Now, you could accuse me of being rather stuck on Chopin (absurd! I hardly ever listen to his music… maybe once every other week…sometimes more… okay, sometimes lots more). But isn’t everyone? Nah… I was driving home tonight with one of my university-days friends and he was telling me that his daughter refuses to ever listen to classical music. You know what she likes instead? he asks. Kurt Cobain.
Kurt Cobain? Can I admit to not knowing who that is?

I don’t want any expressions of shock and disbelief. I really did not know (I’ve since sent my research team at my sister’s home to work and I’ve got some answers). I’m stuck on Chopin alright. Or, I’m just plain stuck. Maybe sometime during my crossing of the ocean in one direction or another my internal calendar-clock lost its battery and quit functioning, so that I am perpetually set on the hour five, or the age five and cannot move beyond that.

Things I did not know about myself

1. Speaking weirdly

I tell one of my high-school friends tonight: you know, I think I am beginning to speak Polish with a slight American accent. My “sz” sounds are too soft, they’re beginning to sound like “sh” (this is an unthinkable enunciation atrocity for a Pole). He looks at me and hesitates before saying anything. What? You agree, don’t you? I am beginning to sound American? Um, even in high school you spoke…not exactly like the rest of us, he tells me. Endearing. But different.

Great, I sounded like an outsider at the age of fifteen. And in Wisconsin I am always told I speak with a slight (kind people add this adjective) accent. Basically I can conclude from this that I do not know how to speak any language well. I can just imagine the French laughing as I mess around with their vocabulary.

2. Overcome with emotion

I asked my sister today: do your (grown) sons ever cry? No, not really, she said. But then neither do I. I mean, if there was a tragedy or something, but otherwise no... I answer - oh. She looks at me and comments – you know that you always were the emotional one in the family. I mean, you were always laughing or crying…

Good thing we have these reunions so that I can get a sense of who I was.