My grandmother is 85. This is the house she was born in in Europe. I traveled across the world to Poland find it and her relations, not knowing a word of Ukrianian, just to hang out before studying abroad. A year later, I studied Polish intensively and returned to study in Poland, and return to visit. I have since been invited back, but I can hardly by groceries at the moment. I think that our names and our families mean a lot. I also think that "Life is brilliant."
how did it make you feel to visit the house that your grandmother grew up in? Did it give you a sense of pride, or accomplishment, or understanding to see this house?
ReplyDeleteShe was born in this house. Her village is now a cemetery/ mass grave on the on the other side of the mountain, massacred by the Polish during the war when she was 17. She was one of the few to escape.
ReplyDeleteI now have so many questions about cultural idenity in this region etc after actually seeing the place she has always talked about, although I am slowly gaining a larger sense of understanding.
This picture and this scene reminds me a lot of the book Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Have you ever read it? It's a work of fiction, and I read it years and years ago at an age where I was awestruck by things that feel unimpressive now, so I don't know if it's as amazing at this age as it was when I was 15. Regardless, from what I remember, it's laden with motifs of self-discovery, family and history.
ReplyDeleteAwesome that you got to visit the village! So cool! I've never been out of the Untied States, and I think its great that you can connect with your cultural heritage. I feel that this is an important thing to connect to; my own family history begins here in the US, since we moved here back in the 1700's. We must have been real rejects if we made it to America back then.
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