Hide and Seek

Poland is part of Europe. But of course, you say. Just look at the map. There it is: Poland. Right smack in the center of Europe. As sixteen-year-old Annika says, “well, duh.” It’s there, all right, conveniently situated exactly where it has been for hundreds of years, stuck right there in the middle of the European continent, offering easy access to armies from east and west. Yes, indeed, that wide open field in the heart of Europe is Poland. Except for when it isn’t. Ah, there’s the rub. Poland isn’t always where it is. Or isn’t. Or was. Or wasn’t. Put simply, Poland has been hard to keep track of. Sometimes Poland wasn’t here. Or there. Or anywhere. There were times, whole centuries, in fact, when Poland went completely missing. Search any map. Look high and low, there is no trace. Poland is gone! Lost. You blink, you turn away for several decades and Poland has vanished. It simply isn’t there. Entire centuries, notably the 19th, passed without any evidence at all of a Polish nation on the map. It disappeared completely. Except that it didn’t. Turns out, Poland was there all along. Hiding. Or more to the point, hidden. Pushed underground, shrouded with obscurity, pounded down and then carved up into three pieces. The biggest chunk of Poland was hidden away within Russia. Another part in Germany. And the third was tucked neatly into Austria. Each of these three countries was determined to hide Poland most of all from itself. Formerly Polish citizens were forbidden from even seeing their own language, from speaking it, learning it and teaching Polish to their children. Poles were deprived of their own culture, history, and traditions; it was illegal to practice and celebrate ancient Polish customs. They were not allowed the basic rights of citizenship in any nation, including owning land and self-government. Ancient and rich Polish traditions of education, democracy, science, music and literature and other arts were hidden from the very cultivators of these precious treasures. Marie Curie, Frederick Chopin, and other brilliant Poles sadly realized they would have to find freer societies for their genius to flourish. For a time, these three partitioning powers tried vainly to disguise Poland, to make it look like another country altogether. Each attempted to dress it up as part of themselves, but the real Poland kept popping out. Even while Poland shared aspects of its identity, its ethnicity, religion and culture with all of these three usurping empires, Poland did not look convincing to outsiders, much less to itself, when fitted out as part of Austria, Russia or Germany. Ultimately, there was no hiding it. Whether disguised or hidden or hunkered down, Poland was unmistakably itself and eventually (after World War One) had to emerge from obscurity and oblivion. Poland also moved. Left, right, up, down, over, out and around, Poland, at least, was a moving target. It did and did not control the Baltic coast, then it did and didn’t again. It was and wasn’t east of the Bug River, west of the Oder, inclusive of Lithuania, Ukraine, parts of Slovakia. When Poland reappeared on the maps again at the end of World War I, its borders were not the same as they had been when it was cut apart, over a century earlier. And Poland at the end of World War II had still different borders, as if the entire land mass had taken two giant steps left (pun not intended, well, maybe, pun intended). The Soviet Union had taken for itself a big part of what had been Poland in the east, enlarging the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the victorious Allied powers had given Poland parts of what had been Germany in the west. People who had started the war in Germany, ended it – without moving – as Poles. Ironic, isn’t it. Vast numbers, however, of formerly German citizens were resettled westward, losing their lands, their homes, their livelihoods. Polish citizens in Lvov, if they survived at all, now found themselves with the dubious distinction of Soviet citizenship, although some Poles from the former eastern region, now in the USSR, were planted in these newly Polish areas in the west. Confused? Join the club. Which brings us to this. Poles have, from time to time, hidden themselves. Underground. Forbidden to be Polish, to teach or speak, to celebrate and carry on their own Polish customs, Poles of earlier eras took themselves to ground, doing whatever they could to speak and sing and read and teach, to practice their religion, to govern themselves and run their own affairs, tucked beneath the surface of things, away from the watchful eyes of their arrogant, ruthless official leaders. During the period of the partitions, under the Russian, Austrian, and German regimes, the Poles suffered terribly. At the same time, they cleverly outwitted and undermined their overlords. Children were taught in homes, in secret; they learned from an early age the cost of telling tales out of these clandestine schools. Higher education was carried out in what they called “flying schools,” or “flying universities,” a practice revived of necessity at points in the communist era of the 20th century. They operated without formal sanction but continued to provide not only an excellent education but also the various diplomas and certifications that prepared Poles for future service in the medical, legal, scientific and other professions, and in service of a once and future Polish nation. All of these earlier lessons served them well when, once again, in the 20th century during the brutal Nazi German occupation and again at critical times during the post-war Soviet-imposed Communist period. These flying universities and underground schools, press, businesses and professional activities, unions and even, to an extent, small self-governing civic units were reliable sources of social order and authentic Polish life. Poland was there, even when it wasn’t. Poland was on the map at the dawn of the 21st century. But, of course, you say? Consider this, Poland was missing, invisible, wiped off the map when the two previous centuries started. It seems safe now to draw these new, post-1945 borders in permanent ink but Poland, perhaps more than any other European country, teaches one to keep an eye on the horizon. Things change. They come. And go. For good, and for ill. One thing is for sure, nevertheless. Poland is stuck in the middle.

