leftover ham, mounds of over-mashed potatoes, and dollops of cooked cabbage layered with solidified grease. Loaves of sliced pumpernickel and rye bread got harder by the minute in their paper envelopes wedged between the ubiquitous squat jars of Polish dills and pickled red beets. On the car floor sat stacks of Popular Mechanics magazine and a week’s backlog of The Hartford Courant and Novy Swiat that fed Dad’s insatiable need to know what was happening in the world. Upright next to the periodicals, a large brown paper bag held my stuff: my pull-on rubber boots, pink chenille bathrobe, flannel pajamas, and finally, my treasured collection of paper dolls in the fliptop cigar box. Folded on top was my yellow raincoat for storms that came without warning and the scratchy wool sweater that I hated but wore anyway when it turned cold.
We loaded up and made our way to the back door, only to drop everything on the cement while Dad fumbled with the rusted lock that never got oiled. Door unlatched, we reloaded and staggered into the farmhouse kitchen, looking for empty space on the long wood table. No luck—it was overrun with crockery from our last trip to the farm, of Mother’s cooking long discarded. I don’t think disorganized Mother kept track of her diminished supply of dishes in Hartford. Maybe she just kept buying more Polish blue and white pottery as a way to remember her heritage.
We piled all our stuff wherever we found room—Dad and I had no sense of keeping things neat or clean. At the farm, we usually gobbled what we couldn’t have in Hartford: fresh eggs from our neighbor’s coop; canned Campbell’s soup disparaged by Mother; and varieties of pears and apples untouched by insecticides. Oblivious to disorder and disrepair at the farm, Dad and I heeded only Mother Nature and the Emerson radio’s weather reports.
The entire second floor was mine to explore. I raced up a flight of creaky stairs, combing my way through the cobwebbed hallway connecting too many bedrooms to remember. Except for mine—the best and the oddest shape, as if it had been sliced away from the bigger room next door. Inside was everything I needed: an iron bed frame hugging a single mattress; one rickety chest of drawers; a drop-leaf table inscribed with old graffiti; and a petite chair, the seat unraveling into raffia puddles on the floor. No closet—wooden pegs along the wall were more than enough for my meager wardrobe. The casement windows begged, “Fling us open!” And I did.
My childhood fantasies reinvented Mother Nature as my beautiful companion at the farm. With every change of season, I cast Mother Nature as a beneficent queen with transformational powers. In spring, she coaxed the abundant trees to bud in yellow and pink so that they appeared to me as billowing ball gowns. In summer, she covered ponds with green algae and cast a dancing net of flying insects over them. When fall came, she dipped her paintbrush into earthy shades of umber, flashes of coral and hues of brown. In winter she became the arrogant Ice Queen, freezing every surface into sparkling diamonds, gleaming platinum and shimmering gold. My little room at Old Glendale Farm became a fantasy setting that Goldilocks herself would’ve loved.
Dad slept downstairs. His bedroom at the farm was a converted storage closet near the kitchen—its’ walls made of thin wood siding were an inadequate shield against the harsh outdoor temperatures, meaning inside was cold and drafty all year. But Dad was used to sleeping cold, and alone. At home in Hartford, he spent his nights in the enclosed and unheated sleeping porch that was beneath the boarders’ second-floor kitchen. As a child, I never saw him enter Mother’s bedroom. And as an adult, I reflected back on the emotional barriers and striking contrasts between my parents. Mother was a woman who unleashed drama and temperamental outbursts that kept the many boarders and me on guard and in line. Dad, on the other hand, was a man of silence and emotional detachment, seemingly oblivious to boarding house turmoil and Mother’s volatility.
Tranquil days at the farm could have brought my dad and me closer together. Yet even there, we remained separate and undisturbed. Nearly every morning, I’d scrounge up odd bits of bread and apples for breakfast and listen to the weather report. If the forecast was good, I’d shove a small flashlight into my burlap sack and take off on yet another solo expedition to rediscover hidden caves I called “my secret places.” For hours, managing to beam the flashlight, I’d forage in their damp and dark interiors for ancient arrowheads and exposed bits of what must have been Indian pottery. On my way home, I’d sing out my childish glee, accompanied by the rattling burlap bag of oddities.
On days when the weather was iffy, I’d stay closer to home, most likely sitting on the edge of the cement veranda and dangling my short legs over the scratchy cement foundation. I’d watch Dad in the distance driving high upon the antiquated tractor. Never did he hoist bags of seeds or hitch a plow to the tractor. As I tracked his upright image across the fields, I too understood the liberated joy of being far away from Mother commanding, “Do this! Do that!”
Dad seldom revealed clues to his inner life or personal turmoil. I’d assumed that his quiet withdrawn personality was a reaction to Mother’s persistent drama. But one day, when the rains were so heavy that even my yellow slicker and mud boots couldn’t tempt me to go outside, Dad opened up and told me an extraordinary story.
Tired of playing in my bedroom with my paper dolls, I clomped downstairs to the front room. Dad was settled in his favorite chair, the shabby high-back, a reading lamp over his shoulder directing the light to his issue of Popular Mechanics. I gravitated to a low stool next to him. Somehow, that day, I managed to ask the right question at the right time.
“Tatush, will you tell me why you left Poland to come to America?”
Dad lifted his eyes and closed the magazine to set it aside. His glance was affectionate, as if he was pleased by my interest. “So, Danusia, you don’t know my story.” Removing his wire-rimmed reading glasses, he leaned back into the chair. “Perhaps is time I tell you. When I was young man, Tsar’s police make extreme danger for my family.” His voice was low and steady as he spoke.
“We were hard-working farmers.” He nodded as if for emphasis. “Polish farmers, whose lands on northern border by Lithuania were ruled by Tsar Alexander Nicholas II, the Russian who named himself King of Poland and claimed our lands as Russian territories.” Dad’s expression turned grim. “Speaking Polish language, reading Polish books was absolute forbidden. Tsar’s police roam the land like vultures looking for Polish prey.” Dad leaned forward and bent his bald head toward me.
“One day they arrive to our farm,” he said. “I was working in fields. They tear everything, search everything. And they find our Polish books—banned books. Tsar’s police threaten to take my father to prison.” Reaching into his pocket he withdrew his handkerchief and blew his nose several times. “Your aunt Mamie was little girl then, like you. She come running to the field, to warn about the Tsar’s police. I drop everything and rush to house. Must save my father!”
I could hardly imagine my aunt Mamie, now grown heavy and tired from serving customers at Kazanowski’s Deli, as once being a small girl and Dad’s little sister of long ago and far away. I tried hard to imagine my old and silent dad as a vigorous young man working the fields, instead of driving around in a rusty tractor at Old Glendale Farm.
“What did you do, Tatush?” I asked, even though I was afraid to know the answer.
“I tell Tsar’s police, ‘Books are mine, not my father’s. He is man who never learn to read. Take me, not him.’ Police agree. I say good-bye. Whole family crying. They see me leave surrounded by guards.”
I was shocked to learn that my aged dad had once been a courageous young man who saved his own father from an unjust fate. Yet he was the same man who never protected me from Mother’s wild and unpredictable lashings.
Suddenly, Dad stood and walked toward the living room window. He gazed out at the front lawn and barn beyond and no longer seemed to be present in the room, where I sat on a little stool by his empty chair.
“In
