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?

"Leafing greenly spirits of trees"

i thank you God

i thank you God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is Yes

(i who have died am alive again today

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and of wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should telling touching hearing seeing

breathing any --- lifted from the no

of all nothing --- humans merely being

doubt unimaginable you

(now the ears of my ears awake and

the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e.cummings

It's almost here and the signs are all around us. Leaping -- and leafing -- greenly spirits of trees! And today I went after them.

"i who have died am alive again today" so I crawled out from under the blankets and the dim safety of my tomb and took off for mountains and farms and canyons, and blood red sunsets.

I drove through three feet of snow along the Peak to Peak highway, saw aspens leafing out and hills covered in green pine, watched waterfalls cascade off the rocky cliffs, and drove down dirt roads past fields sprouting the first of spring's green. There was a blue dream of sky overhead and all the day through I found myself saying, "Yes."

How do you choose life?

Time to get out the boots

Time to find the muck boots. It's almost time for trampling. Trampling. It's not an easy image, not one I much care for. Too violent. It sounds like a capricious act, trampling everything in one's path, without discrimination. Sometimes, indeed, it happens that way. "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life." I'm not much for religion these days. I spend my time among people for whom the church is a constant irritant, a source of pain and rejection and hurt. I respect their experiences and I'm not in any mood to try to talk them out of feeling anger and suspicion about the institution, as it is. But the story of this one who trampled down death by death is a compelling story, one I live with and by. I want it to live in me, to animate my comings and goings and thinkings and doings. So it's trampling time again. This Easter greeting from the Russian Orthodox Church inspires me all over again every spring. I've learned that the messy work of being kind and loving and doing justice and being merciful and gracious does, in fact, also involve some trampling. Trampling on the sensibilities of those who want order and to preserve power. Trampling on the impulses of avarice and greed, trampling down the deadly attitudes and deathly addictions that prompt me -- and others -- to hate and hoard, to look the other way, to fail to give and share and work hard for the basic human rights of others. Trampling on my fear of getting out of my little cocoon and moving back out into the world again, with humor and grace. So, it's not snow boots or ski boots (although I'd gladly strap those on one more time) or cowboy boots or even hiking boots I'm talking about. It's the muck boots. Those are the ones I imagine when Easter comes around. And I'll be out in the yard, trampling down those deadly and deathly impulses that live within and around me. The peeps and bunnies and dark chocolate rabbits will wait. I'm going trampling this week, getting ready. For new life. Maybe I'll see you out in the yard, too. There's muck enough for us all.

Give up?

I'm not giving up.

It is Lent. And even people who aren't particularly religious talk about what they are giving up for Lent. Ice cream, alcohol, shoe shopping.

I'm not giving up for Lent. That's right. I'm giving up giving up. For Lent. Forever.


The old old word that became Lent means "lengthening." There are lots of things in my life that need lengthening. And strengthening.

So I am adding rather than subtracting. Muscles. Discipline. Time to concentrate.

Some of us have already given up a lot. And not always by choice. In fact, I'm still grieving all that was stolen from me.

When so much has been taken, I honestly don't know what else I've got to give up.

I'm not giving up anything more.

Bring it on.