The Power of Place

I had a rough time sleeping last night, even though I was tired. So much excitement, so much to think about. And yes, afternoon seventh graders, probably a little too much illuminated screen time. Oops!

I began to think a lot about what it means to be in this place. I'm not in America. It didn't take two weeks on a train and two ships. It took twelve hours and I am now in Poland. I'm here. I'm in the Old World.

My dear sixth grade student and penpal, Emily, is moving this weekend. I know the power of being in sixth grade. When she is grown up, she will still remember what it felt like to think like she does now.... My most transformative year was sixth grade in Jerry DeFina's class, and I remember thinking then how I was on the brink of change and I just wanted to savor it all. Emily is on the brink of change, and she is thinking about her youngest brother who won't even remember this home that has always been her home. Changes, even beautiful changes, always involve some loss.

Papa didn't talk much. Nana had the voice in the family. He worked hard as a baker and an owner of a bakery, but  the early work hours meant he napped a lot in the days. Only when I was older, maybe Emily's age, and he was entering into retirement, did I form a really close bond with him. He called me his "Sponge" long before that might render some SquarePants jokes. He tried to learn some piano for me. He told me about making it to Ellis Island and seeing his father for the first time in years, and being a little jealous that his dad went to huge his younger brother first. He told me only one thing about Poland-- his mother stuffed geese to make them fatter so they could sell for more money.  

Like many people of his generation, he came here and didn't look back. He learned English, repeated first grade a few times, became the class clown, then fell in love with the girl around the block. He married his childhood sweetheart, and worked hard to provide for her, sometimes holding on to every cent to delay gratification.  He didn't tell me much about his extended family, and Nana made up that they were all dead. 

Only through some intensive research on my part did I track down his brilliant first cousin Helen and begin to grow the family tree back together again.  Ironically, Helen had grown up in the US much longer than Papa had, but she  was more comfortable sharing tales of the Old World, where I am now.

And while I am here, what am I doing? Maybe some grief work. Papa died just months after my sister and I guess there was unfinished business. Maybe there always is? But I'm walking myself back through his house. I'm recreating the credenza, the likes of music, the aroma of baked rugelach and the glow of black and white cookies, the sound of piano lessons in the immense living room, the feel of the decorative iron gate on my palm, the murmur of football games that I still don't understand and which Papa slept through but kept on in the background,  and most of all the feeling of leaning in to him while he dozed off on the recliner in the living room.  It all happened there.

People move. Emily is moving to have a bigger house. (Go, girl!) Papa moved to be reunited with his father in Amerike, the  Land of Opportunity. 

My friend Dorothee (who I wrote about yesterday) moved to escape Eastern Germany, about a month before the wall fell. She was the age of my students and her parents didn't tell her they were moving because kids that age tell their friends everything, and that could have been dangerous.  In the early 2000s, I went with her back to her childhood town. It must have been weird to not even have your country exist anymore! I will never forget that journey, being in the places of her childhood with her.

But here I am in Poland where, in the years after Papa moved, the Nazis came in and did the unthinkable. And I will be meeting with people who endured the unthinkable and who are coming back too. Places speak. In the next few days, I must listen.