The colorful lights on our choinka were twinkling, the ornaments I’d made from my babcia’s crocheted doilies were hanging on the branches, and on the radio, Freddie Mercury was thanking God it was Christmas. My son Damian and I were sitting at the dining room table addressing holiday cards to family in Poland.
“And this one,” I said, pointing to an envelope, “is going to Leśno, where your Babcia Zosia grew up.” I pictured the small red-brick house (now yellow stucco but in my memories stubbornly remaining as it once was), and inside it, the large round table covered by a white tablecloth, where my ciocia and cousins always serve us tea in those typically Polish glasses in wire baskets with handles when we visit them every few years. Smiling, I set the envelope aside and picked up the next. “What about that one?” Damian asked, watching me write the address.
“This one is going to Lipusz. Remember when we went there, and your ciocia took us to the store and bought you and your brother those wooden angels with Kashubian designs?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Again I smiled, thinking of the square house with the flat roof and the four windows in front, and the table around which we’d sat together with my family so many times, eating and drinking and laughing, reminiscing. I thought of our visit two and a half years ago, and of how little time we’d gotten to spend with them. Half a day. When would be the next time we’d be able to sit at that table again?
I looked at the list of addresses.
“Oh, and the next one is going to Czapiewice, remember, where you and your cousins sat on those hay bales eating hot dogs?”
Damian’s eyes lit up with the memory and he nodded. I remembered that evening vividly. The dear faces, the pure joy in the room, catching up with these relatives who’d known me as a child and who’d welcomed me into their home all those summers.
We continued addressing the remaining cards. On the radio, Freddy Mercury gave way to Celine Dion’s “So This is Christmas.” I felt a lump rise up in my throat.
I’ve lived in the U.S. for almost thirty years. It’s home. I’ve made my peace with the reality that a significant portion of my family and some of my closest friends are on the other side of the world, and that I see them for only a couple of weeks every few years.
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And yet, at times like this, as I sit at the dining room table writing out those Polish addresses, imagining that other life, or when I receive cards from family containing the delicate white opłatek we Poles share with each other on Christmas Eve, the ache of being an immigrant returns. And it cuts a little deeper than I’d like.
It’s at times like this that I hate how far away Poland is, and how expensive it is to fly there. At times like this, it’s hard to keep the nostalgia at bay.
So I welcome it for a little while, my heart warmed by the memory of all those people to whom I’ll forever be connected. I may not be able to see them at Christmas, I may not be able to be a part of their everyday lives, but oh, how good it is to know that they are there.
Dropping the envelopes into the mailbox, I imagine them making their way across the Atlantic Ocean, mixed together with scores of other holiday greetings to missed loved ones. I imagine them in some truck rumbling along the newly constructed highways and the narrow, bumpy roads in Poland, until they eventually make their way into the messenger bag slung over the village postman’s shoulder. From his hands they will pass to the hands of my relatives, who’ll tear them open and smile at our family picture on the American Christmas card. Perhaps they will do this while sitting at their tables. Tables around which we once sat together and around which someday, we will sit together again.
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