Posts Tagged Heritage

Madeline

As a child, what I remember most was that my Great-Aunt Madeline was blind. She could see a bit, but legally, she was blind. I think she could see better when she was younger, but by the time I knew her, her eyesight was extremely poor. She had red hair, and wore funny blue-tinted glasses, and she was always immaculately dressed. She was my grandfather’s sister.

She tried to teach me to knit, but I was not a very good student at the time. So, instead, she would knit beautiful things and send them to me. I was always particularly intrigued by her shoes. Even though she had to have help walking, because of her blindness, she wore the prettiest shoes, and always with heels. I also remember that she was a really great cook. She briefly lived next door to my grandparents when I was a kid, and I remember going over there for dinner a few times. It was always excellent.

My father loved Madeline, and loved to tell stories about her. His favorite story was about when she had surgery to improve her eyesight. He asked her what was the most surprising thing about being able to see. Her response kept him in stitches for years. She replied “My reflection.” He would also marvel at how she would only smoke a cigarette when she came to visit. She would ask him for one of his, and then that was it. She would not smoke another one until the next time she came to visit, and that could be a year or two.

Madeline, however, was actually my mother’s aunt. My mother remembers staying with her in Chicago when her younger sister was born, and remembers Madeline coming to visit them when she was a kid. She said they would have to go to the train station to pick her up, and that it was always very exciting. I think Mom gets a lot of her independence and spunk from Madeline.

Aunt Madeline hated Texas, and spent most of her life trying to get out of it. She had some success at that. She lived in Chicago for several years, attending modeling school while she was there. At some point she moved out to California, where she met and married Ed Coleman. She was 55 when she married for the first and only time. They were married for 19 years before he passed away, and she outlived him by another twenty years.

Madeline & Ed Coleman

Madeline was a brilliant woman, and had she been born in another age, she would have been an ideal candidate for CEO of a company. Her memory was incredible, and her attention to detail was unparalleled. Even after having not been to Chicago for 30 years, she could describe the streets, buildings and landmarks as if she’d been there yesterday.

The last time I saw her was just over four years ago. She was in a nursing home down in Marble Falls, Texas. My cousin, Spencer, and I (along with my kids) went to visit her and take her to lunch. At ninety, she still looked amazing, and held herself regally, with as much dignity and poise as any queen could ever hope to achieve. We took her to lunch, then

Madeline - 80th Birthday

brought her back to her room. We visited for a while, but couldn’t stay, as we were traveling. I didn’t realize that it would be the last time I ever saw her.

When my house burned down in the Summer of 2005, she called me at my mother’s house to express her concern. She wanted to help me, and told me I would need dishes, so she sent her beautiful Noritake dishes to me. She said she didn’t need them anymore, living in the nursing home, and so I could have them. I thanked her, hung up the phone, and wept. What an amazing, generous gift! She had been suffering for several years from dementia, yet she very clearly knew what had happened to me, who I was, and had figured out a way to help. I was humbled and honored beyond expression. So today, we used those dishes (instead of the plastic ones we usually use) in honor of Aunt Madeline.

Madeline passed away Saturday night, in her sleep. I loved my Aunt Madeline very much, and I feel an emptiness because she’s gone. She was my link to the past, to a world I never knew but would have loved to have been a part of. She remembered everything with such brilliant detail, and was always glad to tell me about what it was like when she was young. I miss her, and I will miss her memories. Her passing marks the end of an era in our family.

While everyone is down in New Orleans partying at Mardi Gras, and Europeans are indulging in Carnival, Poles all over the United States are celebrating Paczki Day! (Pronounced: punch-key day)

Traditionally, the reason for making paczki has been to use up all the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit in the house, which are forbidden during Lent. They are eaten especially on Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent (Polish: Tlusty czwartek, not to be confused with Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday). In Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Hamtramck, Milwaukee, and South Bend Paczki Day is more commonly celebrated on Fat Tuesday instead of Fat Thursday. Chicago celebrates both Fat Thursday & Fat Tuesday, partially due to its sizeable Polish population.

