Category: Kwiatkowski

  • Thirty-six Minus Twenty-two Equals Fourteen

    Thirty-six Minus Twenty-two Equals Fourteen

    preface

    Truth is often stranger than fiction. Maybe that’s why I like historical fiction. Even though the story line isn’t true, the background of the story is truthful and accurate. This is the case with most novel ideas that have come to me. In this case, the truth is that I developed a close relationship with a man fourteen years younger than myself. Josh had become my best friend. I warned him that I was falling in love with him, but he ignored my warning and the warnings of others until it was too late. Just over a year after we first met, Josh finally admitted that it wouldn’t be possible to marry me. He blamed the age difference, but I was angry with his mom for standing in our way. Although I knew that I should have blamed Josh, I was just sad, because he couldn’t stand up to her.

    I learned so much about love with Josh. I was convinced that I had found my soulmate. I was hurt that he couldn’t see it. I am confident that this will make an excellent story, but I needed Josh’s permission to write it. Heaven forbid it should appear in print without his consent. Josh, being the understanding spirit that he is, read the story based on one of my journal entries as it appears in this multi-genre work, and gave me his blessing. It’s no wonder that I love him.

    Any Man of Mine

    Shania Twain

    Any man of mine better be proud of me
    Even when I’m ugly, he still better love me
    And I can be late for a date that’s fine
    But he better be on time

    Any man of mine’ll say it fits just right
    When last year’s dress is just a little too tight
    And anything I do or say better be okay
    When I have a bad hair day

    Well any man of mine better disagree
    When I say another woman’s lookin’ better than me
    And when I cook him dinner and I burn it black
    He better say, mmmm, I like it like that.

    And if I change my mind
    A million times
    I wanna hear him say
    Yeah,
    yeah,
    yeah,
    yeah,
    Yeah, I like it that way.

    Any man of mine better walk the line
    Better show me a teasin’ squeezin’ pleasin’ kinda time
    I need a man who knows, how the story goes
    He’s gotta be a heartbeatin’ fine treatin’
    Breathtakin’ earthquakin’ kind

    Any man of mine.

     

    First

    Impressions

    I had been married.
    Got divorced.
    After a controlled marriage,
    I had to be the one in control.

    I went back to school.
    Something I wasn’t allowed to do–
    When I was married.

    I liked my freedom.
    I liked being in control.
    I didn’t like men.

    The absolute truth?
    I could trust no man with my heart.

    Summer term,
    Students raved about the new math tutor–
    Said his name was Josh
    And he could do math in his sleep.

    This man looked nothing
    like the typical 21 year-old Utah boy.
    He certainly looked like a math tutor, though.

    “Are you tutoring, or can I sit here?”

    “Please sit.”

    “So Josh, how was your weekend?”

    “… Marianne, just what is it that you’re after?”

    “I beg your pardon?”

    “What are you after?”

    “Um… I don’t know, Josh, what am I supposed to be after?

    “My mom says that women like you are only after one thing, so what is it?”

    “Maybe you should ask your mom, cuz I have no clue. Apparently you find this more amusing than I do; and how do you raise just one eyebrow at a time like that? Are you going to tell me?”

    “Don’t be offended, but I really do think it’s funny. When I came home on Friday I was raving about you. When Jim came over on Saturday, I was still going on about you, and my mom finally asked, ‘So Josh, just who is this Marianne?’ So I told her about you.”

    “And what exactly did you tell her?”

    “Everything.”

    “What did she say?”

    “She didn’t say anything for a minute, and then she got mad. The next thing I knew, she was the one raving. By Sunday, my dad was trying to calm her down.”

    “So she thinks I’m after something.”

    “Yep. She told me I should stay away from you.”

    “So what are you doing here with me, Josh?”

    “You approached me, remember? Should I stay away from you?”

    “I don’t know, should you? Tell your mom I’m after your body and your money.”

    “I’m not staying away from you, Marianne.”

    “You’re a glutton for punishment.”

    “It’s all good.”

    March 16, 2001

    Dear Peppi,

    I’m so confused. Josh knows that I’m falling for him, and he says that we’ll always be friends, but I think I want more than that. I have no clue what he wants, but everything he does points straight to eternity.

    I tried to hide in a corner study room with my headphones and CDs today, but Josh found me. He walked in, closed the door, sat down next to me and raised one eyebrow. I burst into tears, and he pulled me to him. I wanted so much more than just a hug, but I didn’t do anything but lay my head on his shoulder. He let me go, and asked what was wrong. I shook my head and didn’t say anything for a minute. He just sat there with his hand on my knee and watched and waited. Josh is so patient.

    I know how his mom feels about us, and it frustrates me that she gets so upset when she knows we’re together. It bugs me, because Josh and I really do spend a lot of time together, but most of the time we’re with other people, and we’ve never done anything that either one of us would ever be ashamed of. I’ve never even kissed him.

    I finally told him that I was frustrated because he is going to be such an awesome husband. It hurts to know that I spent thirteen years in an abusive marriage, and now that I’m free, and have found the perfect man for me, the age difference seems insurmountable. It doesn’t matter who Josh marries, he is going to treat that woman the same way that he’s treated me and every other woman I’ve seen him interact with. I so want to be that woman, and I can’t see it happening.

    Josh did nothing more than pat my knee and say, “I know.” Why can’t he just say Marianne, will you marry me? I would say yes. He says his mother’s opinion doesn’t mean anything, because she just doesn’t know me, but I know that if he wasn’t so worried about disappointing his mom, that we could get past the age difference. I know that if his mom knew me like Josh knows me, she wouldn’t be having this problem. She’s never even met me!

    I left my CDs with Josh while I went to class. He likes my music, and I never mind sharing. When I came back, Josh had returned to the corner room. I walked in, and he pointed to the headphones on his ears and said “John.” He meant John Denver. I grabbed the headphones and said “Mine.” He grabbed them back and said, “Can’t you share?” I know that Josh understood I was teasing, but I was still hurting, and all I really wanted to do was sit with my CDs and feel sorry for myself. I gave up, and just sank into my seat. Josh put the headphones on my head and said, “Let’s take turns.”

    I listened to a couple of songs, then passed them back. Josh loves digging through my CDs and listens to a variety of stuff. Sometimes he brings his own music and we share that too. Once he brought Michael Boulton, and I was thinking about How am I Supposed to Live Without You? It’s one of Josh’s favorites. I wanted to stick the music in, and make him listen to it, but he didn’t have it with him today. Why doesn’t he get it?

    We studied, passing the headphones back and forth, for more than an hour. Maybe I should say that we tried to study, but most of the time we spent talking about music and comparing homework. Josh is taking a Shakespeare class, and he loves to tell me about it. I didn’t get much done, and now, I’ve spent the last hour writing in my journal. I hope I don’t fall behind.

    I was actually relieved when he glanced at his watch and said, “Uh Oh, I’m supposed to be tutoring!” I thought I might finally get some homework done, but Josh grabbed the headphones off my head, took Shania Twain out, put the headphones back on his head, and stuck John Denver back in the CD player. He did it all so fast that I didn’t even have time to ask what are you doing? He started pushing buttons madly, then slowed down, listened for a second, took the headphones off and put them back on my head, pushed a couple more buttons and then ran out of the room.

    There’s no way I could do any more homework today, anyway. When Josh left the room and the music started playing, the message came loud and clear; “Lady, are you crying, do the tears belong to me?” Obviously, Josh understands more than I think he does. Now I’m more confused and frustrated than before. Why would he want to send that message to me?

    Josh knew that I had to leave during his tutoring session so I could get home to my kids. I couldn’t ask him what he meant. This is so not fair!!!

    My Sweet Lady

    John Denver

    Lady, are you crying? Do the tears belong to me?
    Did you think our time together was all gone?
    Lady, you’ve been dreaming, I’m as close as I can be.
    I swear to you our time has just begun.

