My blog post about my Babcia (Grandma) was well-received. Everyone loved it. Everyone, that is, except for Babcia’s spouse.
I called him up, as I did every weekend, the one permanent appointment of a life that was always busy. He praised my writing, as was his wont, and emphatically agreed with the warm portrait I had painted of his wife and life companion of 53+ years. One thing, however, he quibbled with.
“Did we really have fierce disagreements, you and I? I don’t remember that at all. We argued, yes, we disagreed, certainly, but I hope you knew then and know now that I only had your best interests at heart, even if I didn’t express them that well. If you ever write about me, make sure it’s only positive things.”
We laughed.
And a few weeks later I cried.
On October 25, 2018, in the wee hours of my husband’s birthday, I opened my eyes to the insistent ringing of my phone – a WhatsApp call from my uncle, who could only have forgotten about the time zones. Answer, my husband gently insisted, it could be something with your grandfather.
He was right.
Dziadek had passed away.
******
When I was a kid, I lived in the US, and my two sets of grandparents lived across the ocean in Poland, a distance that then could only be bridged by recording stories on a cassette tape, or occasional conversations kept intentionally short – long-distance, international phone calls weren’t cheap.
When I was a kid, I dreamed of having a gentle grandfather, a Santa-Claus-like figure who would bounce me on his ample knee, gathering me close to his flowing white beard, telling long and fanciful stories, surprising us with chocolates and Polish candies, patting us on the head and sending us off so he could nap.
When I was a kid, I didn’t quite know what to do with the kind of grandpa who was extremely tall (6’ 6”), clean-shaven, bespectacled and very, very opinionated. I have a faint recollection of some snuggles, and we definitely engaged in tickling fights when I was 5 years old during my first visit to Poland. But he could be quite stern and really wasn’t too comfortable with childish chatter, or childish behavior.
When I was 13, but still really a kid, my grandfather came to spend the summer with us. Apart from pining for my grandmother, and cutting his visit short, the main thing he achieved over those short few weeks was convincing me to come to the land of my ancestors “for a few months”, to see how I liked Polish high school, Warsaw, and living with them.
I liked Polish high school so much that I ended up staying for four years, and I loved Warsaw and living close to a metro line, but living with my grandparents, especially my loud and decisive grandfather? Hm.
When I was 14, and still a kid, my diary was filled with long diatribes against the strictness of my grandparents (personified in my Dziadek) and lots of CAPITALIZATIONS and !!!! showing how upset my teenage self was with the highly unreasonable rules they enforced on me, such as not allowing me to go to overnight parties with my older classmates. And the enforcer, of course, was Dziadek.
I’m sorry, Dziadku! I was still a kid.
****
As we both grew older, we both mellowed, and we both grew in our relationship. Dziadek realized that I had some common sense of my own, and I realized that maybe I wasn’t always right.
As much as the peace-driven overtures of my Babcia, with strawberries and cookies, I remember now the late evening history-learning sessions with Dziadek, when he would ask me to narrate the flow of the 30-year War or the reasons for the failure of November Uprising, squinting somewhat to decipher the hieroglyphics of my handwriting, but also often adding details from his own vast store of knowledge.
I remember now the time I called from school, crying from pain into the hallway pay phone, and he waited for a long time at the tram stop by our house to then half-carry me home, stooping his tall frame to support me, and hovering anxiously as Babcia administered hot tea, hot blankets and all the other things we hoped would deafen the endometriosis cramps.
I remember now that when I came home complaining about how our homeroom teacher was going to ruin our Polish “senior prom” (called a “studniowka”, it takes place 100 days before the end of school examination, called a “matura”) by her inaction, Dziadek stepped up to fight for a ball worthy of his grand-daughter, taking on the organization of the catering and being the only grandparent, let alone parent, at all engaged in the school activities. To my still teenage mortification, he came at the beginning of the party – but only to ensure that everything was in place, and up to his standards – and then he left, taking the tram home in the dark and cold night.
I remember now the times he would come to greet me at the airport, when I would come back from Christmas or summer vacation, how I would cringe when his unmistakable tall form and his unmistakable booming voice would call to me across the arrivals hall. My class posse, who would often take off time from school under the pretext of greeting me at the airport, would often unsuccessfully try to hide from him, and to this day they remember my grandfather loudly, in his British accent, suggesting that I should have replied “Kiss my ass” to the airline employee who had mishandled my luggage.
