Recollections and Regrets

The Background for this Journey

Recollections:

One of the very few recollections I have as a child are of my grandfather, albeit it is just a glint of a memory. I think I would have been four or five years old. I remember my grandfather at my aunt Rose's home in the east end of Winona, Minnesota. It was a long narrow brick home with an equally long narrow path leading to a side door in the back. It was this door that we usually entered. I remember this particular door because it was through this door, years later, that I first set eyes on my first dog, a puppy. We named the puppy , Timmy only to learn years later that Timmy was a female.

I remember my grandfather was in a dark suit, perhaps black. He was sitting in a chair in what seemed to be a formal living room. He had a full set of white hair and a white beard. He held a cane in his hand. I think it was just my dad and myself who came to visit. I often accompanied my dad to visit his sister though I remember few of those visits. It never felt like a warm friendly or welcoming home. I can't telll you why, I just remember feeling "stiff" and very "shy" while I was there.

Another recollection is one of "dread". I remember the knocking at our porch door of our house on Hamilton Street in Winona and the bustling of several older women with funny hats and lots of rouge on their faces. It must have been winter because I remember large dark colored coats with fur collars. There were strong perfumy smells, too. But mostly I remember not wanting to be there to greet these women. They spoke a funny language which I did not understand. I remember bashfully withdrawing lest they come near to give me a kiss as a greeting. They were my dad's sisters. While they would speak at times in heavily accented English, when they saw my dad, they would switch languages and I felt strangely left out. My younger sister would cringe and hold on to my skirt.

Once inside our home, one of my dad's sister, my aunt Verna would solemnly take off her hat and coat and I would be surprised to see that she was wearing not one, but sometimes three dresses at the same time. (Many, many years later when I visited Poland in the late 1970's, I saw many Polish folks dressed the same. This was what we know as the "layered" look. The Polish folks put on layers of clothers to keep warm because they did not have outer wear such as coats and sweaters like I was familiar with.)

Regrets:

I often ask myself why I didn't ask my dad to help me understand what he and my aunts were speaking about. I shyly felt I was respecting their privacy by not asking. I would have loved to know what they were laughing about, but I did not ask. (Several years ago, I started a Polish class and think how easy it would have been to learn the language as a child. Is it ironic or not that in college and post-graduate work, I majored in language with Spanish as the core language but also studied, Latin, Portuguese, French, and Greek Roots?)

I regret not asking my dad to tell me stories of his parents, his homeland, his culture, his food, and his language. I thought it all strange and felt frankly embarrassed by the differences. (Another irony, I wrote a paper which won a scholarship to study in Mexico for both graduate and post graduate work. The central them was that to understand a languge one first had to understand the culture of a country, everything from hand signals, to cooking, to geography, to customs and dress.) I was exposed to the bits and pieces of culture but I never tied it to language or used it to better understand my own family and that is a major regret. I regret that I have only one memory of my grandfather. I do not know if he ever held me or called me by name. Did he ever call me grandaughter in Polish and why didn't I call him grampa in his language? Where did my grandfather live; where did he come from; who were his family, how did he earn his living; what were his interests, what were his dreams or his disappointments?

I regret that I have so few recollections. I regret not starting this search sooner and I regret that I know oh, so little. It is my hope, that any one out there who is seeking his or her family history or joins me in the search of the Wicka family, that you start now, not tomorrow, or a year from now. Just do it as I intend to do. Join me in my quest for the Polish Ancestry of the Wicka family.