    Close your eyes and rest your weary mind.
    I promise I will stay right here beside you.
    Today our lives were joined, became entwined;
    I wish you could know how much I love you.

    Lady, are you happy, do you feel the way I do?
    Are there meanings that you’ve never seen before?
    Lady, my sweet lady, I just can’t believe it’s true
    And it’s like I’ve never ever loved before.

    Close your eyes and rest your weary mind.
    I promise I will stay right here beside you.
    Today our lives were joined, became entwined.
    I wish you could know how much I love you.

    Lady, are you crying, do the tears belong to me.
    Did you think our time together was all gone.
    Lady, my sweet lady, I’m as close as I can be.
    I swear to you our time has just begun.

    How do You Love Me?
    Let Me Count the Ways

    Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning
    1. You look at me and one raise one eyebrow.
    2. You sing loudly and off-key in while assembling my new computer desk.
    3. You play with my hair from the seat behind me in our Book of Mormon class.
    4. You whisper John Denver lyrics in my ear as I catnap in the student union building.
    5. You lead me by the hand to your secret hideaway to calm my nerves after I locked my keys in the car.
    6. You try to hold my hand from the back seat of Sandra’s car while I ride shotgun. It’s awkward, but we make it work.
    7. You ask a question that only my heart can answer while gazing into my eyes and replying with your own.
    8. You lay your head on my shoulder until my tears slow.
    9. You fold my laundry as you wait for me to get ready for a Michael McLean concert.
    10. You bring me a miniscule piggy bank with my name printed in tiny letters from your weekend trip to California.
    11. You interrupt a study session to drag me down the hallway to a “found” penny for my new piggy bank.
    12. You present a downy duck feather to me halfway through one of our many walks around the duck pond.
    13. You brag to our co-workers that you can outrun my ex-husband.
    14. If outrunning him doesn’t work, you say you will hide under a table because he is six inches taller than you and won’t fit.
    15. You sit quietly next to me without saying a word.
    16. You nurse my injured foot on a broken-down pier while everyone else is splashing and playing in the lake.
    17. You throw your arms around me saying “I missed my Marianne” when I come back from a month in Europe.
    18. You say, “I’m right here.” in a voice so low only I can hear through the encroaching crowd.
    19. You eat cherries with me and spit the pits in the bushes as we discuss more serious matters.
    20. You lay next to me on the grass and watch the stars for 45 minutes after the post-fireworks traffic has cleared.
    21. You play with my children as if I weren’t even there.
    22. You hug a tree to show me you’re on my side because my family thinks I’m a crazy tree-hugger.
    23. You stay with me as I wait for the last bus of the day, then hop on your bike for a seven-mile ride into an oncoming storm.
    24. You call to tell me you’ve made it home safely.

    When You Say Nothing at All

    Ronan Keating

    It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart.
    Without saying a word, you can light up the dark.
    Try as I may, I could never explain
    What I hear when you don’t say a thing.

    All day long I can hear people talking out loud,
    But when you hold me near, you drown out the crowd.
    Old Mr. Webster could never define
    What’s being said between your heart and mine.

    The smile on your face lets me know that you need me.
    There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me.
    The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me if ever I fall.
    You say it best when you say nothing at all.

    A Broken Pipe

    It was Josh’s silence that caused so much trouble that summer. Josh was always willing, even eager, to listen to anything and everything that Marianne had to say, but when it came to revealing himself to her, he was disturbingly silent.

    It took a discussion about a broken pipe in his uncle’s lawn to get Josh to open up. The pair sat at the top of a man-made waterfall on a large stone. Marianne’s children were spending the weekend with their father, so she had invited Josh to visit Utah State University with her. She had made it sound so innocent, but she desperately needed to talk.

    Josh was going on about his uncle who wouldn’t fix a broken water pipe in his lawn. Marianne seized the moment, “I have a broken pipe.”

    Curiosity piqued, “Is it a big pipe or a little pipe?” Josh asked.

    Marianne swallowed. “It’s a big pipe.”

    “That’s a real problem.” She could tell that Josh was thinking about a broken water pipe, and she continued to let him think that. She needed him to understand the enormity of her problem.

    “You should get it fixed as soon as possible.” he said.

    “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

    “Is it inside or outside?”

    Marianne was tempted keep the charade going and tell him that it was inside. Instead, she swallowed again, “It’s an emotional pipe.”

    “Oh, I see.” Josh grew quiet. He could see where she was going with the conversation. “Do you need some help fixing it?”

    “Josh,” Marianne choked, “I can’t fix it without your help.”

    Another significant silence. She didn’t dare look at him; her vision was clouded by brimming tears.

    “Did I break the pipe?” Josh asked.

    It takes two to play in the game of love, and Marianne knew that she was not an innocent bystander, “You helped.” It still wasn’t easy to tell him, even though it was clear to both of them that he already knew the answer. She decided to get straight to the point by explaining that she needed to communicate, and he didn’t see the need. She reminded him of similar talks that they’d had in the past, and of the age difference.

    “If I were fourteen years younger . . .”

    “There’d be no question.”

    Marianne was cut to the very core of her soul. “None whatsoever?”

    “I’d marry you in a heartbeat.”

    Ouch. That hurt. That was it. She had to tell him, but it was still so hard. Marianne was so sure that he already knew. “Josh, I thought that I had made my feelings for you very clear when we talked before.”

    “You made them very clear.”

    “Very clear?” From Josh’s recent behavior, she wasn’t sure she’d been clear enough.

    “Very clear.”

    “Well, I need to be sure, so I have to make them perfectly clear, okay?”

    Josh smiled and sat back. “Go ahead.”

    Go ahead. Just like that. She decided she was a glutton for punishment; “This is so difficult. . . “

    “Marianne, just say it.”

    She gulped. The tears were running down her cheeks, and she so desperately wanted to think clearly. She couldn’t. “Josh, I love you more than I have ever loved any man in my life.”

    The truth of the matter was that she hadn’t even known what true love was until now. Why did it have to be this way?

    Silence. Except for a few muffled hiccoughs.

    “Was that perfectly clear?” She had her glasses in her hand, and she couldn’t see him through her watery eyes, but she looked at him anyway.

    “Perfectly.” His reply was quiet as he wrapped an arm around her and laid his head upon her shoulder. The tears continued to flow as she laid her head on his.

    “Josh, this has been the most difficult summer of my life.” It was the happiest, hardest, saddest time of her life.

    “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”

    “I tried to warn you…”

    “But I wasn’t listening.”

    “Is it possible that I was saying something you didn’t want to hear?”

    “No, but it is possible that I just can’t figure out how to fast forward or reverse time.” They talked about time, eternity, and the age difference.

    “Josh, you don’t see time the way I do. I don’t separate eternal time from worldly time.”

    “I don’t see how you can live in this world without separating it from God’s time.”

    “You think like a mathematician.” Thirty-six, minus twenty-two, equals fourteen. . .

    “It’s not going to work, is it?”

    “I don’t see how it can.”

    Marianne was completely devastated. How was she supposed to live without him? Even though She had already learned that she could get along just fine without a man, she just didn’t want to get along without the companionship of her best friend. He wasn’t even gone but she was already missing him. For a while she just sat, snuggled in his arms until the tears slowed.

    “Josh, you’re going to go on with your life. You’ll get married, be a fantastic husband, make some lucky girl incredibly happy, and I’m going to remain single for the rest of my life.”

    “How can you say that? You’ll get married again.”

    “Josh, you can’t really believe that.”

    “What do you mean? You’re an awesome lady; someone will want to marry you.”

    “That’s not the point, Josh. I could easily find a man, but I don’t want just any man, I want the right man, and it’s taken thirty-six years to find him. I don’t want to spend another thirty-six years looking.”

