.  But all my disgruntled-hostessness melted away when his friend, the South African, exclaimed as I opened the door, "My God, you look fantastic!"  As someone who had been very sick for a week (and had spent a good hour primping herself in the morning), I couldn't help but be charmed by the flattery, even if the flatterer was late.  At least both boys had had the good sense to dress nicely for my elegant brunch.

We finally sat down to eat.  Because there were so many people, I had to use both sets of plates, and teacups instead of bowls for the zurek (a traditional Polish sour soup with a fermented rye base).  We quickly ran out of cheese for the vegetarians to put on their sandwiches, and on several different occasions people ran out for more wine.  But we were having a wonderful time.  There were people from Poland, America, South Africa, Australia, Finland, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, and almost definitely one or two other countries I've forgotten.  Most of us didn't know each other that well, but wine and food make for good icebreakers.  On occasion, the smokers of the group would go downstairs to smoke.  On one such trip, I went down, too, and got to talking to the South African, Gordon.  He was telling Susanna about his literature class at the Jagiellonian University, and when he started talking about Czeslaw Milosz, I was officially smitten.  So few non-poets (and non-Poles) that I'd met were aware of him, and here was someone not even from the same hemisphere talking about his work.

As it got later and later, some people left to go home, and still others arrived for drinks and dessert.  Finally, a group of us went into Kazimierz, the beautiful Jewish quarter near where I lived.  We went first to Singer, a curious little bar that turns into a rabid, packed dance party late at night  (it's named Singer because the tables are made of old Singer sewing machines).  Later, we went to Alchemia, where Susanna and I took turns dancing with Gordon and his band mate Davie, from Scotland.

By the end of the night, I'd decided to stay a few more weeks in Poland.  I had such lovely friends, after all, and I'd met so many interesting people.  I hadn't had the experience back at home of having so many different people, from so many different walks of life, sit at my table, enjoying the meal I'd prepared so carefully.  And that feeling of having successfully hosted such a wonderful Easter still resonates with me.  To this day, it's one of my most beautiful memories.

Enjoying homemade Advocaat (a dessert drink similar to eggnog) with some of my guests

And then there was that charming South African.  He wasn't really the type I'd gone for before.  (For one thing, he was a lot hairier).  Boys I'd dated in the past had generally had a lot in common with me on paper, but not so much when it came to details.  Gordon, on the surface, did not seem like my type.  He was in not one band, but two bands;  he smoked; and he had a more stress-free attitude toward relationships than I could envision myself having.  He was a socialist with very strong opinions on almost everything, and, as a last straw, genuinely enjoyed sports.  But he had an ease about him that I found appealing and novel.  I thought perhaps I could, for the first time in my life, date someone casually without falling pathetically in love with him, and then many decades later have a nice memory to look back on and tell my grandchildren about.  (I actually imagined telling my children about the romantic spring I spent with a political South African in southeastern Poland).

Needless to say, the rest is history.  And personal.  I won't go into the details of our courtship, but suffice it to say, that hairy, opinionated, musical South African and I have been married for just over a year.  We've hosted a few holidays and dinner parties, and I imagine we'll host many, many more.  But Easter will always be my favorite holiday, because, by fate or sheer dumb luck, on April 4th, 2009, Easter Sunday, in Poland of all places, I met the love of my life.