Of Children Grown and Going On, of One More Day Now Come and Gone . . .

I recall Poland as an odd place - where winter's hand was heavy on the land, and summer's was somehow equally so. Spring and fall were themselves just as intense - spring a time of suffocating pollen, and the sensation that the lifeblood of the earth was strongly stirring itself beneath your feet, compensating for its long sleep. Fall was perhaps the fairest of all, yet coming off of a summer so heavily drenched in sunshine and treesap and contemplating the approach of another deep dark frozen season, when the sun would seem to rise at 9 and go down by 4, fall always assumed a kind of poignant and dreadful urgency, perhaps similar to what a man soon to enter prison might feel in his last few days of freedom. These, then, are the prominent feelings that accompany the memories that play through my mind when I remember back to Poland. The more I travel around the world, the more I perceive, or think I perceive, that a people are of one cloth with the place from whence they come. I know it sounds silly - fantastic even - I can hardly credit it myself. Yet, I have come to think it is true. Whether their character springs from their native soil, or whether the two things just become so associated in my mind that I cannot separate the one from the other I do not know, but foreigners and transplants somewhat aside, when you look upon the resident of a land, who for long generations has not been uprooted, you can find in his manners and habits, trapped in the crevices of his hands and face and soul the soil of his home, much as you would upon a stone dislodged from the side of a mountain. Nowhere was this more true than in Poland. The people have a heaviness in them that parallels that of their climate. They are serious at heart, and even their levity rides like foam on a deep, dark river - you may hear light laughter, and see them downing beer in the sunshine, but none of that negates the powerful force lying under which carries it along. They are a somewhat sad people, it seems to me, though they carry their sadness well. Somber tones inflect their voices when they speak unthinkingly, for they are imbued with a dread of the future, and an underlying conviction that it holds nothing very good, at least in store for them. This tends to manifest itself at worst in a surly and mopish character, or at best in a wry and self-deprecating anticipation of being thoroughly fucked unknown forces of the future. Life is, in their approximation, something that easily spins out of control, much to the cost of the onlooker who has not correctly anticipated its antics. I myself believe this peculiarly Eastern European worldview evolved from generations of drunken villagers laughing raucously in close proximity to dancing bears. I was not surprised then, to receive a recent email from one of my past Polish students, asking advice about her university choices, and how it would affect the rest of her life. I remember this student particularly, because she had an air of self-possession in a degree not usually encountered in people of any age, let alone those in their teens. Whether or not she felt any of the confidence and assurance that she projected I do not know - I would suspect not, as it is my experience that what is projected to the world and what is actually felt usually only coincide in the more pathetic portions of the emotional spectrum. She became a natural leader in the class, but only in her chosen circle, for like many natural leaders her power was much predicated on the fact that it was never seen to be wielded or by any effort extended - her influence over others was what it was, and she neither wished for it nor rejected it and thus all recognized it to be her rightful due. At the end of our year together, (and a year is a great deal of time in which to become fond of a group of young people,) somewhere near our last class together, I spoke to Joanna, and told her that her life could turn out to be very, very interesting, or really quite boring, and I was curious to know which it would be, so would she please write to me about once every 5 years or so, and let me know what had become of her. She agreed, and every year or so, probably as often as it occurred to her, she dropped me a line and told me of how she was doing - what was meaningful in her life, what she was worried about, etc. I was glad to hear from her, but little that she said engaged my interest overmuch. Then, about a week ago, she sent me another message. It began with "I don't know why I am bothering you, but I just feel as though I don't have anyone else to talk to who will listen to me." What she went on to say was nowhere near as dramatic as such a beginning might lead one to suspect, but all the more dramatic for how heartfelt it was, and how non-dramatic of a person I know her to be. She is, like so many people of her age, having to begin making her own decisions, and they are not small ones. She has decided that Poland is not the country in which she will make her eventual life, and so is looking at the possibility of moving abroad now, in order to do her schooling in England or another place. As large as this decision is, (and I think we can all recall how fraught was the decision of where to go to school,) it is only the first of a number of difficult decisions she has in front of her as she transitions from the haven of being directed by her parents into a world in which she makes her own decisions. Her parents are offering to sell their plot of land so that she can go abroad, but the money will only pay for a year, or two at most. She knows she will have to work tables, and wash dishes, and struggle to make ends meet, and I assured her that in the end, what people determined to do, they usually got done. So if she was determined to make her life in London, she needn't worry - but she would need a lot of determination to carry her through the rough (and impoverished) sections of the way. In the end I advised her to stay in Poland for the first two years of her education, and then transfer abroad for the final two. Although she liked that advice very much, I don't know whether she will follow it or not - I get the feeling that the main value the conversation had for her was in being able to talk with someone outside of her own town and circle of common friends, and hear an outside voice - and I am immensely proud that at the moment she thought to speak with me.