Leaping into history

Ready, set, GO! I landed in Poland just as Lech Walesa leapt over the shipyard fence and Solidarity was being born, in the late summer of 1980. No one yet dared to dream that within the decade communism would be done for. Gone. Kaput. And I had no idea that Polish history – and history-making – would become a life-long passion. I arrived in Poland, a graduate student, expecting to study history and ethics for several months in Warsaw, then return home enriched, but not completely transformed. Instead, I was hooked, fascinated and enthralled by the story of a people that lost everything, over and over again, yet managed to get up every time, again and again and again, to re-create their national culture and institutions and their personal lives out of literal mounds of rubble and ruin. And now they were about to risk everything to attempt it once more. How can you walk away from that? I found the Poles’ story compelling on a personal level, as well. My name, Erickson-Pearson, reveals my heritage as the daughter of Swedish immigrants, with not one drop of Polish blood in my veins, so this is not my story. Yet, on that first visit in 1980 and again over the years, and especially most recently, I discovered in the Polish experience many important parallels to my own. How to resist evil and survive betrayal? How to get back up again after deadly violence? How to deal with a difficult past? What to remember, what to forget? What to forgive, and when and how? How to rebuild, when to take risks? Whom to trust, and how much? How to tell the difficult and unwelcome truth, and when? How to stand up to bullies and indifference? On that first trip, I was stunned to discover the extent to which I could identify with and respect the Poles’ dilemmas and courage. My fascination with Polish life was fixed. “To choose what is difficult, all one’s days, as if it were easy; that is faith.” __W. H. Auden I inscribed the poet’s words as a caption to the photograph I’ve kept on my desk, of Polish friends who were never free of the burden to make consequential, agonizing decisions. Their cunning, cleverness, creativity and courage inspired me at work and in my personal life. How do you do that? I wondered and marveled at their resilience. Over time, I found Polish poets, artists, and writers who spoke with eloquence and power even more directly to my soul. No matter what else was supposed to be happening in Warsaw and the rest of Poland during the fall and winter of 1980-1981, the daring-do of a young electrician named Lech Walesa and his brave band of steel-workers, journalists, doctors, students, captivated everyone, as they stood toe-to-toe with the iron might of Soviet power. It was a seminal moment for Poland. Public impatience perfectly corresponded with the political maturity of the post-war generation’s anti-communist dissident leadership and the time was ripe for decisive action. Sympathy for the striking workers was almost universal and, for the first time in the communist era, serious support and active collaboration between the workers and intelligentsia created a perfectly unsettled situation, ripe for change. A propitious moment, indeed. The real problem, of course, was not in Poland but next to it. The times were as dangerous as they come. Earlier outbursts of frustration in Poland and in other Soviet satellites had been threatening to the Soviet Union’s aging, imperious and unimaginative leadership, and had been met with a violent response. One needs only to remember Budapest, 1956, and Prague, 1968, to know how disastrous it could be to challenge Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe. But, in the late months of 1980 in Poland, the danger was more acute than ever before. The daily news featured two distinct, but absolutely related threads: what Solidarity said and did, and, ominously, what the Soviets were threatening. Polish citizens and visitors like me had to rely on sub-texts and rumors, street stories and underground news sources for most of the real information – about all sides. The heavily censored public press was thwarted in its efforts to describe Solidarity’s proposals and, more surprisingly, also in its presentation of the bellicose posturing of the Kremlin’s commissars and the paralyzed, scared-out-of-their-wits activity – or inactivity – of the Soviet-sponsored, Soviet-restricted Polish government. The looming question on everyone’s mind throughout the dizzying fall was not if, but when the Soviets would crack down and invade. It seemed as if the Kremlin was giving the Poles just enough rope to hang themselves. As the glorious autumn gave way to an early winter, speculation and fear about the imminent Soviet reaction rose to a fever pitch. More than half a million battle-ready Soviet soldiers paced impatiently on the Polish border, awaiting orders to invade, as I crossed the frontier from the USSR back into Poland on the frosty night of December 6, returning to Warsaw from a week’s study trip to Moscow and Leningrad. Forced to leave the train in the middle of the night, at Brest, the border station, I was stunned by the sight of troop transports and trains standing ready to take tanks and an overwhelming military force into Poland, an invasion force prepared to turn Poland into an armed camp, beaten into submission yet again. But that is not what happened. The troops stayed on the Russian side of the tracks, the “creeping revolution” continued and, a miserable nine years later, the Polish government was the first in Eastern Europe to hold free elections and shed its Soviet-style Socialist strait-jacket. Not that anyone noticed. When the Berlin Wall came down in November, 1989, twenty years ago, the world watched, transfixed as this enduring and imposing symbol of separation, desperation and despotism crumbled before our eyes, allowing the surge of stunned East Germans to rush through to freedom. Twenty years. It’s been twenty years since the Poles took up their pencils on June 4, 1989, and, ironically, on the very same day of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, in a much less dramatic and almost unreported scene, Polish voters quietly went to the polls to mark their ballots in the first free election in Soviet bloc history and elected its first non-communist government. The enduring impact of the Poles’ initiative is still evident every day throughout Eastern Europe, as the unimaginable occurred over the next few months and a peaceful, even “velvet” revolution changed history. The mighty Soviet Empire imploded. No tanks, no guns, and, most fearsome of all, no bombs. The Poles’ action – and the tacit sanction of the USSR and its remarkable leader, Mikhail Gorbachev -- emboldened East Germans, Czechs, Hungarians, and others throughout Eastern Europe, and even the citizens of the Soviet Union itself, especially in its western, Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and by the end of that year, a new era had dawned. June of 1989. Twenty years. Twenty years of a free market economy, democracy, a free press, re-integration into the European mainstream, recovery from the stifling dictates of Soviet-imposed Communism. Twenty years of shoes, great shoes, Jimmy Choo’s, Manolo Blahniks, no less. Twenty years of fresh, top-grade beef. Twenty years, an entirely new generation, of forth-right public debate. Twenty years of vacation trips to the French Riviera, Hawaii, and Carnivale in Rio. Twenty years of chaos, deliriously normal chaos. Twenty years of freedom. And French fashions.

