MIND RESET

click to enlarge summer 1965

MIND RESET
(July 2008)

Our neighbor, Brenda, is selling her house and wants us to buy it and turn into "slum lords." She suggested we should bring our parents from Poland too. What Brenda does not know that the times when it was so difficult in Poland that everybody wanted to get out and come to the US are long over. Now it's them targeting us with questions like "what are we still doing here?" But it's not Brenda's fault as no TV stations reported times changing for Central Europeans. She's average meaning she knows more about Amy Winehouse's last collapse, Kirsten Dunst going to rehab or Britney's quarrels with her mom over her mom's "tell all" book. Brenda does not know that the dollar is worth 2.02 zl (and in many places in Poland it even went down to 1.97 zl.).
Brenda, like many others, lives in a world created for her by the media. How ridiculous has that world become? Several days ago, a major US news channel broadcasted pictures of Sarah Jessica Parker with and without her birthmark (if you don't know who she is, you must have heard about "Sex And the City", the show she was in). They called "it" (her birthmark, that is) … famous. I feel terrible as I did not know she had one, and I did not know it was famous. Darn it! I missed it again…I better start looking for others with birthmarks or… I will die not knowing!

Brenda breathes the media's propaganda with the air. She absorbs it, because in the US, there are no other alternatives. Whether she has a TV or shops at supermarkets, she's exposed. Even if she claims not to be bothered with some tampered news, she believes in other news. So do people have switches to the true information and another switch blocking the news created for us from the propagandist's list? You know, the way we block viruses in our computers? What makes her think that the time in other countries, while walls tumbled down, gas prices rocketed and wars were induced, stood still?

For $20 a month extra, I have access to Polish channels and an additional $2 buys me Euro news.

In it, Palestinians are humans and Jewish people are like every other people, no privileges there.
Poles can be young and intelligent and not necessarily old and conservative or "traditionally" nationalistic.
Although the Euro news too may slip up. In a segment about living in a world without cash but cards only, they showed a single mother in Great Britain who does all her business using plastic and already had several accounts. In contrast, there was this old farmer couple in Poland who lived without setting up a single account. What the commentator suggested was that in the future, the old couple has to have an account because they will not survive as all
transactions will be done through it. But I saw it differently. The girl in Britain, it was said, had great debt and one of the banks had helped her to set up a payment plan to get rid of it. That was the point the TV crew was making, banks helping dealing with debt, while the Polish couple lived debt free and I believe, I bet my pinky on it, that the table they invited the reporter to sit at, was in the kitchen that was in the house that was built on land that belonged to them. They owned it. It was theirs. Not the bank's. Not anybody else's.
I'll take the assets of that old couple over the payment book of that British girl any day.

Before I knew all that, my first days as an immigrant in America were preoccupied by the ambition to learn English as quickly as possible. That was why we did not move into a Polish community. I set up dictionaries in every room, and I searched for the right sentence in my collection of The Beatles songs that I memorized at 15 but did not understand the meaning. I realize now that those texts are now ready to use for me, courtesy of Lennon and McCartney.

That's right…the famous duo's lyrics came in handy. "Help" or "We Can Work It Out" has a different and more serious meaning now, just as much as "With a Little Help From Your Friends" and "Carry That Weight" became reality.

While I did everything in my power not to call myself "I'm a Loser."
After all these years, "I Should Have Known Better," but at the end "I Feel Fine."
I couldn't avoid little misunderstandings like arguing with my friend, Betty about having my door closed or locked up. Before I got my driver's license, she picked me up for a doctor's appointment and while halfway there, she asked if I had locked up the apartment door for which I replayed (having only some understanding of what she was asking me)… "I closed it." So she asked again, "But have you locked it?" Here I go again with "I closed it"… and what does she want from me?

I did not see the difference between those two, and Betty was not very good at helping me understand it.

Her asking me if I "zamknelam" the door was odd, because often people do close the door behind them when leaving, and only on rare occasions they leave the door wide open. In my mind, she did not ask if I had closed it with a key (zamknelam na klucz.)
We had similar arguments about shoes and cars. Betty's way was that sandals are not shoes but sandals, and a truck is not a car (which I always was so sure
of, darn it!), but a truck is a truck.

So when in Betty's presence, I said to my daughter to "put her shoes on" pointing to her sandals or flip-flops, Betty quickly corrected me. To me anything that you put on your feet in order to make walking a more pleasant experience are …shoes, and that's why we buy sandals or flip flops in the shoe department and not let's say, a hardware store. Over time, I have met people who still use "ice boxes" instead of a fridge.

I felt uncomfortable calling elderly people by their first name and kept silent when grandmas demanded from their grandkids to be called "nana "or nena."