Paczki

Although they look like Bismarcks or jelly-filled pastries, Paczki are made from especially rich dough containing eggs, fats, sugar and sometimes milk. They feature a variety of fruit and crème fillings and can be glazed, or covered with granulated or powdered sugar. These pastries have become popular in the United States as a result of Polish immigrants and marketing by the bakery industry. They are prepared exclusively in preparation for Lent and are hugely popular in many parts of the country. In Hamtramck, an enclave in Detroit, there is an annual Paczki-Day (Fat Tuesday) Parade, and lines at bakeries can be seen up to 24 hours before the deep-fried delights go on sale Tuesday morning. Many bars in town open early in the morning, and provide free entertainment, a party atmosphere, Paczki-clad mascots, and at at least one bar, Paczki filled with Jagermeister. The Paczki-Day celebration in this town is even larger than many areas have for St. Patrick’s Day. Prunes are considered the traditional filling, but many others are used as well, including lemon, strawberry, Bavarian cream, blueberry, custard, raspberry, and rarely apple. Due to French influence, paczki are eaten on Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) rather than on Fat Thursday. In the large Polish community of Chicago, and other large cities across the Midwest, paczki day is also celebrated annually by immigrants and locals alike.

Another cultural phenomenon is the emergence of the “Paczki Challenge.” A eating contest in which individuals attempt to race from one side of a room (non – standard) while eating as much or as many Paczki as they can before reaching the other side. The person to reach first and having eaten the most Paczkis wins. Typically a ratio of 1 Paczki for every 10 steps is considered competitive.

Okay, it’s not as, um, exotic as Mardi Gras or Carnival, but it’s my Polish heritage!

(Above information about Paczki Day from: Wikipedia)

Today, we will come home from Mass and begin preparing for our Christmas Eve Celebration, Wigilia (vi-GEE-lee-ah’). This is the traditional Polish Christmas Eve Vigil Dinner, beginning with the first star of the evening, Gwiazdka (g-VIAHZ-kah), followed by the lighting of the Christmas Tree, Choinka (hoy-EEN-kah), the sharing of the Christmas Wafer, Oplatek (oh-PWAH-tek), the not-totally-Polish-feast, the singing of Carols, Koledy, and finally, Midnight Mass, Pasterka (poss-STAIR-kah)!

My immediate family has not always celebrated Christmas like this.  We’ve always celebrated Christmas, but in varioius ways throughout the years. I discovered Wigilia in the process of researching our family history, and we all agreed that it was a wonderful way to celebrate the birth of Christ, and at the same time add some seriously lacking culture to our melting-pot family.

So, for me, Wigilia is a way of connecting.  A way of connecting, not only to my religion and my God, but to my family and my heritage.  Growing up, my family was (and actually still is) very scattered.  We didn’t go to visit family members often, and they only rarely came to see us. Weddings and funerals were the exceptions, and even then, most of the family couldn’t make it! I have very few memories of playing with my cousins.  In fact, I only have three first-cousins.  (As opposed to my husband, who has like, a million cousins, or some outrageous number like that!) And one of the few holiday-cousin memories I do have is of Spencer breaking the index finger of my left hand while we were trying to play German Dodgball! (Hey, is that cultural??)

My brother and my sister are both quite a bit older than I am, so I don’t have any real memories of growing up with them, either.  I do remember my brother used to walk around the house on his hands, and that was absolutely fascinating to me when I was three years old!  And I remember my sister babysitting me once.  She talked on the phone the whole time and kept putting the earpiece up to the stereo speaker so her friend could hear the song “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”.  Funny, the things you remember!

I do remember going to Midnight Mass, and that was always a highlight.  It is such a beautiful service.  Even if someone is not Catholic, I am sure they would appreciate and enjoy the holiness and beauty of Midnight Mass!

So, I guess genealogy was, in many ways for me, a means to having a ‘past’, a family. It was a way to connect with the family I never knew, a way to ‘belong’, to somebody, somewhere.  I always knew that my grandmother was Polish.  I knew her mother had come from Poland to Chicago when she was only 17, and that the boat had caught on fire!

I met my great-grandmother at least four times that I can remember, and she was always a great source of fascination for me. She had piercing, coal-black eyes and a very thick Polish accent.  In fact, my father always needed a translator to converse with her, and she needed someone to tell her what he was saying because his Southern Drawl was too difficult for her to understand!  Dutifully, since it was her grandmother, after all, my mother would interpret for the two of them.  I understood my father’s dilemma, because she always referred to me as “Walleree”.  Daddy thought that was absolutely hysterical, but his sense of humor always was a bit ‘off’!

Food and cooking are the most vivid memories I have of my Polish Grandmother, who firmly believed that if it was breathing, she should feed it, and that no one at her table could ever get enough to eat. Such is the true legacy I received from Poland. So, in an attempt to celebrate the birth of our Savior in a more meaningful way, in an attempt to provide a cultural heritage for my children, I will cook!  I will cook for two days (and really should have started cooking yesterday!) and I will fill our home with the wonderful smells of Christmas Love!