My Busia and Dzia Dzia

After hearing from Uncus last night (who was crying like a baby, watching the DVD of old family movies I had sent him), it brought to mind his parents, my grandparents... who we called Busia and Dzia Dzia (Polish for Grandmother and Grandfather).

Busia and Dzia Dzia were the best people I ever knew, and they were responsible for me feeling as good as I did about myself, when there were seven other siblings that demanded my parents' constant attention. They were from old Polish stock, and I was their first granddaughter.

Busia (Sophie) was a crusty woman, but in her younger days, she had dark wavy hair, and was a real knockout. She once showed me a picture of herself when she was 19 years old. If I had dark wavy hair, we could have been twins. The resemblance was uncanny. I was 18 at the time.

Busia was the eldest daughter, and she had a younger sister, Anna. Their parents, Mary and Felix, came straight from the old country, and when they didn't want us (grandchildren) to know what they were talking about, they would speak Polish to Busia. I always wanted to learn Polish just so I could understand what they didn't want us to know. Busia worked hard and played hard. She used to work on an assembly line in her younger days, and lost a thumb when her hand caught in the conveyor.

When other people would say that they wouldn't know how to exist without their thumb, Busia was busily sewing doll clothes for my Barbie. She would still do all the things that life required of her, including cooking, cleaning house, making clothes, crocheting and fishing. She was one of the best fishermen I had ever known, overshadowed only by Dzia Dzia.

Dzia Dzia (Joe) was the love of my life. I adored him and the feeling was mutual. He came up hard, often referring to himself as the black sheep of the family. I never understood why, or how someone with so much love to give could ever be so ostracized by his own family. Dzia Dzia was the second of eight children, with 3 brothers and 4 sisters. (Hmmm... there's a similarity here. I was the second of eight children, with 3 brothers and 4 sisters also.) Dzia Dzia loved to go hunting and fishing, and was good at both. But he loved his family even more than that. He had 3 children, who brought him 16 grandchildren, over 20 great-grandchildren (at this writing) and at least 3 great-great-grandchildren thus far. He would have loved that. He worked at a steel mill for most of his life, and although I never understood how he could stand the smell, I guess it was a small price to pay to keep his family afloat. It was just after the Great Depression, and times were hard. You took whatever job you could get and were thankful to have it. Many Poles in South Chicago made this their way of life.

But along with working hard, Dzia Dzia also believed in playing hard, and family was all-important to him. Family gatherings were big on his list of how life should be lived. We often took family vacations together, where we would all gather at a fishing resort in Minnesota, with Busia's parents, her sister and her husband, their children with their spouses and the grandchildren. I am blessed to have known such fine times and to know what it is like to "rough it" in a cabin on a lake, with nothing to do except relax, go fishing, and visit with family. Evenings at the resort would consist of the adults getting together for their card games and booze parties. Stories about the "one that got away" would get larger with each telling, and on special nights twice a week, the adults would get together for a sauna and a swim afterward. The bracing cold of the water was just the refreshment needed after the searing heat of the sauna. What were the grandchildren doing all this time? We were shuttled off to bed, so the grownups could make merry. Good times.

Birthdays, Christmases, Easter and all our assorted religious events required a party, and of course, the entire family would attend. I remember having Christmas Eves at Busia and Dzia Dzia's house, and we had to fast all day and could not eat until the first star came out. They relaxed the rules a little for the grandchildren. We were hungry and didn't care who knew it! When the time came, after working all day in the kitchen making all our Polish delicacies, the women would bring dinner down to the basement, where all our hungry mouths watered. But we still couldn't eat until the aplotek (Christmas wafer) had been broken by the heads of the family, and then shared with everyone. Each person would take a bit from someone else's wafer, wish them a Merry Christmas, and give them a hug and a kiss. It's a wonderful tradition that my family and I continue to this day. After the aplotek, we were finally given the go-ahead for dinner. Grace came first, but then we dug in! On the table, there were always 10 items for the Wigilia dinner. It is a meatless dinner, and includes fish (caught while on that fishing vacation and frozen for the trip home), pierogi, kapusta soup, assorted vegetables and desserts. After dinner, it was time to open gifts. The adults saved this for very late in the evening, right before they left for midnight Mass. The grandchildren all had to go home. (It was much too late for us to be up because Santa Claus was still coming that night!) These sights, scents and sounds will be in my memory forever, as I try to uphold these traditions for my own children.

It was from these traditions and these two very good decent people that I learned that even if you work hard, you should play harder. Watching them helped me to understand that life was not a bowl of cherries, but if you work it right, you can turn those cherries into a pie, filled with love and a little spice.

I will forever miss them.

Nazdrovie'

Paczki Puta