I cant think of the good translation for this Polish word: działka (or działki as plural). They've been around since I was a kid in postwar Poland. They are small allotments of land outside the city center, where city residents can plant their gardens. (Sometimes they're very small, resembling community gardens back in the U.S., but sometimes they're quite large, with structures on them to shelter you in inclement weather.)
My friends here are all Warsaw people -- in their youth, many with years away, but now back in the city for good. But except for one (and she has a family home in the country), they all have either a dzialka, or they live at the periphery of the city, in homes with gardens. Poles love and have always loved escaping to the country on vacations, on weekends, whenever time allows. If your city home is in a densely populated urban environment -- all the more reason to plan your escape to a spot of green grass and a a modest or not so modest garden.
These działki have also been places where you can invite family and friends to socialize. Poland is not a country of introverts. Eating, drinking, talking -- they're national past times.
Today and tomorrow there are two such gatherings on two separate działki, owned by two couples from my Group. Today, Gosia and Piotr host us in the afternoon. This is the anchor for my day.
But first, you guessed it -- my "healthy" breakfast. Outside, because guess what! It's going to be one heck of a brilliant day! (I eat to the cackling sound of the Eurasian Magpie and the dainty yet aggressively hungry sparrows, who seize the opportunity to steal food when you get up to refill your coffee.)
Our meetup begins at the Polish lunch hour (1:30 pm) and so I have the morning to myself -- a rare set of hours and this absolutely confounds me: where do I go? What do I have to explore, see again, probe a connection to?
Perhaps predictably, I head south. Toward my childhood haunts once again, this time picking a route along Marszalkowska -- a postwar modern street that's changed little since I was a kid. And I do have a purpose. I really do: to feel that Warsaw vibe within me once again. To connect the dots. To observe and think about where I once fit in and where I fit in now.
As I stand at an intersection, waiting to cross (no one crosses on a red light here -- it's a real no-no; you can get a hefty ticket if you get caught), trying to catch a photo of an older woman whom I see as one representative of my postwar generation, amber necklace and all...
... a much younger woman standing next to me says, in English -- hi Nina, and noticing my momentarily confused look, she continues: I'm Kinga. I rack my brain. I've known two Kingas in my life -- one lives in South Carolina and she has very dark hair and the other was a crush for the guy I thought was into me in my adolescence. But this Kinga is too young for that. Besides, she's speaking to me in English.
She laughs and introduced her husband. Turns out they read Ocean.
This happens to me sometimes in Madison. Hi Nina, you don't know me, but I read Ocean. Or I also will get -- hi Ocean! It happens to me in France: I see you went to Scotland! I know, I read Ocean. Never have I had this happen to me in Poland!
It seems this Kinga has been reading Ocean for a while now, and it becomes obvious what the draw is for her: she's American, but like me, she was born in Warsaw. And there's more: like me, she halted her studies at the University of Warsaw and finished them in the US, where she married an American. And went to law school. (She now practices law in Texas.) And her father, like mine, worked for the Foreign Service in Poland.
Is that not bizarre???
Here she is, with her husband (and with her permission to post):
We chatted for a while and then went on our way, but the encounter really got me thinking deeply about my past, about all our mixed up paths to adulthood.
I walk on. And here you'll see random shots I took along the way of places and people who either reminded me of the old Poland, or of people who are the faces of the new Poland.
[I noted already that the country just celebrated the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. Signs, posters, flags are everywhere. And sure, it's the 80th, so perhaps the round number had people thinking especially hard about that event, but the fact is, my generation I think is always thinking about World War II in one way or another. You walk along the streets of the Jewish Ghetto, and you can't help but remember that beneath beneath these pavements lie thousands killed during the massacres that took place here not really that long ago. You pass plaques commemorating bravery, reminding you that those who defended Warsaw paid dearly for it. And especially those who fought and died 80 years ago this month. 63 days of fighting, with little or no support. Warsaw was then destroyed by the Germans in retaliation.]
(W Jak Wolnosc -- meaning "F like Freedom")
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I come to MDM, or Constitution Square. It's hard to describe why one would have warm feelings toward this open space, but I do feel some sweetness toward it. Not especially attractive, with a parking space right in the middle. But for us, it was fresh and open and inviting. The buildings had gone up to house families in a new way -- with playgrounds in the back, forming communities of sorts, for the kids, perhaps for the parents too. I didn't live on this square, but I did live not even two blocks away from it as a young kid, and later two blocks up in another direction as a teen.
There's no nostalgia in me or in anyone for the years when these Stalinist era experiments in living were thrust upon us. But I have to smile as I remember the hundreds of times I'd gone across this square. To the music store, to the tram stop, to the chocolate shop. I loved the square's vastness, it's opening up to smaller venues, to the sky.
(In the corner, still standing, the socialist realism sculpture -- one of four)
And now I come to the church that was just down the block from where I lived and yet... I have never entered it. Nor do I go into it today. It's of historical significance and yet I have always thought it to be austere and not a little frightening. An imagination of a six year old can run wild...
I have posted on Ocean a picture of my first Warsaw home before, but it gets another run now, because I am facing it and I pause for a long time thinking about it and how my life changed once my father accepted his position at the United Nations in New York.
(I swear the entrance door is the same one that was there 65 years ago, though the building itself has been at least a little cleaned up.)
I posted the photos of my adolescent apartment windows. Here are the two windows from my childhood place:
(the apartment had two rooms: one for the kids -- with these windows, the other for the parents, facing the courtyard on the other side)
Across the street, there's a guy selling some veggies from a booth. And, too, these -- a beloved and common snack here, never ever sold in its full form in the US:
Okay, let's look around at the new Warsaw, the younger one that would not call itself the postwar generation.
The city is theirs, not mine any more. May they love it in the way I once did. Protectively, with a vision for an even better place to raise the subsequent generations that will pass through it.
In the early afternoon, we (four of us from the Group of ten) drive together to the działka.
The owners (or are they renters? Not sure about how that works..) are two with an acute case of gardening love. Well, Gosia has it. The bug hit her as much as it hit me and her efforts are well displayed in the mass of flowers she grows here.
(she welcomes us at the gate)
It's a walk through a garden fairy tale!
There's lots to admire and to love here...
But of course, in addition to the flowers, we have our friends.
And food. A Pole will never allow you to go hungry. Never!
I set up a timed release...
But it's premature! Two more from our Group have yet to arrive. Here they are! (I'll just leave myself out of this one...)
We play our game -- two more questions, lots of discussion, Gosia's chocolate raspberry cake, more wine...
And her daughter comes over too, with her kids. It is a lively set of hours!
It's late by the time I return home. And later still when I turn out the light (after posting, of course). Sleep is not something I can count on at times that are especially intense for me. This trip isn't a vacation in the traditional sense of the word. It's travel, through time and place, to a past and a future. It shakes up memories and all that brain matter that structures my everyday once I get home. An unforgettable day, an unforgettable trip.
with Gosia's flowers and so much love...
