Healing Via Epigenetic Excursions into Poland

Stanley Wiktor (Polish-American, b. 1913, d. 1975), somewhere near Palmiry, Poland (1960s).

A dear friend of mine sent me an Ancestry genetic test so I could discover a bit about my cultural history. This gift from Sondra has sent me on an archeological whirlwind of love and understanding for the ancestors I did not know well in their lifetimes. I always presumed cultural research would be a fruitless endeavor as the stories of both sides of my family lay behind massive iron-padlocked doors in underground vaults guarded by skeletons and ghosts. My Mom and I always laughed that her Mother must have worked for the FBI, so little did we know about her.

But there was a door cracked open by my second cousin Gwen, who passed away in 2018. Her Father Steve was my Grandmother's brother. I had just gotten to really know Gwen when she died at 50 from end-stage Lyme disease and breast cancer. I don't presume I can carry on where she left off as her research was an exhalted combination of celebration and thoroughness. But maybe, through curiosity and imagination, I can unearth and share some stories to add to what she found. Gwen imparted on me that people have their reasons for their secrecy, usually some version of fear; and I should try to accept them as they are, and as they were. I haven't done great with that historically, but I am trying my best now.

I recalled a quote from Ted Lasso which (paraphrased) that forever changed the way I see the world. It was something along the lines of "what if we were all judged at the lowest part of our life" ... not one of us would come out looking triumphant, or kind, or good. Yet those are just moments in time. And we all have the hero's journey within us.

Our shared history (through my Mother's maternal line) is filled with mystery and myth, but begins in the 1800s in Małopolska, a historical region known as Lesser Poland. Its capital is Kraków. Finally, I discovered where my people came from, how this region was unique and added an understanding of my family's secretiveness and fear. Namely it was a safe haven for many ethnic and religious minorities who fled from other areas to avoid persecution. How my family came to be there, I don't yet know, but leaving such a fledgling democracy could not have been an easy decision.

Escape from persecution and poverty were relentless concerns until my great grandparents began a new chapter in the United States. Somewhere in the early 20th Century, they immigrated to Chicago, where they found community, friendship and a pocket of their beloved language and customs. All four of my Grandmother's brothers served their adopted country with courage and pride, in both World War II and the Korean War.

All of this was very scary as a young person though, and to top it off, my Grandmother and her siblings spoke in tongues, their region-specific Polish, especially when they were talking about us. Directly in front of us. The inflection never seemed positive and the words impossible to decode. This started an unfortunate detour to see unknown languages as weapons. It took me some time to soften and see all they were really doing was trying to preserve a culture they loved and called home.

But there were wondrous things too. Mysterious basements filled with all kinds of curios and tinkered-with items from the past. In the Polish Roman Catholic community, adult siblings lived together (or on the same street) and supported each other; helped where one couldn't manage, often to the detriment of new marriages and personal autonomy. Sort of like my own version of Indiana Jones, I could not wait to get into those basements and search for treasure. This love of thrift stores (especially ones that smell like those basements) remains with me vibrantly today.

Christmas seasons remain so exciting to me because of those early ones bursting with family, heaping plates of pierogi and kołacski, but also infusions of Midwestern newness with ambrosia Jello salads and my Aunt Olga's anxiety-ridden Chihuahua Corky running around, with his permanently expelled little tongue. Aunt Olga had long, rich friendships with her Mexican-American neighbors, filled with gossip and various comings and goings, and somehow Corky came in on the pipleline of that cultural fusion that could only happen in Chicago.

Kraków is now in the "top five" of places I would love to visit, with its monuments, castles, nature and historical landmarks. I'm still researching things, but it appears I have family in Oświęcim.

This journey will also be the final push to go through my Grandfather's slides and bring them into the modern world, even though I have to believe the depression he struggled with all of his life will be apparent. He committed suicide in 1975 at the age of 62. My Mother carried the shock and sadness of this trauma for the rest of her life. I am sure other members of his family, and my Grandmother, did too. Those slides continue to sit on the shelf. But he LOVED travel and photography, and those are gifts he gave to me. No epigentic lineage is without pain. I am hoping I can heal some of that pain moving forward and sow fertile new celebratory cultural ground.