It all began in Poland. Yes, Poland.

Oh, for the love of Jonas. It has started. Already. We knew this would happen. But so soon? Poland truly is the Rodney Dangerfield of nations. It gets no respect. Let's do a quick history review. What popular movement took Poland -- and the entire Soviet bloc -- by storm, putting the fear of God (maybe even literally) in Kremlin leaders and setting the world on edge? Yes, that would be Solidarnosc. Solidarity. And it's charismatic leader's name, the one with the charming mustache, the Nobel Prize Laureate? That's right, Lech Walesa. And in what East European country were the first free elections held in June, 1989, resulting in the first non-Communist government in the Soviet-controlled bloc? Yes, again. Poland. Ah, so. Keeping all this in mind..... The European Commission has released a short, three-minute video commemorating this year's 20 year anniversary of the end of Communism in Eastern Europe. And guess who is virtually shut out? One more time, yep, it's Poland. The Poles have complained (they are good at this) and a spokesperson for the EC said, "If we find something from 1989 in Poland, we'll probably put that in." FIND something? Are you kidding? I walk past the gleaming white palace on Krakowskie Przedmiescie where a sullen soldier stands watch and two alabaster lions guard this site of the Round Table Talks, official meetings between Solidarity and Communist leaders in March of '89, during which the decisive elections were agreed to and planned, during which, for all practical purposes, the Communists gave up. This is where Communism ended. And at ballot boxes all over Poland. And later in summer, at the Parliament where a non-Communist Prime Minister was elected and charged with creating a new government. How about a glimpse or two of all that? And a tart sentence of commentary. Without the spring and summer of 1989 in Poland, and the power of Solidarity in the nine years preceding it, there would not have been Trabants tootering down the German roads or the crowds in Leipzig or, finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall on the 9th of November. How about the Gdansk shipyards in 1980 and Lech Walesa stirring up the workers? Even I have a photo of that, not that they are difficult to find. Show the Polish demonstrations, the strikes in that fall of 1980. I remember. We got off the tram at noon. It -- and everything else in the country -- stood still. Huge crowds defied the authorities and gathered to protest. And the Poles gathered by the millions to worship with the Pope when he returned to his homeland during those years. Perhaps that could be fit in. I know, I sound bitter. And it's not even my fight. I'm not Polish. But I care about the integrity of storytelling, of history, of getting it right. And I've come to deeply respect and hold great affection for the people of Poland. This time, the Poles have a motto that does set the tone for the year of celebration, remembrance and honor, "It all began in Poland." They're right.

