The meal may be just for two. If you're lucky and have family that can isolate with you, there may be more at your table. But big or small, your Christmas Eve dinner will be the same and served by every friend of mine in Poland. Borscht with dumplings (perhaps a second option -- mushroom soup -- will also be offered). Cabbage salad. Herring! Other fish as well, but without exception, there will be herring! The list goes on. Twelve dishes. More perhaps. Noodles with poppyseed -- I heard about that today. So many Polish dishes that I have never served here to my family. Why?
No two immigrants will have the same story, but there definitely will be those who will assimilate completely into the customs of their new country and there will be those who will keep their old country traditions burning fiercely in their adopted new home. I definitely belong to the first group, perhaps in part because my family had no holiday traditions to pass on to me. I would be making them up and so why not simply start fresh.
I thought about this today because soon after breakfast...
I had a holiday Zoom call with all my Polish friends. The one who was so sick with CoVid is doing much better and we were once more a group of ten.
That is not to say that we were a worry free group. The virus still structures each day for all of us. Nonetheless, we all cheer the holiday before us and the New Year that is almost here, offering so much hope and visions of reunions...
We are in each others lives in this odd way right now, but it isn't all terrible: we meet and talk in our Zoom space and it feels sweetly comforting to share life Zoomishly.
Afterwards, I finish the Sunday house tidying and dig into dinner prep. It's Sunday and for these few weeks, the family is still able to isolate and share with us this weekly meal.
(I finish cooking and catch up with my daughter, kids amuse themselves...)
Just before we sit down, we do a phone call with Primrose. We all pile in to catch a few minutes with the little one.
And now it's time to eat.
Dessert? Cookies from our cookie project of course. Now dipped in chocolate.
At the end of the day, life tastes much better when dipped in chocolate.
