Large Fierce Mammal

On my father’s side of the family, all ancestry leads back to German settlers arriving in Lunenburg by way of Halifax in 1753. On my mother’s side, the paternal line goes straight back to the same source, but her mother was born and raised in Surrey, England. That makes me a mutt, and I’m proud to claim the title right alongside some of the finest mammals of the canine persuasion it has been my privilege to meet.

Diana though, now she’s a thoroughbred. Born in Poland to Polish parents, she was raised predominantly in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, facts that contributed hugely to the similarity of our mutual upbringings in spite of the 25 year difference in our ages. As it turns out, as of 1982 eastern European parents were exactly a generation behind Canada, and by that I mean better, in the arts of raisin’ up a kid or two, than most 1982 vintage Canadian parents. To reach that level of quality here you have to go back to 1957.

As most of you know, Diana and I were married on Hallowe’en of 2008 at which time I became officially Polish by marriage, and that dear readers is a burden I am proud to bear. To illustrate why I feel this way, I will list here some items Diana recently received in an e-mail from her mother Izabella titled, “You Know You’re Polish When …“

Obviously Polish people can just check their birth records whenever they’re in doubt, but please try to stay focused and just enjoy this post. Diana added annotations to assist the unschooled; i.e., non-Poles; in understanding the unbridled wit of this, and I’ll include those as I write, so here we go:

1. You have relatives who aren’t really your relatives.
2. You sing the same song, “100 lat”, on every joyful occasion: weddings, birthdays, baby showers ….
3. You know very well that Pope John Paul II was Polish, and his name was Karol, not Carol. As a side note, Diana and her parents met him.
4. You drink your wodka straight. No, there are no misspelled words in the previous sentence.
5. You open your presents on Christmas eve.
6. You don’t feel the need to add “s” to “pierogi” because you already know the word is plural (You can’t eat just one!), and it annoys you when others do. However, you still add “y” to already plural English words; i.e., “chipsy”.
7. You are convinced your pets only understand Polish. In the case of Izabella’s cats, this is one of the Great Truths of the Universe
8. You can spot Polish people like Asians can spot each other. Strangely, and without any actual practice I’m aware of ever having participated in, I have developed this talent.
9. Your name always gets slaughtered on the first day or school. OK, tutorial time. Diana’s maiden name was Kleszczynski. To get this right, you need to understand a simple set of rules: “sz” in Polish is pronounced like “sh” in English. Similarly, “cz” is pronounced as “ch”. Pronounce the “y” like an “i” and you get “Klesh-CHIN-skee”. Work on it until you can say it three times fast with a snoot full of straight wodka.
10. The thought of eating cow stomach (flaki) doesn’t gross you out. Why should it? I’ve always known cow tongue as “the snack that tastes you back”!
11. When you are at a stranger’s house, you expect their garbage can to be under the sink.
12. Every window in your house must have “firanki” (curtains), even in the bathroom. For a couple of years I lived in Sweetland, Lunenburg County, and found it the local custom to eschew curtains in favour of ensuring that the primal horror of having anything happen outside that you couldn’t observe was avoided at all costs. Sweetlanders would make very poor Poles.
13. You celebrate your birthday and your name day, “imieniny”. This is a clever way of getting more presents out of a year of life and highly recommended. Kind of like looking for excuses to have a party. Yippee! Skeezix of the funnies landed a job! Let’s party!
14. You were extremely surprised to learn that North American weddings last hours, not days. Diana and I created our own version of this tradition. The actual ceremonial part occupied an evening while what is usually referred to as “the wedding night” lasted days.
15. Your grandmother insists you wear kapcie in the summer. Diana says that since she had no grandmother here in Canada, her father Ryszard did the insisting. I had a college room mate who told me his mother would tell him to put on a sweater because she was cold, but he was from Moncton.
16. You know Chopin was born in Poland, not France.
17. You were speaking Polish before English. Diana came from Poland to Canada by way of Italy, and entered the Nova Scotian school system speaking only Polish and Italian.
18. At every party you attend, people tell dowcipy (jokes) and there is a discussion about politics.
19. You watched Bolek i Lolek before bed time. Diana did, and YouTube has them in spades. Here’s a sample:
    