    “Marianne, you’ll find someone.”

    “Yeah, when Hell freezes over.”

    “I hear they’ve been having a cold snap…”

    She laughed a funny little hiccuppy laugh spawned by a breaking heart. Then sighed, and said flatly, “Josh, you just go on with your life. I’ll be right here waiting.” She placed her palm over her heart.

    “Right here?” He looked down at the rock and patted it. “This isn’t the most comfortable place in the world. Where will you sleep at night? It might rain or snow. You’ll get cold. You’re gonna want an umbrella and a jacket.”

    “Oh Josh, you know what I mean. “For the next few days, the tears fell freely until Marianne had to admit to herself that the emotions she was experiencing felt too similar to the pain of divorcing Bob. Because she had loved Josh so much more deeply than she had loved Bob, her immediate fear was that the deep emotional pain would last a lifetime.

    It was useless; that pipe was never getting fixed.

    Right Here Waiting For You

    Richard Marx

    Oceans apart day after day
    And I slowly go insane
    I hear your voice on the line
    But it doesn’t stop the pain.

    Wherever you go,
    Whatever you do,
    I will be right here waiting for you.
    Whatever it takes,
    Or how my heart breaks,
    I will be right here waiting for you.

    I took for granted, all the times
    That I thought would last somehow.
    I hear the laughter, I taste the tears,
    But I can’t get near you now.

    Wherever you go,
    Whatever you do,
    I will be right here waiting for you.
    Whatever it takes,
    Or how my heart breaks,
    I will be right here waiting for you.

    I wonder how we can survive
    This romance.
    But in the end if I’m with you,
    I’ll take the chance.

    Wherever you go,
    Whatever you do,
    I will be right here waiting for you.
    Whatever it takes,
    Or how my heart breaks,
    I will be right here waiting for you.

    Profound Loss

    Josh and I were introduced by one of the students he was tutoring. In fact, I would have to say that Jenni went on and on about Josh just about the same as he would soon be going on and on about me. Like me, Jenni was a single mom, and just a year older than me. And like me, she found him to be a good friend. Unlike me, her friendship with Josh never changed. Because I was also a tutor, I knew I would soon know him as well, so I asked her to describe him to me. From Jenni’s nondescript description, I really couldn’t figure who he was. But I ran into her a few days later on her way to her appointment with Josh while I was on my way to work, so I asked her to show him to me. The poem, “First Impressions,” appears exactly how I saw him, and yes, even though it’s a stock photo, the cover photo is pretty true to my first impression of Josh.

    That was Summer Term 2000, and the “What are You After?” conversation occurred at the beginning of Fall Semester after I’d set him up on a lunch date with the hottest girl in the room. We had a strong bond, and soon found ourselves doing nearly everything together during our school hours. During winter break, we even went on a double date. I was with another tutor closer to my age, and I’d fixed him up with a younger friend of mine from the bus we rode. It was a weird date because by the end of the night, Josh and I somehow ended up together deep in conversation while our dates sat awkwardly at either end of the room. It was Josh that got the goodbye hug while I don’t think my date even got a handshake.

    I don’t recall when my physical attraction to him changed, but I do know it was after I found myself falling in love with him sometime in midwinter of 2001. I remember when the sudden realization hit me. Josh and I were on our way back to campus after attending an LDS temple session together. We’d already been talking about the age difference because I knew his mom flew into a rage every time my name came up or she found out we’d been spending time together. We were stopped at a traffic light, and it hit me like a punch in the gut. That was the first time the tears fell, and even though I didn’t actually say the words, it was at that moment we both realized I was falling in love with him. It was also when I began to feel the pain from the well-found fear of losing him.

    That summer I spent a month in Europe immersing myself in the German language. I’m sure I was driving the students in my group a bit nuts over the fact that I couldn’t help myself from bringing him up in nearly every conversation. Either that or talking about my kids. Although we’d gone together on the same plane, a large portion of the students extended their stay to visit other countries, while I was more than happy to get home to my kids. I was homesick nearly the whole trip.

    I remember quite vividly my flight over New York City on the way into Newark. It was my first time seeing the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and the Twin Towers. I’d never in my life been that far East, let alone to Europe, so I was more than happy to have seen them up close even though it was from the air.

    When I came back on campus, I was pleasantly surprised at Josh’s welcome home hug. It was the first time he’d ever called me My Marianne.

    I so wanted to be his.

    But there was something in the air that day, telling me it was the beginning of the end. There were two new women in the room, both with their eyes on Josh. Sandra had been hanging out with Josh while I was away, and she had set her sights on him. Yes, she’s the same Sandra driving the car while Josh held my hand from the back seat. She was none the wiser. The other, I might describe as mousy but not in a derogatory way. She was quiet and I don’t know if I’d say shy, but there was nothing more than ordinary about her. Looking back, she was the kind of woman who deserved a man like Josh.

    At the end of that summer, I found myself sitting on the rock talking about a broken pipe. It was my last attempt to make him put up or shut up. He did neither. I’d say the Broken Pipe story was the day we broke up, but Josh didn’t see it like that. For me, it was that day that I knew for a certainty it was over.

    Fall semester of my senior year came a week later. I found myself weeping from a broken heart whenever I was alone. But I also found myself looking for hiding places where I could study alone. It was so tough for me because Josh seemed to know where to look and I had to get more creative as time went on, and the more I needed to be left alone. I still loved being with him, but it was torture for me to feel that tiny glimmer of hope all the while knowing it was hopeless.

    Just three or four weeks later, I remember crying a bit in the early morning hours while the kids were still asleep. Wiping my tears, I headed down the stairs to start my morning routine of switching the TV on to the morning news, more as background noise than anything else, while I woke the kids up for school. Dressed and nearly ready to go, I started back down the stairs to find the TV screen filled with the image of the North Tower with a gaping hole and black smoke billowing into the beautiful blue September sky. The complete irony of that day was not lost on me. It is the only day I remember where the skies were blue, and the weather was perfect from coast to coast.

    My daughter seemed completely nonplussed when I pointed out the billowing tower on the screen, so I didn’t bother to bring it up to her five year-old brother. I shooed them into the car, turned the TV off, and headed out the door where my next-door neighbor informed me that the second tower had been hit. By that time, it was obvious to everyone that it was a terrorist attack. I didn’t know what to do, so I dropped the kids off at school and decided not to take the bus in that day. I wasn’t sure if I’d want to turn back around and go home. Despite those blue skies and temperate weather, a gray pall hung in the atmosphere and there was absolutely nothing normal about the traffic.

    Regardless of the complete lack of accidents, road work, or emergency vehicles, traffic was going at a crawl and no one, including myself, seemed to care; we were all transfixed by the narrative replacing the music on every radio station. The first tower fell about halfway through my commute, and I suddenly found myself in a quandary: Do I go home to my children who were already at school, or do I keep going even though I was already an hour late for work? I was sure the kids didn’t care one way or another (they didn’t), so I kept going. From the parking lot, I called the tutoring center to tell them I would not come in that day, and was told that everyone was cancelling, both students and tutors, so it really didn’t matter anyway.

    On campus, TVs had been brought out from everywhere, and every screen, including the theatres, displayed the same scene. Passageways, though filled with students, were eerily quiet except for the commentary from the screens. Some teachers canceled classes, but most kept their schedules in case students needed to talk. It didn’t matter whether or not I’d done my homework; it was irrelevant that day. I decided I didn’t want to be alone, so I headed to our favorite haunt– the nontraditional student center. Josh’s age and marital status may have made him a traditional student, but there was nothing traditional about him. He was there waiting for me. He took me by the hand and led me to the theater next door where we sat with my head on his shoulder crying and watching the horrific aftermath unfold. I still feel the irony of that day with the two of us snuggled in the theater like lovebirds at the movies. I cried and cried that day as I felt the double loss over and over again.

