Remembering Grandfather

I spent the day making golumpki. That’s stuffed cabbage to persons not of Polish heritage. It takes the day, or longer to make them so it doesn’t happen but maybe once a year. You need a large head of cabbage and the month of March is when cabbage is on sale. On sale for the Irish, not the Polish. Golumpki is one of only maybe a handful of things I ever stood by my mother’s side to watch and learn to make; another was her coleslaw. Both of these dishes she was always asked to provide for family gatherings. Both made with cabbage. She owned the cabbage.

Naturally when making golumpki I think of my mom. This time I thought of her skill at making this traditional Polish dish. My mother was not Polish. Not even a little bit. So where did she get the recipe? In whose kitchen, by whose side did she stand watching and learning?

My Polish comes from my father’s side; Marauszwski. My mother’s golumpki were better than my paternal grandmother’s. She, I discovered fairly recently, was mostly French Canadian. And she made pale, bland golumpki of which now, understanding her heritage, I can forgive her. If you put a pan of her golumpki next to a pot of my mother’s golumpki there would be no comparison. I know this because at my grandfather’s funeral there they sat, side by side. And my mother’s were gone first. This really bothered my grandmother, as I am sure my mother noticed and secretly crowed over. There was no love lost between those two. My mother would never have taken a lesson in anything from my grandmother. So where did the WASPy girl learn how to make an ethnic masterpiece?

My paternal grandfather was second generation Polish American. I know this because on his death certificate his father’s birth place is listed as POLAND, all in caps. Just like that. No village, town, city or anything other than POLAND. At some point in my pursuit of trivial information I learned that the -ski at the end of many Polish names you see means “son of” and when asked by customs staff what their name was they all said “the son of so-in-so.” and customs staff being as they were recorded it as spoken; hence the many -skis.

My grandfather died at 65 years of age when I was in the 8th grade. I have few memories of him as my parents divorced when I was still in diapers. It was not a amicable divorce. My father re-married quickly and was rarely seen. My grandfather was perhaps more present in my younger years and there are a few very special memories I have of times spent with him.

The earliest is when he gave me a gift. It was a beautiful baby doll in a red and white pin strip pajama and stocking hat. I still have that doll, pictured above. I have had to replace her eyes and give her new hair as 60 plus years has worn on both of us. And of course the pjs are gone. But she is still beautiful and I still remember my grandfather sitting in his chair smoking his Camel (no filter) cigarette watching me as I unwrapped her. He had to help me take her from her box as I was too small to know how. I am pretty sure it must have been Christmas time but I couldn’t swear to it. Years later my adoptive father, Frank Sheridan, took me to College Point, Long Island to visit his mother and she gave me a carboard box with string on it to pull my baby around in. I had that box with string for a very long time.

Another memory of adventure with my Grandfather Marauszwski was, I think, an indicator of the kind of woman I would grow to be. I must have been about 5 years old and he put me in the front seat (!) of his pale yellow Cadillac. I remember the color well. The roof when closed was soft and black. And that day, with the roof open, he took me to his mother’s house. She lived in an upstairs apartment with a short sloped driveway off a busy street in town. I didn’t know my great-grandmother. I have no memories of her now. But that day my grandfather told me to sit in the car while he ran in to speak to his mother. And I, being who I am, thought it would be fun to make believe driving the car. I remember pushing the big black radio buttons and turning the dials and then moving in place behind the steering wheel. I turned the wheel and hummed car noises, happily making believe that I was driving. Then I reached over and pulled the long shinny stick toward my self and moved the car out of park. The next thing I knew me and the car were really moving, backward into the street. My grandfather came running out of the building and hopped over and into the car to step on the break. To me he was a hero. My mother wouldn’t have thought so but she probably never found out. And was it from my great-grandmother that my mother learned to make golumpki? Maybe.

One final story of my grandfather; again just he and I off adventuring, this time in one of his many large trucks as he owned a moving company. One hot summer day we went to a swimming hole. Where, I don’t know, but my grandfather told me to say away from a particular section because that was where the snapping turtles lived. I do recall that there were other people in the water and in retrospect I wonder if he was just pulling my leg. But at the time I was too young to understand the humor. Truthfully though I still don’t “get it” often times.

By this time I was older, maybe 7 or 8. My grandfather very gallantly hung towels in all the windows and over the doors of the cab of the truck making me a dressing room. He then stood guard so I could change into my bathing suit. He understood that I was shy and I was grateful.

It is fascinating how a smell, a sound, or even a task can trigger a memory. A memory so vivid that you can still see the sun shinning or feel the heat from the stove rising. I am grateful for these records; for the ability to recall them now. Just a few months ago my 22 year old grandson asked me to sometime tell him my stories; difficult to do on cue. Perhaps this is a beginning.