Tag, you're it!

It's Saturday night in the suburbs. There's a mess of kids in the backyard, their expensive cars parked out in front. I just pulled in and junked up the landscape with my '97 minivan. I hear a lot of noise out there and it's all laughter, silliness, slipping and sliding and, no doubt, they're intimidating the heck out of the foxes cowering under the deck. I was invited to make a brief cameo appearance, and then uninvited, "mom, could you, like, go inside now?" Actually, it was more like an order, "go, bye bye." I like this, I like this very much. We are lucky beyond measure. Our high school daughters love to play silly games with their friends in the backyard. Or the family room. They're not out spending beaucoup bucks, or drinking, or being thugs. They are, at this moment, playing tag. These little things are the best parts of life. I'm closing my eyes to take it all in and record it in my mind, the sight of tie-dye shirts and redheads and plaid bermuda shorts and stripes and jeans and brown and blonde heads, and I'm listening intently to their goofy remarks and rowdy laughter, hoping to tuck it all away so I can still see them, still hear them long after they are all gone and I'm stuck away in a nursing home somewhere. Ooo, that's maudlin. Never mind. The shushing sound aspens make as they shimmer in the late sun, the true blue canopy of sky, the glint of silver leading a jet contrail, and the black and white blur of dog rushing around in the midst of the frenzy. Boys and girls voices, soft and loud, high and low, trills, fifteen teen-agers talking at once, more giggles, guffaws. "This way, no that, no this, over there, try that," and then it all dissolves -- again -- into laughter. Is this heaven? On this night I think, "I was made for this." This is what it's all about. Not the hokey pokey, not some bunch of titles and achievements, not the trophies and plaques and ribbons. But this. Not even the published titles for sale on Amazon or the bullet-points on a resume. This. This is what I was made for, to revel, to laugh, to love the life I'm part of. What a luxury! To be here, now, to listen and watch, and even -- when they let me -- to play with them! It worries me sometimes, do my Polish mom friends get times like this? Most don't have big grassy backyards that serve as volleyball and badminton courts, playing fields and dance floors (dancing in the grass, well it sort of works), and multi-purpose silly-making space. Do they get to listen in and watch as their kids have fun? I'm not saying my life is better or worse, just that it's right for me. This is the soundtrack I want, the life I want to watch flowing past. But it's very different from the way moms -- and dads, and kids -- live elsewhere. Living in suburbia is its own trippy experience and it's one I never expected, never planned. But here we are. Not in the city where, I imagine, there would be get togethers in a park, or downtown. More movies, concerts, museums. All good. All good. That is what I remember of nights like this in Warsaw, herds of teens laughing as they wander into the Square, spilling out of the theaters, sipping coffee at Cava. Whatever, wherever, the kids will find ways to have fun. But tonight I'm thinking about the moms. And dads. This life is especially well-suited to parental voyeurism and I'm glad. The soundtrack of my life includes lots of kid-noise and, boy, am I glad. I hope my friends Margaret and Elzbieta and Marcin and Jurek, parents all, get to enjoy it too.

Cape Town? No, Warsaw. Why Poland?