    After that day, I marveled at the fact that my first time flying over New York came so close to the day when the towers fell. I wondered about other students doing study abroad who suddenly found their way home blocked by closed airways. I’m so glad it wasn’t me. I was so glad to be home with my kids when it happened, and even happier to know that I had gotten my chance to see the towers in person, even if it was from the air.

    By the end of Fall Semester Josh was dating that sweet quiet girl, and I was looking even harder for better places to hide. I didn’t bother to deny the fact that I was hiding from him when he confronted me, and I was glad that to have finally found one place where he never looked in the Art building.

    At the end of Spring semester, 2002, Josh and I went our separate ways. Josh married that girl the next year and they moved to Logan to finish school at Utah State. I did the graduation walk, with one incomplete class and took a two-year break while trying to focus on family issues. It was a disaster, and I fell into a deep depression. When I came back to Weber State, I completed that class, entered the teaching program, resumed work as a tutor, and tried to get used to the old familiar places without the old familiar face. I was grateful that I no longer thought of him on a daily basis, but the familiar places and faces often brought back raw hurt.

    Loving Josh was sweet, beautiful, and painful. I fought that depression for another three years, but finally found my way out when I moved to Chicago for grad school and met and married Tony. Tony read this story before I married him, and said he’d love to meet Josh someday. That was when I knew I’d found a great guy. I haven’t shed any tears over Josh for more than fifteen years, except when one of those songs catches me unaware. Even then, I think I’m finally truly done with the tears.

    Why They Call it Falling

    Lee Ann Womack

    It’s like jumpin’
    It’s like leapin’
    It’s like walkin on the ceiling
    It’s like floatin’
    It’s like flying through the air
    It’s like soarin’
    It’s like glidin’
    It’s a rocket ship you’re ridin’
    It’s a feeling that can take you anywhere

    So why they call it fallin’
    Why they call it fallin’
    Why they call it fallin’
    I don’t know

    There was passion
    There was laughter
    The first mornin’ after
    I just couldn’t get my feet to touch the ground
    Every time we were together
    We talked about forever
    I was certain it was Heaven we had found

    So why they call it fallin’
    Why they call it fallin’
    Why they call it fallin’
    I don’t know

    But you can’t live your life
    Walkin’ in the clouds
    Sooner or later
    You have to come down

    It’s like a knife
    Through the heart
    When it all comes apart
    It’s like someone takes a pin to your balloon

    It’s a hole
    It’s a cave
    It’s kinda like a grave
    When he tells you that he’s found somebody new

    So why they call it fallin’
    Why they call it fallin’
    Why they call it fallin’
    Now I know.

    Ooh, why they call it fallin’
    Why they call it fallin’
    Now I know.



  • Right Here Waiting

    Right Here Waiting

    Music is a powerful memory keeper. My husband Tony, who is six years older than me, likes an oldies station, and when we are in the car together with the radio on, we inevitably end up talking about his college years or old beaus and my high school football games. Queen was big in my high school years;  Another One Bites the Dust and We Are the Champions always pull me back to the stadium and cool autumn evenings. 

    I was a single mother in my senior year of college when the twin towers fell. That particular day was doubly hard on me because it happened at the tail end of a failed relationship. We stayed good friends, and on that day in 2001 we sat together in the college theater watching the whole thing unfold in real time with his arm around me and my head on his shoulder because good friends comfort each other. I cried so much that day, not only from the devastation appearing on every screen, but for my lost love.

    There was no music on the air that day, and when my favorite country station returned to music in the following days, One More Day by Diamond Rio featured heavily on their playlist. Every time I heard it, I not only went back to the people who lost so much on 9.11, but the love that I had lost just two weeks before. Even writing about it today brings a lump to my throat and I find myself pausing to wipe my eyes, take slow deep breaths blowing the air out in a whoosh in attempts to release the pain in my heart from so long ago.  AND I’M NOT EVEN LISTENING TO THE MUSIC RIGHT NOW!

    I wrote the story in my journal as it happened. I had hoped that somehow putting pen to paper might force our relationship in a better direction. I turned one entry into a short story regarding our “break up” discussion. I titled it Love Lost on the Rock. I asked him if he would mind if someday I put our story into a full-length novel. Surprisingly, but not surprisingly if you know Josh, he gave me his consent.

    I did finally write that story about three years after it happened. I was back in school two years later to get a teaching certificate when I was given the assignment to write a multi-genre paper. Given the amount of music Josh and I shared in that one year, I thought it would be the perfect bridge from one genre to the next, but as I wrote, the tears fell freely and abundantly. A myriad of emotions filled me with each word or phrase I put to laptop screen, from frustration and sadness to happiness and comfort. I don’t know if you can call pain an emotion, but I felt it from beginning to end of that assignment. I got an A, but I knew a full-length novel would be put on hold for some time.

    Six years after the multi-genre story I met Tony. I love him in a different way than I did Josh, and even though a part of my heart still belongs to Josh, I didn’t have any problem telling Tony. Even though he’s never met Josh, he says he would like to meet him someday.

    I was alone driving on the freeway when the familiar piano solo leading into Richard Marx’s song, Right Here Waiting for You came on. I didn’t realize it was an oldie, but I was catapulted back to that Day in August 2001 when I finally knew our relationship was irrevocably over. It was suddenly like it happened yesterday. My heart skipped a beat, and I really wondered if I should just turn it off. My right hand seemed frozen on the wheel. I was sure I was going to cry, but as the song went on, my eyes stayed dry. Instead, I felt searing pain starting at the roof of my mouth, meandering through my sinuses, and down my throat filling my chest and settling in the pit of my stomach. It was then that I realized that this was one story I did not want to tell again. This was the result of that one time in my life that I had truly madly deeply fallen in love (apologies to Savage Garden).

    The date? September 11, 2023.

    The irony was not lost on me.

    On that day, I knew it was time to publish the story in its original form and move on to other stories.  I tried to do it yesterday, but I’m still struggling with WordPress’s new editor. It did not turn out the way I intended, so I trashed it. I’ll try again later today If I get my work for the Garden of Hope done. If not, I’ll post it tomorrow. 

    After 22 years, I wonder what would happen if Josh and I suddenly found ourselves single again. Would I still be right here waiting for him?

    I don’t know.

  • (n)O Christmas Tree

    (n)O Christmas Tree

    Part Four of Four–Dad’s Story


    I hope you had a Merry Christmas. Today’s post might seem anticlimactic, but I think I just got too ambitious by adding Midnight Mass to my Christmas celebrations. (It was truly beautiful, though.) I gave serious thought to saving the fourth Christmas tree story for next year, but I promised a fourth story, so here it is.

    I saved the best for last.

    Dad is the only person I know who laughs harder when telling his stories than anyone else does. His laughter is contagious, which makes his stories all the more entertaining. Dad is also the only Pollack I know who told Pollack jokes when Pollack Jokes were trendy. His light bulb joke comes to mind:

    • Dad: How many Pollacks does it take to screw in a light bulb?
    • Me: I dunno. How many?
    • Dad: Five. One to hold the light bulb, and four to turn the chair.

    Ba dum bum ching.

    I think the best Pollack joke told by Dad, is actually a story that happened to him. It happened just before a staff meeting at work several decades ago. A man had come from out of town, and when introduced to my father, said, “Oh, yer a Pollack, eh?” Of course, the man had to follow up with a Pollack joke. Dad laughed. He could appreciate a good joke after all. But the poor man couldn’t be stopped. He continued telling every Pollack joke in his repertoire, and as time went on, the jokes became more off-color and inappropriate.

    Dad was no longer laughing, and finally interrupted with a question, “Do you speak Polish?”

    “No.” The man replied.

