Everybody’s Related to Aliens

Miscommunicating in my new language is an ongoing adventure. Waiters and waitresses are usually patient as I read the menu with a dictionary at my side. Others deliver their finest monologues in Polish, sometimes not noticing my vacant look of incomprehension until 20 minutes later when they are done. Sometimes they never notice, and just think I am very shy. This “shyness” ploy works very well in English, for that matter.

When I first arrived, one of my most useful phrases was “nie rozumiem” (I don’t understand); often I’d just say “nie rozumiem po polsku” (i don’t understand polish) and then they’d usually just give up altogether. After a week or so of classes and with some confidence, I threw in a “rozumiem” (I understand) once in a while for every few “rozumiems”. But experience has hardened me, and made me realize that understanding 75% of what someone is saying very often leads to disastrous miscommunications. So, today, I have adopted my new Polish phrase, “rozumiem, może” (I understand, maybe).

In summary, my speaking “style” in Polish, if I have one, is to say “nie rozumiem,” “rozumiem,” “rozumiem, może,” and occasionally another word or two of Polish thrown in here and there just for style.

Very often, I lack the benefit of ever really knowing what a miscommunication is about. There was more reliable feedback during my Polish classes in Krakow and Chicago. For example, I was told to write a letter to a friend, following a model in our workbook. In the workbook, the sample letter seemed to say something like “Hello dear friend, it’s warm here in Greece.” I made my own version, hoping to say, “Hello dear friend, it’s cold here in Krakow.” My teacher was there to tell me, no, that wasn’t right. The workbook example translated as “Hello dear friend, warmly, from Greece,” and my version was “Hello dear friend, coldly, from Krakow.”

Here in Płock, my great grandfather’s homeland, there’s not a whole lot of English spoken. I love this because it gives me real practice in Polish. Very often, people are friendly and patient. Very often, though, I get a glimpse at the hardships of life as an immigrant. Maybe these are some of the same challenges that Ignacy faced. Sometimes, incomprehension can be a convenience, such as today when I wandered around a government building and opened some door I wasn’t supposed to, blissfully ignorant of what I presumed to be a stream of Polish profanities that followed.

My brother, who lives in Montana, doesn’t have a telephone. But, every once in a while (I’m using the term “a while” very loosely here) he’ll show up unannounced at my doorstep. When I’m lucky, I’m actually home when he shows up, and get to spend some time with the rascal before he drives another thousand miles down the road.

It was a frosty April in Chicago, and this time I actually had some advanced warning that my brother was on the way. Unlike other warm-blooded mammals, my brother doesn’t need heat to survive. So, at the top of his list of travel itineraries was a trip to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, where the bitter early spring cold ensured that all the attractions would be closed. It was a long drive, but we wound up where we aimed, at the copper mining archives at Michigan Tech in Houghton, Michigan.

Some people find that their life calling is juggling knives and eating fire for a living; others seek control of money and power. At the archive, we encountered a man who was meant to be a reference librarian. I asked him for the employment record of my great grandfather, but he came back with two records.

The first record was my great grandfather Ignacy. The record confirmed a fact that I’d only recently discovered- he was born in Poland. This made me 1/8 Polish.

The second record was a man named Josef Kmieciak. I had never heard of Josef Kmieciak, which is my excuse for not being able to pronounce the name. But it turns out, he also worked in the mines, was Ignacy’s father-in-law, and also was born in Poland. So I was up to 1/4 Polish! Before the summer began, I didn’t even know I had a drop of Polish blood in me.

There would be more surprising leads like this, and I soon found that I could easily spend entire days mining through archival references and internet databases looking for another clue in the story. By now, I’m up to 1/2 Polish; all six immigrants on my mother’s side came from the partitioned land that was the once and future Poland. The research became overwhelming in scope, so I learned to focus. This is just the story of Ignacy.

My uncle, from the Texas branch of my family, was happy to share his stories about Ignacy. Turns out, Ignacy’s job in the mines was to light the dynamite. This was a good way to make money fast, and it was also a good way to die. Fortunately, he “chose” the former, or else this story could never have been written.