I was disappointed as back in Poland I waited all my life to be called "Mrs." and here I come and at the very beginning, I become "Justina." Since the mothers of my children's friends introduced themselves as "Roses," "Lauries," or "Robins," I guess I should not argue for not being called "Mrs. Ball." Only later, I discovered that there are still some good traditional families like my Irish landlord, Tom C. and his lovely wife, Kathy whose children were taught to call us (tenants!) Mr. and Mrs., and I liked it. I remember my grandma in Poland meeting with her friend, Mrs. Sentkowska. They knew each other back from during the war times. My grandparents stayed in her house while building their own (in 1947), and during all those years they never called each other other than "Pani Halinko" or "Pani Halusiu" (although only one was Halina, and the other was Helena). Occasionally, they met for a tea and I, as a kid, loved that hierarchy and keeping old customs. They made the atmosphere elevated with respect.
Later in America, I was told that it is a Southern thing to call a person Miss
Daisy or Mrs. Jeanie. We are in New England so it does not apply. Betty was very "old school," officially introducing herself by her husband's first and last names although she demanded from her grandkids never to use the forbidden "g" word (grandma) and asked to be called "Bongie" instead. To someone coming from Poland, a woman who insists on being called "Pani Jan Kowalski" seems insane.

Polish immigrants still learning English may have a problem with the right pronunciation of words like "sheet" or "beach" and sometimes results in calling them the "sh" or "b" word. At first, the difference between "sheep" or "ship" or "living" and "leaving" was unnoticeable to us. Once we even asked my husband not to say "sheet" until he gets it right.

For the same reason, reporters on Polish TV, often call Halloween "Helloween" or disco music "deesco." The "South Beach diet" became "diet from the beaches of Southern seas" whatever that means only because whoever translated it was not familiar with South Beach in Miami. My article in a Polish magazine, "Twoj Styl" about a nudist colony in Woodstock, CT had a caption "The legendary Woodstock" only because the person editing my story did not know that there are many Woodstocks in the US. The legendary Woodstock is in New York, and there is nothing legendary about the one in Connecticut. But I guess you have to live here to know it.

To learn about one's culture, you need to sink into it.

Seeing middle-aged women dress up in sports team jerseys seemed infantile and does not make me want to wear one, but I learned to accept such sights. I simply reset my mind although my kids became an easy target for the media.

On our trip to San Francisco, I said "there are many gays around here" to which our daughter answered with "What's wrong with that? Are you against gays?" Jacek noticed that when only a couple of hours earlier, he said "There are many BMWs around here," she did not say, "What's wrong with BMWs? Are you against people driving them?"

Exploring American culture became an adventure. I learned how Americans live, eat, shop, how they raise their children, what has value, and what turns people off. I found out that just as we need to keep up with the Joneses, our children urge to keep up with the Joneses' kids. How do you explain to a child that buying a class ring for $200 is not a deal? Easy. "Are you out of your mind???" End of discussion.

Quickly, I learned what a "rip off" means, and it became a popular word in our vocabulary. I did not turn into a American mom, but remained a Polish mother. I potty trained my kids when they were 1.5, and I can train your dog, too. I did not put M&Ms in their peanut butter sandwiches. They did not have peanut butter sandwiches, and they ate horseradish and even raw herring at Christmastime.
I remained sober-minded, but in harmony with understanding and accepting other cultures.
So why am I still surprised that two American couples (actually one American and one Polish–American) who recently traveled to Poland wanted to see Auschwitz as the main attraction? The Polish-American couple stayed in Poland two weeks, The American couple opted for 9 days but returned … 4 days earlier. Something tells me it was their first trip outside the country so you have to be careful criticizing them as they are a very fragile species.

You know, a couple of years ago, my daughter's then boyfriend, who was Jewish, did not want to go to Auschwitz while visiting Krakow. He was smart enough to know that he was there for a short time so he wanted to have fun. Unless … this is what this group of American tourists sees as fun. If the crematoriums turn them on, it's scary. I think there is a name for it…
My bet is that none of them know anything about Poland's history and I'm not even sure if the American couple know what the capitol of Poland is. The father went on business, dragging his wife and daughter with him.
So I asked the Polish-American couple whose idea it was. It was Mark's idea. Celina has no opinion. I asked why. For historical and educational reasons was the answer. Weird, I thought.
Its like Poles coming to the US seeking to go to Gettysburg, skipping Times Square and Broadway in NYC, Boston and the historical trail, and every major city and its attractions. Weird.

With five young children in tow, the Polish-American couple traveled to Mragowo (Celina comes from a village in the area) known for country music festivals (and that's American country music!). From Mragowo, they drove down South to Auschwitz and Zakopane.

Slovakia was next, and back to Mragowo for the Polish wedding. I don't have to tell you how much fun they had there. But if you look at Poland's map, the very first town near Mragowo is Mikolajki, the capital of sailing and kayaking and a really lovely town. Did they go there? Sorry, car problem or something like that, you know with five kids it's not easy. So it came down to Zakopane, Aushwitz, Slovakia, and the Polish wedding.

After that, a great idea popped into my mind. How about creating (exclusively for American tourists,) trips called, "Auschwitz and Slovakia - Tours of Poland?"

And if you pay a little more, I will take you to a Polish wedding.

In conclusion, it all comes down to common sense.

But the more people are deprived of it by the ever present media that tells them what to think, and there is a substitute for culture (the true one fading away), the less they have it.