    “How does it feel to be dumber than a Pollack?”

    That put an effective end to the Pollack jokes.

    Dad’s Christmas tree story is a story that sounds more like a Pollack joke, but it really is a story. It’s also more my grandfather’s story than my dad’s; but I never knew my grandfather. Dad told the story many times over the years, usually around Christmas time, and I never got tired of hearing it. Of course, I had him retell it at least three times this year in preparation for this blog post.

    The story happened in Olean, New York before my father was born and before my grandparents were married in 1931. Grandma was seventeen and my grandfather was nineteen when they were wed, so he would have been a teenager at the time. Probably in the late 1920s. Grandma was not involved in the story, but it would not surprise me if she had also been one of the storytellers over the years.

    Chester John Kwiatkowski, “Chet” This is currently the only photograph I have available of my grandfather.

    In the Kwiatkowski family, the boys were responsible for getting all the trees for heads of households. This was quite a big job because the family included households on the Szadlowski side (my great-grandmother’s side). It probably included living grandparents, married brothers, and uncles. In all, the amount of trees required numbered about fifteen. That’s just an educated guess from counting all the males older than my grandfather who were living at the time.

    As was the tradition, Chester John Kwiatkowski (“Chet”) and his brother, Dad can’t remember whether it was Edward or Michael, set off to locate and chop down suitable trees for the whole family. I’m guessing that they must have driven to the hills nearby, because it certainly would not have been easy for two young men to get fifteen trees home in one trip. Either way, it would have taken the better part of a day.

    Their job wasn’t done when Chet and his brother arrived home, though. They still had to allocate each tree to each family. I can imagine the brothers breathing a sigh of relief when the last tree was handed out. Maybe the brothers were getting ready for bed. Or more likely, since the job probably took at least a couple of days, the brothers were getting ready to head off to other activities when a knock came to the door.

    It was Uncle Matt Szadlowski.

    Matt had come to collect his tree. I’m sure the boys exchanged guilty looks. They told Matt they’d be right back with his tree and headed for the back door. Uncle Matt must’ve wondered what took the boys so long.

    At the back door, the boys scanned the horizon, wondering how to come up with a suitable tree, and fast. It was at this point where one brother turned to the other and said, “What are we gonna do? It’s too late to go back to the hills for another tree.”

    After a bit of thinking, one of them pointed out, “Matt’s got two trees in his front yard lining his walk. He won’t miss one of them.” Off the boys ran to Matt’s house. After a longer than usual wait for Uncle Matt, the boys came back in with a very nice tree.

    Photo by Photo Collections on Pexels.com

    I don’t know if Matt noticed right away, or if he figured it out when he arrived home, but Dad tells me that Uncle Matt was no dummy. It did not escape his notice that there was a sawed-off stump in his yard where a tree had once been. It wasn’t the stump that Matt brought up to the boys, though. It was the tree’s uncanny resemblance to the one that used to be in his front yard. It was a perfect tree, Matt told them; just the right size and shape for a Christmas tree, but it did look an awful lot like the missing tree.

    Not so, the boys told their uncle. The tree in Matt’s living room was shorter and had been chopped. The stump in the yard had been sawed. Matt verbally accepted the explanation, but I’m pretty sure that both my grandfather and his uncle Matt knew that they couldn’t hide the truth that they had chopped the tree down, cut it to size with the ax, then sawed the stump in an attempt to provide an alibi.

    I wonder if uncle Matt ever replaced the missing tree?

    Now that Christmas is over, and the majority of us have made it through the season with our landscape intact, I hope you have a very Happy New Year!

  • Family Xenophobia

    Family Xenophobia

    Today marks the 32nd anniversary of the first official observance of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day as a national holiday in the United States, and on this day I felt it important to tell the stories of “othering” in our own personal family trees.

    Before I get started, let me make a disclaimer. In no way do I intend to downplay the significance of discrimination experienced by Americans of  African descent. There can be no excuse made for the maltreatment of Black Americans today and in the history of the United States. It’s just that today seems like the best time to focus on xenophobia in my own family history. Not that it matters to me, but there is no evidence of African blood in my DNA, and I have simply not found any such stories to tell.  Not yet anyway.

    I was raised in a community where the “others” were often those of different religions. I grew up in Utah as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or “Mormons”). I wasn’t necessarily taught this othering at home, but I saw it and learned it from the discourse around me: at school, in social gatherings, in the workplace, and at church. Many Utah LDS families inherited a deep distrust of outsiders from their ancestors who experienced persecution and intense harassment leading to an official extermination order from the state of Missouri and their eventual exodus from Illinois to what was then Mexican Territory.  Terms like prejudice and racism never entered the conversation, and I was well into adulthood before I learned to put a name to the fear that governed that public discourse. The name is xenophobia, an intense and irrational fear of aliens. I’m not talking about little green guys with antennae growing out of their heads coming from distant planets; I am talking about human beings coming into our communities from different places, cultures, and religions.  Here in the United States, that can be anyone.

    Dad’s Story

    So I begin with a simple story from my father’s childhood. Dad was born in Olean, New York and lived there until he was thirteen. During the 1940s, he attended Olean Public School no. 7. As Dad tells it, there were two doors serving students in the school, the main door on the East, and a side door on the South. The side door had been claimed by a large group of Italian students at “the Italian door,” and when teachers weren’t looking, they patrolled the door for encroachments upon their self-proclaimed territory. The “Italian” door was closer to Dad’s route home, so one day he decided to leave through it. As he heard the door latch behind him, he knew he was in trouble; there was a group of kids waiting at the bottom of the steps. Dad took off at a run and managed to escape, but looking back at that day, Dad said, “I learned to run real fast.”

    Even though many Italian Americans share similar physical features, their mostly fair skin and European facial features keep them firmly entrenched in white-American society. The only way those schoolchildren truly knew whether one came from one European background or another, was to be well aware of families in the neighborhood and the other students attending their school. So when the Hawaiian Kwiatkowskis came to stay with family following their mother’s death in 1952, their unfamiliar faces and tanned complexions immediately identified them as alien.

    Tod and Ski’s Story

    Being the youngest of the Hawaiian clan, Ski doesn’t remember much about his trip to New York in 1952, and he does acknowledge that there are many reasons why resettling in New York didn’t work for Leo Kwiatkowski and his five children. However, the one obstacle to the widowed father and his family that Ski remembers well is the othering of himself and his siblings by New Yorkers who could not accept mixed marriages. As Ski put it,

    It was almost scandalous that a white man from New York was marrying a dark skinned Hawaiian woman.  But it was not at all as scandalous as some might have thought as a lot of us newer generation Hawaiians are mostly of mixed blood, so inter racial marriages started way back in Hawaii, where there really is no racial bias or prejudice. [sic.]  The only bias, if one could call it that, was a form of reverse discrimination where the Hawaiians were very wary of any white man and how he would fit into “our” society.  Our society is very, very different from that of the mainland U.S.  The most glaring difference is the mixture of races and the harmony in which we all live.  Japanese, Caucasian, Negro, Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Puerto Rican, Portuguese, and the list goes on with as many ethnic groupings as the earth holds.

    Tod remembers that time as “a tragic and confusing time for five children, ages 14 to 5, and a single Father with no job, and no income.” Although both brothers admit that racism was just a part of the issues facing the young Hawaiians in New York, xenophobia often has the effect of further alienating families from the very places where they go to seek refuge, just as it did for this family.

    Mom’s Story

    The Jews of Europe know that story well. Those who survived the Holocaust and chose to return to their European homes faced an uphill battle to reclaim their ravaged property and maintain an uneasy peace among many of their neighbors. Their numbers are significantly reduced from pre-Holocaust days. Those who chose to seek asylum in the reformed nation of Israel have yet to find peace. Still others who scattered to the Americas denied their identity as a form of protection to their progeny. Such was my mother’s case, as she was in her early twenties when her mother finally revealed her Jewish identity.

