My parents’ plan when they came to Chicago from Poland in March 1990 was to stay for a year and then return. But when I was born a year later, plans changed.
My dad wanted to go back in 1998, but they couldn’t sell our house in Des Plaines, where I grew up as an only child. They tried selling the house for some time, but the older I got, the less they liked the idea of moving. So the three of us settled here, while our entire extended family remained 4,795 miles away, in different towns in Poland.
I may have grown up in Des Plaines, but my parents did everything they could to make sure I was connected to my Polish roots.
We drove to Chicago every Saturday for me to attend Polish school through the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church. We drove to Mount Prospect to attend Polish mass every Sunday at St. Thomas Becket Parish. We shopped for Polish products like “Ptasie Mleczko,” a popular Polish candy, and Polish magazines, at Kalinowski Sausage and Deli in Mount Prospect. And we drove to Wilmette to go to the beach to be around Polish people.
Because of my parents’ hard work, I’m able to communicate with my family in Polish and I’m familiar with the culture, like how the Monday after Easter Polish people participate in “smigus-dyngus,” where we spray and pour water on each other. But whenever I went to Poland as a child, and even on a trip last Christmas at the age of 25, I couldn’t help feeling disconnected.
Maybe it’s the fact that everyone asks questions about America. Maybe it’s that my Polish isn’t as fluent as that of native speakers. Maybe it’s that after a certain amount of time, I start missing home, which is thousands of miles away.
“She’s from America.” That’s what my family members tell people I’m meeting for the first time who look at me strangely when I make a basic grammatical mistake in Polish.
Poles living in the Chicago area have to work at keeping in touch with our heritage. We travel from our communities to attend Polish school in Des Plaines. We attend mass in Mount Prospect.
Polish children who grew up in the United States get used to making time to connect with their roots. When we’re younger, we get used to leaving sleepovers early on a Sunday morning to go to Polish mass or telling friends we can’t hang out on a Friday night because we have Polish school either that night or early Saturday morning.
And while those things are important, nothing beats the experience of going to Poland itself.
This past Christmas, I went to Poland to spend the holiday with my family. I’d been there before, but spending time during the holidays was a special experience, one I’d never had before.
While I was prepared for the traditional Christmas meal, I found myself overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the celebration.
On Christmas Eve, Polish people eat a 12-course meal known as “wigilia.” The tradition of wigilia says that you need to eat everything so that you don’t go hungry in the upcoming year. My parents make wigilia every year, so I’d been ready at least for that aspect of the festivities.
But because my parents and I normally celebrate the holiday together with a few family friends, it was new to have 10 family members around the table with me. Christmas in Poland lasts until Dec. 26, which I was surprised to learn, so for two days after Christmas Eve, I lounged around with my family playing cards, eating and drinking.
What was difficult about the trip was having to catch up with my whole family in two weeks. Fitting in visits to see four pairs of aunts and uncles, three grandparents, 10 cousins and various other distant relatives was exhausting.
I didn’t get a chance to visit every family member’s home, which caused some hard feelings, and it was upsetting to hear my grandparents say they felt they didn’t spend enough time with me.
When you grow up so far away from most of your family, it feels like no matter how long you’re there, you won’t ever make up for lost time.
It’s true that I wouldn’t trade my life growing up in the Chicago area for anything, and I only complained a little bit about going to Polish school. (Hey, I was just a kid! The way I saw it at the time, I was spending more time in school while my friends slept in.)
And I’m thankful that my parents took the time to drive all around the suburbs and city to do activities that would connect me with my Polish roots.
But what I realized on this most recent trip to Poland is that they weren’t able to recreate the most valuable thing of all: spending time with family.
Twitter: @Akukulka11
