Filip

I have a new “niece,” Julia (Yulia). She was born the day after Easter, Easter Monday, a holiday known in Poland as Śmingus Dyngus, (SchMINGoos DINgoos—yes, how unfortunate). Harking back to pagan purification rites at the equinox, it calls for boys and girls to douse, drench, spray, squirt, or sprinkle the boy or girl of their choice with water, or perfect strangers, whoever happens to be handy. Or you can lash them about the calves, more or less lightly, usually in the morning, with a lengthy sprig of juniper. So much for Śming. At any rate, looking down on this rosy new creature and smelling her head (she did not smell like an American baby, that is, one washed in Johnson & Johnson), I wondered if she would overtake me in Polish language fluency. Her cousins, Kalina, Dawid, and Natalia, at almost 8, 8, and half 6, are already well beyond me, and I don’t think I will be able to catch them. But I have a two+ year lead on her. On her brother, Filip, I have only a one year lead. Though I suspect he has “mother” and “father” as well in his vocabulary, I’ve only heard him utter, coo rather, one word, “dziadu,” (“grandpa”). With my current lead, I hope eventually to keep pace. But Filip will be my benchmark.

Back “home” now in Kraków, after a full week in the north country, I’ve had little time to write. Family life, especially happy family life, is time consuming, all that joy to enjoy—cakes and tea in Poland, mniam—and with no need to write anything down because as Tolstoy observed, all happy families are happy in the same way. "Love," you know, "I love you." It’s all been logged already, but if those accounts have gone unread or been forgotten, I’ll attach a few thousand words’ worth of pictures.