    I grew up believing that racism and cultural bias did not exist in my Utah home. It wasn’t until I returned to Utah after living in California for two years that I could truly see the extent of xenophobia in my beloved mountain home. Although that’s another story for another time (and maybe a different blog), the most profound example came when my empty-nester parents moved into a typical Utah suburban home. One neighbor who came to welcome them into the neighborhood, exclaimed to my mother, “Thank goodness you are not blacks or Jews!” I’m sure she explained her reasoning that neither group could be trusted to my mother, but by that time, Mom was no longer listening and had firmly decided to look elsewhere for new friends.

    Tony’s story

    mixed race marriage
    Our engagement photo taken by Denise de la Foye, 2009.

    Now I have a confession to make. I am in a bi-racial marriage. Mine is not the first. It won’t be the last, but when we find such a thing among our ancestors it is not only a talking point, but often a source of contention. My husband was born in Hong Kong, China and came to the United States when he was just three months old. He grew up in the near suburbs of Chicago, and when people ask him what country he comes from, his answer is always the same, “The United States.” He grew up here. He knows nothing else, but unlike European Americans, his skin color and distinct facial features belie the fact that he was not born here. He goes by the distinctly Western name of Anthony, so when I tell people who have never met him that my husband is an immigrant and his name is Anthony (“Tony”), they nearly always say, “Oh, he’s Italian, right?” No.

    It seems pretty common for Chinese immigrants to take on an “American” identity when they come here. Most I have met go by names like David, Catherine, Alexander, and Marie. On his birth certificate, his name is Sai Fung, but on his naturalization papers, social security card, and other official documents, he has always been Anthony. We didn’t think anything of it until he brought his Illinois driver’s license into a Utah DMV to exchange for a new one. I was able to exchange mine within a matter of minutes. For Tony, it was a matter of months. Six years  and a move to Kentucky later, all of his legal documents identify him by a name no one but his siblings recognize. I blame xenophobia cloaked in our Patriot Act signed into law on my 36th birthday.

    As Tony was nearing the end of his legal paperwork nightmare, a casual encounter with a drunk man at a bus station revealed a side to Tony’s life that I had not yet seen or understood. The drunk man approached my husband, and said, “Fried rice on the side?” Giggling to himself, the man staggered off. It was not the first time my husband had encountered such ignorance, but it sure helped me understand Tony’s lament, “Sometimes I wish I was white.”

    We can’t deny that xenophobia exists all around us, and it would take willful blindness to claim that there is no racism in the midst of our families and ancestors. But we have to face it as it happens, and learn to acknowledge it. It is so easy to claim superiority based on the color of our skin and country of origin, but we must be wary as it happens to us. To be clear, my surname is Kwiatkowski, an obviously Polish name. As happened with the Italians in my father’s grade school, it would be just as easy to group together and claim racial superiority based on pure Polish blood. That is, until one encounters another who has had different experiences and sees life from a different narrowly appointed point of view.

    Yesterday, my dear cousin Bernie illustrated this point in a Facebook post quoting Thomas E. Watson, an American politician from Georgia. As Bernie pointed out, Watson is “Talking about [our mutual] ancestors from some hole* in Eastern Europe.
    *That would be Poland.”

    So here it is:

    “The scum of creation has been dumped on us. Some of our principal cities are more foreign than American. The most dangerous and corrupting horde of the Old World have invaded us. The vice and crime they planted in our midst are sickening and terrifying.” Thomas E. Watson, 1912

    It has not been my intent to preach or to politicize my family history. I simply want to create awareness. After events such as those in Charlottesville, West Virginia, last summer, I have become hyper-aware that xenophobia in the United States seethes barely beneath our surface.  We need a new way of looking at things, and I believe the best way to start is by acknowledging our mistakes of the past. We could also look to places, like Hawaii, that have managed to become true melting pots. As my cousin Ski explains, “Hang loose is an expression we use to say “Just chill, take it easy, there’s no need to rush” and it befits the island lifestyle.” We could learn a few things from the Hawaiians.

  • Life Gets in the Way

    Life Gets in the Way

    The hardest part of telling the stories of dead people is that it requires a living person to do it.  But sometimes life gets in the way, and that is what is going on with me right now. In fact, I had a plan way back in November, and I was well on the way to have it in place and moving smoothly by 2018. Then life happened.

    I have a lot to tell you, and it won’t take much time to tell that part of my story, but I just can’t fit it into my schedule for a few days. Please bear with me until I can get everything compartmentalized and reorganized.

    notfoundWhile some of this might have to do with procrastination (i’m good at that), most of it has to do with unexpected communication from my readers and just life in general. I’ll tell all; don’t worry. But before I go today, I really want to give a shout out to my three groups of readers, plus two individuals, that are helping pave the way for new and exciting changes for the new year:

    • Descendants of William Dolby Skeen and his two wives: Carolyn Smart Smith and Mary Davis. Theirs is the story that started it all, and I have not forgotten them by any means.
    • Descendants of Johannes (John) Kwiatkowski from Olean New York. Without your support and encouragement, I would not be contemplating a big step. An extra special thanks goes to my new-found cousin, Chuck, who’s caught the passion for telling the story that deserves to be told.
    • Ruth Contreras and the people of Bucklige Welt. I haven’t forgotten you, and I have no intention of doing so. I consider it my responsibility to play a part in making sure that the Jews of Bucklige Welt are not forgotten. I am still looking for those lost family members, and will let you know every time I find another one. And Ruth, I haven’t forgotten that I still owe you an email response.
    •  Diedre McLean, who alerted me to the many family stories that could be told for our ancestors right here in the United States.
    • And Dad. His dedication and passion for genealogy have led directly to an extension of my Cousin Connection project that I never thought possible. I can’t wait to tell you about it!

    I have a post planned for Martin Luther King jr. Day, so that comes first. After that, I’m pretty sure I’ll be more than ready to get caught up. See you in a few days!

     

  • Cousin Connection #6: Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou (Happy New Year!)

    Cousin Connection #6: Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou (Happy New Year!)

    Aloha, Olean Kwiatkowskis! This marks the last of the Kwiatkowski Cousin Connections for a while. Time to focus on other branches of the family tree, especially Rothsprack; I’m completely stumped on that one. But first, let me introduce you to my Hawaiian cousins. I’ve got plenty of them, thanks to a cousin named Leo (or Leon, as he told it).

    While Cousins in New York experienced a typically white Christmas snuggled warmly at home away from outside temperatures well below freezing, cousins in Hawaii had temperatures right around 80 degrees fahrenheit.  A great day for some Christmas hula. And since the temperature won’t be changing much this weekend, I’m betting plenty more hula is planned for the New Year as well, even if the Hawaii Kwiatkowskis don’t plan to attend.

    Michael Thaddeus “Tod” Kwiatkowski, and Philibert Francis “Ski” Kwiatkowski are respectively the oldest and youngest of five children born to Leo Michael Kwiatkowski and his wife Catherine Ku’uleilani Guerreiro in Honolulu. Although they are in my father’s social generation, the three men have never met in person. All five of  Catherine and Leo’s children were born in Hawaii, and Dad had moved from Olean before the cousins from HI visited in 1952.

    My first question to both Tod and Ski, was “How did this group of Kwiatkowskis end up in Hawaii?” The answer is pretty simple, really: the U.S. Army. As Tod tells it,

    My father joined the Army and was shipped to Honolulu, sometime in 1935, or so. There, he met my mother, Catherine Ku’uleilani Guerreiro of Waialua, Territory of Hawaii. They were married in 1937, I think, and he mustered out of the Army in Honolulu, rather than mustering out in New York.”