South African Airways flight 0207 took off about an hour ago for Dulles. I'm not on it. In fact, I've never been on a South African Airways flight. But it's not for a lack of trying. Thirty years ago I was bound and determined to take my anti-apartheid fervor to Cape Town and volunteer in the resistance movement. Do you know how expensive it is to fly to South Africa? And how poor I was, a graduate student, working part-time in a tiny, airless closet of a room at the hospital transcribing on a manual typewriter the information written on Emergency Room intake forms, illegible handwriting most of the time, listening all day to Bob and Betty on talk radio. No Cape Town for me. But soon, another option was presented. Poland. Poland? To be honest, I'd not given the country much thought. The Soviet Union, absolutely! East Germany, yes! But Poland. Hmmm. Frankly, it was the promise of getting to go to Moscow and Leningrad as part of the Polish study period that got me on a LOT Polish Airlines flight to Warsaw in the late summer of 1980. I wasn't sure I'd ever get excited about Poland but I was interested in Marxism and Soviet / Russian history and culture. And, importantly, the price was right! Well, as things turned out, Lech Walesa vaulted over the shipyard fence in Gdansk right about then and the unstoppable momentum and dizzying dangerous excitement of Solidarity got rolling and I was hooked. Still am. Those first months were exasperating and exhilarating and my new Polish friends joined me to their cause, their stories, their families, their improbable hopes. Let's set the record straight: the end of communism began in Poland. And now, twenty years later, I want to tell you about it. Yeah, yeah, everybody remembers the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a huge moment for all of Europe. But, earlier, and unnoticed, as usual -- the poor Poles get no credit, in the Spring of that same year, 1989, Polish citizens made the first decisive move into the new epoch. June 4, 1989. The first free elections in the Soviet bloc. The Poles went to the polls (haha) and elected non-communist representatives to Parliament, winning every contested seat. The first non-communist government in Eastern Europe! That is when the wall came down. Poland's non-violent revolution (okay, Gorbachev, too) made possible the momentous events that followed: the hordes of Hungarians seeping through the borders into Austria, East Germans in tiny Trabants flooding the roads to freedom via Czechoslovakia, and then, as we know, the day, November 9, 1989, when the concrete wall itself was demolished. Unbelievable. But it happened. And now, my Polish friends' children have no memories of communism, of the way it was. Poland is part of the European Union and NATO, for god's sake. Starbucks is there. And every gourmet food you can imagine. I fly in and out with no more effort than if I were going from LA to Boston. Stay at the Sheraton if I'm flush, or in a modern apartment with eighty cable channels, a microwave, and high speed internet. And walk past the palm tree every single day. My daughter is on that flight from South Africa back to the States this morning. It is her life's dream she's pursued the past several months, ever since she was a regular, in her stroller, with me at the weekly anti-apartheid demonstrations at the South African Consulate in Chicago. The world is much smaller (and I am much richer) and I'm glad she's got her passion. Because I've still got mine: Poland. Where you'll find a palm tree at -- where else? -- the corner of Jerusalem Street and New World Avenue. Come with me and find out why Poland matters!

I am ambivalent about many things. But not about everything. In fact, I am not the least bit ambivalent about... Aspen leaves shimmering in the spring, cottonwoods leafing out with delicate, brilliant bursts of neon in the sparkling sunlight. Taquitos on the patio looking west, taking in the entire Front Range -- from Long's Peak and Mt. Ypsilon, the Snowy's, the Indian Peaks, and Mount Evans, south to Pike's Peak, over one hundred miles! Laughing, the more the better. Out of control hilarity is best. Foxlets pouncing and playing tag on the deck. Crisp, clean sentences and stories that carry me away. Poland's deserving spot in the light as the place that communism first went kaput, looking forward to the 20th anniversary on 4 June 2009 of the first free elections in the Soviet-bloc post WW II. Coffee in china cups at Cafe Blikle on Nowy Swiat, and not from the paper cup at Starbucks up the street. Plump grandmas in sensible shoes and stylish wool suits pushing the prams in Lazienki Park. Tween-age blond-haired girls roller-blading down the quiet lane, school bag over one shoulder, on the way home in Podkowa Lesna. Cherry blossoms. Apple blossoms. Forsythia. Honeysuckle. Lilacs. Grape hyacinth. Rich, dark dirt, furrows ready for planting. Speeding over mountain roads, chasing the sun through the Blue River Valley. Two black and white cows running -- running hard -- chasing a rabbit across a deep green hay field in northern Poland. The first ice-cold diet Pepsi of the day. Deliriously gorgeous turquoise Caribbean waters. Falling asleep to the click-clack on a speeding train rolling toward Paris. Kaia and Annika conniving to prank their mom. A just-right hair-cut. Frank Sinatra. ..... and so, so much more. What about you?