Pitchforks and Torches

Remember the scene in the James Whale movie Frankenstein where the villagers are chasing the monster into the windmill with farm tools?  Those would have been some of my relatives who,  if it were still permitted, would happily sock you in the eye with a rake.  I come from some of the most superstitious folk who lived in the deep forests of Eastern Europe, and who still torment others with ways that things must be done as proof of family harmony and affection.

In days of yore, at a wedding, the bride would sit on a bucket of water that would be used to wash the firstborn.  Now, a bucket of water kept for nine months without refrigeration probably had tadpoles by the time it was used to bathe the baby.  Adding to the soup, a wolf's paw was put in the water if it was a boy, to give him speed and smarts.  Lord knows we needed all the help we could get.  You could only kill a spider with the back of your left hand, and girls who then ate the dead spider would receive a happy marriage by the end of the year.   I can see my aunt with a scarf tied around her head, crabbing because someone didn't eat a spider and ill would befall the family.

It only takes one crazy babcia to make the rest of the group nuts.  Put this here, cross yourself twice, wear a hat heaped with vegetables on your head if you're the groom, if you don't, you're going to hell and worse, have to live with the babcia telling you so the rest of her life.  Don't talk to the neighbors, don't spend money in front of anyone, have a shot before breakfast, cover everything with Vic's Vaporub, close the blinds, kneel on dried peas; you learn to tiptoe around until you can get out on your own.  The alternative, which I have seen in several families is that the adult children stay, drinking themselves to death while Matka soothes heads and clucks how nice it is that the family is together.  Out of the thirteen surviving children on my father's side, only four married and left.  The others turned their paychecks over to Ma.   I don't like looking back there, it revives the sense of bitterness that permeated them, and most of all, a fear of life.

My Polish grandmother refused to talk to my father until I was nine years old, because he had married my mother, a non-Catholic.  We mysteriously bundled up one Easter and went for a visit with much crying and moaning from people that smelled like mothballs.  It ended with an argument, my father's brothers and sisters running interference between him and his mother when she wanted us kids to have a shot of whiskey for Easter.  It must have smoothed out, for we went back at Christmas and were given brown paper bags of hard candy that had been stored in a cedar chest, and the thick, hard anise cookies called Springerle from the German bakery.

There are some things I miss for not all of that group were dour, but they seemed afraid themselves of my father's temper.  Piorunujący in Polish means "anger" or "thunderbolt", his nickname from his mother.  It was fun to see the strings of dried wild mushrooms, the maszlaki; the homemade jugs of dandelion wine, and the immense feather beds stuffed with thousands of chicken feathers left from Sunday dinners.  It was not fun to be given my first cup of coffee with a bowl of potato chips, or sent to sit in the dark living room to watch television.  Couldn't open the drapes or the mohair furniture would fade, but to turn on an electric light during daytime was wasteful.  There was a chalkware hula girl with her nipples painted bright red by additional enamel paint, and a corner altar of a Pieta.  What on earth?  Clearly, I had dropped through a portal into Wackski-ville.

The house still sits on an East side street, the grey asphalt covering crumbles more each year as that part of the city is now poverty stricken.  I get maudlin around this time each year as Easter approaches, not so much for what was but for what wasn't, but that is the way it goes.  I am drawn to the Broadway Market for chrusciki and horseradish, and to see the various pysanky offered.  You fight it, but it is still an inherent part of you and well, get over it and find some sunlight in whatever existed.  I don't know if I ever will, but would rather just put it behind me and move ahead.  Time doesn't wait for you to backhand any spiders; myself, it's no holds barred and here comes the broom.

Sleep tonight, I think you may go a bit early since the time change took place and we are all short an hour.  The snow is melted, and it seems to be an early spring, with Maple Weekend next Saturday and Sunday throughout the rural areas nearby.   The grackles are back, and a friend saw a robin in the park.  Listen for melting snows, watch for crocus shoots pushing up through ice.  Sleep.  Sleep well and safe, and thankful.