    Catherine Ku’uleilani Guerreiro and Leo Michael Kwiatkowski.jpg
    Catherine Ku’uleilani Guerreiro and Leon Kwiatkowski as they must have looked when they first met.

    All five of Leo and Catherine’s children were born on the “Big Island” (Honolulu), except for a very short stint in 1952 after Catherine died. She was just 43 years old. It was a very rough time for the family. Tod explains,

    Hawaii Kwiatkowskis c1952
    Circa 1950 or 1951. L-R: Bernadette, Phil (“Ski”), Tod, Noel, and Larry.

    We saw our first snowfall in Olean, on October 12, 1952. Because of the burden five children placed on my grandmother and my Aunt Jenny, we all returned to Hawaii sometime in October or November of 1952. That was a tragic and confusing time for five children, ages 14 to 5, and a single Father with no job, and no income. That episode will fill a book.

    Because he was so young at the time. Ski has a more colorful memory of his short time in New York:

    Family connections to the mainland U.S. Kwiatkowskis that lived in Olean, N.Y. are very sketchy for me. . .  I was 5 at the time and remember meeting many cousins, uncles and aunts, but most of them faded from memory aside from photographs that we would get from time to time.  I remember “Bu” quite well and my dad’s sister, Aunt Jenny.  My dad’s brother, John and his other sister Helen I also remember.  I remember Olean as a very typical foothill town of East New York state, not a large town, but a quaint one  with all the trappings of a 1950’s town.  I remember going down to the “crick” near the railroad trestle to skip stones in the water and things like that, but for the most part, faded memories.

    We stayed about 3 months on that trip as we were planning to live in Olean.  Many obstacles came up, one of which was racial and the others I was too young to remember.  My experiences in St. Augustine Elementary were different than Michael as I was sent home for punching a ninny of a nun because she wanted to whack my hands.  I was having none of that, so I punched her in the stomach.  That was the beginning of a few lickings.

    I got a kick out of that last part. My father’s stories of his childhood in Olean are very similar. The family was staunchly Catholic, but that didn’t stop kids from being kids and nuns from doing what nuns did at the time. I went to public school myself, but my father and husband were both raised Catholic, along with several of my friends. All of their stories have a very similar ring to them. One of these days I’ll have to tell the story of the time my husband and his schoolmates spiked the holy water with red Kool-Aid.

    Ukulele by Ski
    A ukulele in the making. By Ski Kwiatkowski

    Now that I know the reasons for the Hawaii cousins remaining in Hawaii, it makes sense. By their Hawaiian heritage bestowed by their mother, these Kwiatkowskis are firmly Hawaiian. Hawaii was the last state to join the Union in 1959, long after the children’s return from their last family trip to the mainland. Ski, who is the youngest, has been making traditional Hawaiian woodwork for many years. He even makes ukuleles.

    As a mainlander who’s never been to Hawaii, I can only base my knowledge of Hawaiians on what I’ve learned through school and the media. Which isn’t much. Aside from my new-found cousins, Pearl Harbor is always the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Hawaii, and since their father came to the islands with the U.S. Army, I had to ask.

    Ski was very obliging with details.

    My dad told it to me that he was home when the attack on Pearl Harbor began.  He was a policeman and we did not have a phone yet so the police department called the neighbor (the contact number) neighbor told him about the attack and to go immediately to the police headquarters.  When he got there, he and one other officer were given a shotgun each and a box of shells and told to report to the area somewhere near an area called Iwilei.  Up the street from them was the OR & L train depot and roundhouse, but they were told to go to the pier and supposedly hold off any Japanese invasion of the harbor with a shotgun apiece, a box of shells and their .38 caliber service revolvers.  Once at the pier my dad recalled a Zero coming in on them and strafing the pier with bullets.  He said that it was close enough that splinters from the wood were hitting them.  It was at that time that he and his partner decided they would be better protected by staging at the OR&L depot, which they did.  There were several more strafing runs in that area and my dad said that he emptied his revolver on one Zero, but knew that it was like shooting spitballs at a tank.

    At least he got to shoot at them, which is more than others did.

    Tod provided another interesting Hawaiian link to the Olean Kwiatkowskis. It turns out that my cousin Bernie’s uncle, Bernie, was brother not only to Bernie’s mother, but Leo as well, which makes their Cousin Connection chart nearly identical to Bernie’s. Not only that, but it seems that Leo’s brother spent some time in the island as a sergeant in the Army Air Corps while Leo was on the Honolulu police force.

     

    So now I have even more questions for Bernie, Tod, and Ski. I definitely want to ask about “Uncle Bernie’s” Pearl Harbor experience, so I’ll have to plan a new post for next Dec. 7.

    Even more curious for me, though, is that all three cousins claim that their grandmother’s maiden name (“Babci Mary“), Conkle, actually derives from the surname Krysztofiak.  Conkle is a Germanic surname, but Krysztofiak is definitely Slavic. So which is it, Conkle or Krystofiak? The geographical boundaries are blurred in Poland and Germany by the rise and fall of the Prussian empire, and I think there may be some answers in the geography. This is going to take a bit of digging, but I’ve got eleven months to do it. It will be fun to see what I come up with.

    In the meantime, Happy New Year, and STAY WARM! (Hawaii Cousins can ignore that last part.)

     

     

     

  • Updates and Ready for the New Year

    Updates and Ready for the New Year

    Most of my followers read my blog for just one reason: to find information regarding their own family history. This post is simply to update you on my situation and when you can expect to hear more about the family history interests that brought you to me in the first place.

    Since my post regarding Grave’s disease a couple of years ago, I have undergone radiation therapy to shut down my thyroid. Living without a thyroid requires daily synthetic replacement. In the past couple of months I have suffered from hypothyroid symptoms that severely affect my general mental alertness. It is difficult to focus, stay awake, and remain pain and symptom free if I sit at the computer for more than just a few minutes. Hence my recent post regarding tennis elbow  (just one symptom of the larger disorder). To make my long story short, I have been back to the doctor and am having my medication adjusted. In the meantime, my blog has suffered.

    Please accept my sincere apologies. Many of the posts I had planned for the past few weeks just haven’t happened. I do expect my blog to return to normal function as my body responds accordingly. So here is what you can expect over the next few weeks and into the new year:

    • An introduction to my new friend from Austria, Ruth Contreras. She was just as anxious to find me as I have been anxious to find family members in Austria. We are both very grateful to have found each other. Ruth’s project, a recovery of pre-holocaust Jewish families from the Bucklige Welt region in Austria is a very exciting development.

      Fall in the Bucklige Welt
      Bucklige Welt, “Land of 1,000 Hills,” Austria https://www.immobilienscout24.at
    • Another Cousin Connection to Kwiatkowski brothers living in Hawaii, along with their holiday traditions.
    • My very first ancestor landing page featuring my great-great grandfather, Rudolf Abeles from Austria. My grandmother was very close to him, and even lived with him in Pitten during his later years where she attended primary school and helped him with daily tasks. We believe he lived to be 99 years old!
    • An exploration of Sephardic Jews in Europe, and how one particular Sephardic family ended up in Austtria. (My mother always said she would take a hard look into the mirror looking for evidence of her Spanish heritage).
    • My second ancestor landing page featuring Aucke Wykoff. He was a Colonel in the American Revolution, and was credited with saving the life of a fellow POW in the infamous New York Sugar House Prison. The man he saved was more than just a friend, he was a member of the family.
    • An exploration of life in the Sugar House prison and how Aucke Wykoff was related to Toby Polhemus.
    • In the next year, I’ll be updating and revisiting the life of Mary Davis Skeen, the woman who started my journey to learn more about Plain

      stone fences KY
      Just one example of Kentucky’s historical stone fences.

      City Utah’s Pioneer History, and the inspiration for this website.