20. You know how to “kombinowac”, meaning to combine, plan, scheme, or add.
21. You or someone you know wears bursztyn (amber). Green amber is our family stone.
22. Your family considers mushroom picking as “having a good time”. So good in fact, that we’re pretty certain the Polish technique of harvesting mushrooms resulted in Diana’s conception.
23. You have paper towels in the house but they’re just for show, because everyone knows you’re supposed to use a szmatka, which means rag. In Poland, the term is also used as it is here when referring to a crappy magazine or newspaper. Interestingly, the letter “k” is often added to a word to soften its punch, so if you encounter a publication that shouldn’t be cast aside lightly but deserves instead to be thrown with great force, the proper expletive to yell as you hurl it should actually be “SZMATA!“
24. When something breaks easily, is of crappy quality or is an ugly looking bike… you call it Ukranian. Diana’s mother has been known to do this on occasion.
25. All your friends wished they were Polish because of smigus dingus. This is an odd Polish tradition that consisted in Diana’s family of being the first person to get up on Easter Monday and douse everyone else with water, or at least spray them with a water pistol. In Poland though, a deluge would be delivered to everyone in sight, and the practice was aimed by men at women. Diana thinks that isn’t much fun so everybody is fair game. As far as I can tell, this is not where the concept of the wet T shirt contest originated, but I can assure you that if Diana is wearing one when hit with water by me, mushroom picking would certainly result.
26. You fail a blood/drug test because you’ve eaten so much poppyseed cake before it. Holy shit, is that stuff addictive!
27. At some time in your life, when you were sick, you had one of these two remedies: hot milk with butter and garlic (mleko z czostkem) or syrop z czebulie (onions with sugar). Diana’s mother had her own formula for the first one; hot milk with butter and honey. She also reports that onions with sugar was actually something she looked forward to but she is an unrepentant perve which is one of the many reasons I love her.
28. When you or your family and/or Polish friends talk to each other in English, you occasionally slip in Polish words, and it’s OK because you all know what is being said. It can get even more convoluted though. When Diana’s father Ryszard was in hospital not long before his death, Izabella, Diana, and I were visiting. Ryszard had been alternately speaking to Izabella and Diana in a mixture of Polish and English when he looked at me and without breaking stride delivered a lengthy statement in Polish. When he was finished and still looking to me for my reply Izabella reminded him (in Polish) that I don’t speak Polish to which he replied to her, still in Polish, “Well, he needs to learn.” Some might consider this rude but that wasn’t his intent. The statement brought humor to a tragic situation and it’s one of the memories I’ll always carry with me about him.
29. If you were born in Canada to Polish parents, you are regarded as the inferior genetic counterpart to the purebred Pole. In this picture from our 31 October 2008 wedding we see, from left to right, Izabella (Diana’s mother), my incomparable Diana, and Diana’s sister Dorothy (AKA Dorota, not to be confused with the maid on “Gossip Girl”). Sorry Dorothy, but you were born in Bridgewater so this item is talking about you. My sympathies. I just don’t know what else to say.
30. Your parents don’t realize phone connections to foreign countries have improved in the last two decades, and still scream at the top of their lungs when making foreign calls. “MAMO!? HALO?!? KTO TAM?” Diana says this was not uncommon in her family, and only in the last seven years has it stopped.
31. Your dad has butchered a pig or lamb. Ryszard grew up on a farm so Diana has a bingo on this one too.
32. You have kielbasa hanging somewhere in your kitchen. I find this one slightly troubling because the only way this would happen in our house would be if the sausage was terrible. In fact, it’s so delicious that any form of Polish sausage is in constant danger of being attacked and is gone in no time. What can I say? Polish sausage is a health food.
33. Your family had at least three working Fiat Maluchy sitting in their front yard, one of which, at any given, time usually had 5 or more people stuffed into it. This was the first car Diana’s father had as a young man in Poland. It was yellow and he always pined over the necessity of selling it.

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