What it’s like growing up as a Polish American and a Linkup

*Warning, long post.  If you want to link up, scroll to the bottom.

**Disclaimer: This is my personal experience, this may not be the same for all Polish Americans.

A lot of these are old pictures throughout the last 5’ish years of my travels to Poland (I’ve been traveling there since I was almost 2).  A lot of times people look at me and think I’m just like everyone else and since I was born in America I’m technically American.  However, my roots are in Poland.  My parents came over to America and just a few years later I was born.  I wanted to talk about what it’s like being a Polish American in today’s post.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  I’m extremely proud of my Polish roots, and I will be until the day I die and I hope that if I have children I’m able to teach them the Polish language and the culture.  I wasn’t always so keen on letting people know I was Polish though.  You see, here in America, there is a stereotype that I’m sure most people know about, that being the two lovely terms (total sarcasm here); dumb Polak.  I know that these are just two simple words, but when you are a child and don’t know any better, or don’t like to stick up for yourself, those two words can break you.  They did exactly that to me.  To the point where I told my parents that I’m not Polish, I’m American, and don’t want to be part of the Polish culture.  Let’s start from the very beginning.

My entire family was born in Poland, except my younger brother and me.  My parents lived through the Cold War.  My family was there for WWII/Holocaust, I had family in concentration camps, and I had family who was part of the Solidarity movement where they tried to overthrow the government, because of the communistic rule.  The Polish people were successful each and every time of winning back their country.  Poland even disappeared from the map in 1794-1795, but we came back.  This past summer my fiancé and I went to Poland and when we came back a family friend actually said how beautiful all of our pictures were and that she thought Poland was a third world country.  Insert a huge eye roll here.  Have you ever heard of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1944?  This was a major WWII operation, in the summer of 1944 an underground Polish resistance, led by the Polish Army to liberate Warsaw from German occupation.  This uprising was fought for 63 days with little outside support.  It is estimated that 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 were badly injured.  Between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions.  We finally took back our country, but the Soviets were coming from the other end.  Poland is basically located in the worst spot.  Auschwitz was built by the Germans to kill all of the Polish people (Jewish and non Jewish) because they wanted our land.  They also ended up making this the biggest extermination camp of all time.

My parents were able to make it to America.  They were going after the American dream.  They struggled and worked their asses off to make something of themselves.  They were able to buy their first home within the first 2/3 years living here in America.   They made a life for themselves.  Then I was born.  I remember my childhood being Polish.  I don’t remember anything American about it.  I didn’t learn English until I started going to school.  The kids at school used this to their advantage.  They would do bad things and tell the teacher I did it because they knew I couldn’t defend myself because of my English.  I always remember being surrounded by Polish people.  I ate Polish food, homemade from scratch every single day.  I didn’t know what fast food was until kids at school talked about it.  McDonald’s was not in my vocabulary whatsoever.  I didn’t even have Taco Bell, let alone know about it until my last year of high school.

I started noticing I was a little different from everyone else.  I had to take speech classes in first grade because my language wasn’t up to par.  They ate such weird things (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches lol) and thought I was weird for having a scrambled egg sandwich.  That’s what I was used to though and that was actually my favorite lunch hehe.  When I was in 3^rd grade I had Mac and Cheese (with the powder cheese) for the first time and told my mom that was my new favorite dinner.  I’m pretty sure she was so disgusted and disappointed hahaha.  I once ate a box of fruit roll ups and fruit by the foots at my friend’s house because I never had them before and loved them.  Oh, I was definitely reprimanded for that.  My parents told me I needed to have better manners and they are right.  I just couldn’t help myself!  I never ate pizza, unless I was at a sleepover and I loved it just as much as I love it now.  I was also lucky enough to live in NJ so we have the best pizza ever.