    • A deeper look into the people and events that make up this place that is my new home. I’ll begin with a close look at the historical “Slave Fences” of Kentucky and the efforts to preserve them. I see evidence of this Irish stonecraft everywhere around here.

    In the meantime, I have discovered some exciting information about Family History in Kentucky. I was able to visit the public library for the first time yesterday, and found some amazing help for family historians. There is tons of information available through their resources, and I want to showcase their upcoming Tuesday afternoon online events from 3-4 pm Eastern Standard Time:

    P.S. You don’t need to have a library card or even live in Kentucky for these online events.  To view online, tune into @KentonLibrary on Periscope (available on your smartphone or tablet), or at periscope.tv/kentonlibrary. Dec. 5 and 12 events look like they’d be interesting for people everywhere, especially those with German and/or Christian backgrounds. 

     

     

     

  • St. Bonaventure Cemetery, Allegany, NY

    St. Bonaventure Cemetery, Allegany, NY

    More Photos from Cousin Bernie.

    Since Bernie is the photographer, he naturally chose a cemetery with family in it. St. Bonaventure Cemetery in Allegany, New York is quite a large cemetery, and I found many family names among the Kwiatkowskis buried there, including my great grandfather and great-great grandmother (Bernie’s great-uncle and great grandmother), . The family relationships can get a bit confusing when I try to position myself and Bernie with the dead relative, but I did use the cousin finder, and I think I got it right. If you see any mistakes in family progression, please feel free to let me know so I can straighten it out. 

    st bonas kwiatkowski.jpg
    Bernie’s grandparents’ tombstone (my great-granduncle and “Babci Mary”).

    st bonas Bernie.jpg
    Bernie’s namesake who died in WWII when his plane crashed, probably in Papua New Guinea (my first cousin twice removed).

    st bonas 3.jpgThe cemetery is named for a local university that students claim to be haunted. Who knows whether the stories are actually true. You can read them here and decide for yourself. In the meantime, here’s one as a great companion to those late night readings. You may want to keep the light on.

  • Cousin Connection #3: John Woodgie

    Cousin Connection #3: John Woodgie

    The Duck, The Whole Duck, and Nothing but the Duck

    Quack.

    But seriously, my New York cousins from my dad’s generation are very Polish. I mean, many of them speak the language, and even if they don’t, they know a few words here and there and even understand much of the Polish dialogue. Even my father, who was separated from the family when he was just thirteen, can speak a few words. Not only that, but many of them are still staunchly Catholic as their grandparents from the old world would have wanted it, and even more still enjoy the good old Polish cuisine.

    I myself grew up enjoying many culinary delights from the Old World. I ate things many of my American counterparts would never dream of touching. It’s too bad for them, though. They don’t know what they are missing out on. Beef tongue served the Bohemian way will always be my favorite.  One of these days I’ll have to post that recipe as well.

    The first thing John Woodgie, another of my New York cousins, suggested for this month’s Cousin Connection was another Polish recipe. I can’t blame him. Polish food is delicious. (By the way, you can get the best Polish food in the U.S. if you visit Chicago.) This particular recipe uses the whole dang duck! It’s one of John’s favorites. I’ve never had it, and like many of my counterparts, I’m a bit reticent to try it; but then I’ve had lots of strange foods in my life, and most of them are amazingly delicious.

    First, a little about John and how we are related. John Woodgie is my family’s genealogical expert.  He has been working on the Kwiatkowski family line for some time and has identified over 2100 family members. He links names while I am looking for stories. I am eager to connect faces and places with those names, linking each of us in a way that brings the past to life. But I’m just a dabbler compared to him.

    Like Chuck Kwiatkowski, John also lives in Olean, NY. In fact, he tells me he’s only a mile away from Chuck. Olean is where my dad was born. I’ve only visited once, staying for just a couple of hours. I think this means I need to plan a trip up north to meet these guys in person sometime soon.

    John, Louis, Sonny and Dad (Joe)
    Joseph Woodgie with sons John, Louis and Steve with their dog Rags circa 1943. John is the little one.

    I am related to John through his mother, who was daughter to my great-uncle Joseph Kwiatkowski. Like my dad, John’s father was also born in New York  but he was a first generation American. Two of John’s uncles were born in Poland before the family immigrated.

     

    John tells me that his grandfather on his mother’s side, Chuck‘s grandfather, Bernie‘s grandfather, and my dad’s grandfather were all brothers. There are plenty more where they came from, too. Their father, Joannes (“John”) Kwiatkowski, and his wife Catharina  had a total of thirteen children. John’s Kwiatkowski grandparents had twelve children, and John is one of 41 grandchildren. Bernie’s grandparents had at least five children. I don’t know how many children Chuck’s grandparents had, but I know that my own great-grandparents also had a dozen children, and I am sure that my father probably has just as many first cousins as John Woodgie does. This means I have only touched the tip of the iceberg as far as my New York cousins go, although I have no intention of focusing all of my Cousin Connection efforts there. I still have three other grandparents to search through.

    Of course, creating a new cousin chart for John was pretty easy. I just had to substitute a few names:John Woodgie Second cousin once removed

    So about that duck.

    Skala Sophie and
    Salomea, Frankie and Sophie Skała with their mother Maria Dynia-Skała circa 1910, Rzeszów Poland.

    Joseph Kwiatkowski married Sophia Skała ,who was born in Zaczernie, Poland, in Olean, NY May 13, 1913. Sophie was John’s grandmother. She would make her duck soup almost every autumn. John says, “Grampa K would kill the ducks that he raised in their backyard along with chickens and pigeons.” Because the family relied on home-grown resources, they never went hungry. But there is more to it than that. The recipe frugally incorporates every edible component of the duck , including the blood.  A goose can be used interchangeably with the duck in this recipe.

     

    Sophie Kwiatkowski’s Duck soup is a regional recipe known as Czarnina (char-NEE-nah). The name is derived from the Polish word, czarny, for black. It refers to the dark color of the soup which comes from the blood in the recipe. The soup often has a sweet-sour flavor, a flavor I remember well from many of the European recipes I grew up on. I’ve never tried it, and I doubt I’ll ever have the opportunity to acquire a whole freshly slaughtered duck, but if I come across the concoction, I’ll be sure to give it a try.

    Or maybe not. Legend has it that Polish suitors would receive Czarnina from their prospective in-laws. It was a way for the family to let a young man know that his advances would not be welcome. But John likes it, so it can’t be that bad.

    Sophie Skała’s Czarnina

    • 1 whole duck (gutted and feathers removed, reserve heart, neck and gizzard)
    • 2 containers blood
    • 1 medium onion
    • 1 medium potato
    • 1 carrot
    • 1 medium apple
    • 1 cup sour cream
    •  sugar to taste
    • 3 tbsp flour

    In an 8 quart pot place duck, neck, heart, gizzard. Cut up onion, potato, carrot, apple into quarters and place them in a piece of cheese cloth. Tie cloth and place in pot.Cover with water to two inches of top of pot. Cook for two hours until duck is done.

    Take duck and veggies of out the soup. Let soup cool to touch. In a bowl, mix  blood and flour. Blend until smooth. Stir in sour cream and pour this into the soup. Stir until soup comes to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for about 1/2 hour.

    While cooking you can make Kluski to add when soup is finished. Some people prefer to use Polish potato dumplings instead. I have also heard that Polish-Americans often use pre-made gnocchi found in the freezer section of their local grocery store.

    You can find different versions online or in Polish cookbooks, but this is how John Woodgie’s Grandma Kwiatkowski made it, and it is his favorite. The others, he says, have too many ingredients.

    I’ve been learning a lot about the workings of my Polish forbears from my New York cousins. Especially John. From both John and Chuck, I have gained new insights into the workings of my Polish-American cousins including changes in surnames and immigration patterns. I’m looking forward to learning more from them and sharing even more with my readers.