I remember him being often impatient, sometimes mercurial in his moods, too frequently offended by unintended slights, and – to a fault – highly defensive of his spouse.
I remember him being very human, and a very, very good, if sometimes gruff, human. He was persistent, devoted, highly protective of his spouse, loyal, extremely intelligent and curious of the world, and always trying to be of service to others.
****
Dziadek Oskar was a figure of the old generation. He considered himself, rightfully, to be of the ‘intelligentsia’ class of Polish society. He had some smatterings of noble blood, traced diligently by himself to the 12th century to a knight of the Polish king Wladyslaw Lokietek, but not enough to really count. Instead, he saw himself as belonging to a class of intellectuals, creators and gardeners of culture and civic, civil discourse, a retainer of the good things of times gone by.
At the same time, he was curious of the future, and took to computers and the Internet quite quickly, using his scanner to upload photos to the genealogy book he was writing, flying to symposia on medical physics, lending me his dial-up internet connection so I could email in the late 1990s. Whenever he would excitedly bring home a new kitchen gadget, my grandmother would steadfastly oppose it, on the grounds that it wasn’t needed. Once he brought home a microwave, and grandma wouldn’t speak to him for a few days, after vehemently assuring him that there was nothing wrong with the old method of letting cooked buckwheat stay warm by wrapping it in a blanket on the bed (the cat liked that solution, too). A few weeks later, though, I came home to find lunch waiting for me on a plate in the microwave.
He was quite liberal in his religious and societal views, often much more than I was at the time. His clear-cut thoughts on clericalism and the Polish religious hierarchy, and various nationalist Polish movements, come back to me often. He wasn’t outwardly tender, or gentle, but he always did the right thing, whether supporting charitable endeavors or taking unpopular moral stances. In his own way, he was always advocating for change for the better. In communist times, when he worked in a hospital as a medical physicist, he thought that patients deserved better than dirty floors, and after hours would grab a mop himself to clean the floors, since no one else was going to do it.
Dziadek was involved in different associations, volunteer groups, historical societies. Gifted with a deep and resounding voice, an imposing posture, and with little fear of authorities that didn’t deserve respect, he was in some ways an ideal spokesperson. In my 20th century history textbook I chanced upon a photo depicting an extremely tall (and lean) dark-haired man reading an address to the student assembly at the Warsaw polytechnic during the protests in the late 1950s. The man, albeit anonymous, looked oddly familiar – and after consulting my surprised grandfather, it turned out it was indeed a photo of him, one he didn’t even remember being taken. It was probably better, at the time, that he had remined unidentified.
He was very encouraging, although exacting. He thought that if I was to do something, I should do it well, and had no patience for half-assed attempts, and even less for half-assed excuses. He knew I could write well, and work well, and organize people well, and just couldn’t understand why I didn’t use those strengths to my fullest advantage. Even though he was raised in a culture with little tolerance for participation trophies, and in the Eastern European mindframe that there was no point to mentioning the good things, only the bad, he broke that mold and was the biggest champion I ever had.
His initial strictness with me waned with each passing year, as I understood more clearly his ways of thinking, as I proved worthy of his esteem and liking, not just unconditional grandparental love. And the underlying tenderness only grew more visible with each loss he sustained, from his close friends, to finally, 1.5 years before he himself passed, his wife, my Babcia.
Dziadek Oskar was never one for conventions. He spoke his mind clearly, sometimes forcefully, more and more gently as the years passed.
The last few days I spent with him in Warsaw were shortened due to airline incompetence and flight mishaps. At the time I wondered whether it was worth it, clawing my way back to Poland after 24 hours of botched inter-European flights.
But as we sat together in the evening, doing nothing more than watching the news together, I realized that it was.
He sat there, in his big brown, sunken armchair, running his hand over his long, tired features, and wiped away the tears that crept in. Not ashamed of showing the depth of his emotion, he whispered “I miss her, every minute of every day.”
And so do I, both of them.
***
Rest in peace, Dziadku. You weren’t the grandfather that I dreamed of, but you were the grandfather that I needed.
Where Is My Suitcase 