Then, people started finding out I was Polish.  That’s when the Polish jokes came out.  I literally know every single one, and have heard them a bunch of times.  So, here I was, a loner (I was super shy), who couldn’t really communicate properly.  In second grade I couldn’t wait to go to Poland for the entire summer.  I would see my entire family and a brand new baby cousin!  When I got back I had forgotten how to speak English.  I tried to ask someone on the playground if they wanted to play with me after school but couldn’t form my sentence properly and they made fun of me and all of their friends made fun of me too.  They laughed at me and told me to come back to them when I actually spoke English.  I cried like a little baby.  I went home and didn’t want to be Polish anymore.  Little did I know, it doesn’t exactly work that way.

Fast forward to sixth grade.  At this point I had been pretty low key about being Polish.  I didn’t openly tell people about this and I just kind of let it subside.  The kids made fun of other things about me so it was a little better.  Making fun of me for something I can fix (my teeth) as opposed to something I can’t (being Polish) was definitely better.  Then we started learning about the Holocaust.  The history they teach here in America is such bullshit.  Well, this reminded people that I was Polish because I had mentioned that my families lived through that.  I had family in camps that survived, and another side of my family hid a family of Jewish people.  This is when the dumb Polak things were being said and since the history wasn’t taught properly (not everyone was Jewish in these camps) a few kids started throwing pennies at me and saying “pick it up Jew.”  Then there was the day when someone came up to me and said that my family should’ve been put in the gas chamber so that I was never born.

I wanted nothing to do with the Polish culture or being Polish because it only caused me pain.

Then in 8^th grade, my parents had, had it.  They were sending me to Poland.  This was the best decision they ever made.  I went to Poland and for the first week-two weeks had the hardest time communicating.  I am so grateful for my patient family who basically had to teach me how to speak Polish again haha.  That was the summer that I remembered why I was so proud of being Polish.  That was the summer that I didn’t want to come back to America.  I felt more at home in Poland.  I guess it’s because I had most of my family there.  I cried for weeks after I came back to America.  I was miserable.

I went to Poland the following year, and then I didn’t go for another six years.  After that trip in 8^th grade I was so fucking proud to be Polish.  I did not let anyone’s stupid words get to me enough to give up my identity.  The next time I went to Poland I was in college.  This is when I started noticing something different.  I wasn’t fully accepted as being Polish.  I was considered the American cousin.  This is when I started to get confused.  I wasn’t fully accepted as an American and I wasn’t fully accepted as being Polish.  I ran into an identity crisis.  I was so lost.  I stuck out like a sore thumb in Poland because I had an accent and was told that they can just tell that I’m an American.  I didn’t fit in anywhere.  It’s still like this today.  Here in America I do things and people think I’m weird, but it’s just how I’ve been brought up, or when I go to Poland I do things that are very American.  I don’t really feel like I fit in anywhere.  I’m just kind of my own person.

The thing that sucks, is that I didn’t get a chance to be with my family enough.  Last summer was the first time I met my grandpa’s sister.  The only tie to my grandpa was her and she passed away earlier this year.  I’m so thankful I was able to meet her.  I have family that I still haven’t met.  After 30 years, I didn’t meet part of my family.  I had cousins that I didn’t watch grow up.  Other cousins got married and had children that I didn’t get to know.  My one grandma has cancer, my grandpa has emphysema and was just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  I can’t be there to help.  I wasn’t there when my cousins all graduated, I wasn’t there when they got their license, I wasn’t there for anything.  I go there 2 weeks out of a year.  There are days where I wish I could just pack up my bags and go to Poland.  There was a point in my life where I was thinking about looking for a job in Poland.  I know that when I’m old, if my fiancé dies before me, I’m spending my last days in Poland.

 

Thanks to my parents coming here, I learned how to work hard and never stop.  Whenever I feel like I’m about to give up I think about my parents and how they came here with $5 in their pocket (well, my mom had $10 but my dad spent $5 on a beer for a Swedish guy he met), and were able to build a life here.  I don’t think I’ll ever truly feel like I fit in anywhere, but this is something that I’ve come to terms with.  I am who I am, and what you see is what you get.  If you don’t like it, “bye Felicia.”

xoxo Monica

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