Day 1: Warsaw

On the summer solstice, I flew above the north Atlantic, midnight sun glowing outside the airplane window, illuminating the clouds below us in a suspension that melted from violet dusk into pink dawn without ever touching the dark shades in between.

It was a night without a star, except for that insistent sun. As I dipped in and out of a shallow sleep, I picked up my phone and iPad, puzzling at the hours that they displayed. When did they last connect to a signal? Was 11:37 the time in Minneapolis, in Toronto, or wherever we were? Where were we?

I did mundane things, like reading a novel and watching Bridget Jones’ Baby. I did remarkable things, like looking down at the shimmering islands of Denmark and trying to discern land from ocean from clouds from the shadows of clouds passing over.

This is why I insist on window seats.

What I didn’t do much of was sleep.

We arrived in Warsaw in a hazy dream state, and I began a series of small, challenging tasks: Asking a gate agent, in Polish, for wheelchair assistance for my mother. Fitting 6 bags and 3 people into a Skoda station wagon. Figuring out how to get said car into reverse (push down on the stick shift), out of a tiny parking garage, and along the narrow city streets to our hotel.

Our hotel, across the street from a 24-hour liquor shed.

When the hotel wouldn’t let us check in until noon, I said “That’s OK – We’ll go for a drive!” and I pointed the car in the direction of the tall buildings on the horizon. My mother marveled at the skyscrapers and shops that had changed the face of the city in the past 20 years. Warsaw isn’t her hometown, but she’s spent enough time there to recognize that she hardly knows it at all anymore.

Driving is a little scary, with the kilometers and the manual transmission and the bold bicyclists zooming across the city streets, but I can do it. That said, it felt great to park the car in the hotel garage (tiny, of course) and curl up for a midday nap. But not before Evie talked me into trying this restaurant she spotted at the airport, and again near our hotel, which she simply had to try.

It was a little different: high tech ordering kiosks, fried broccoli, Emmental cheese

Evie and I took an evening outing while my mother rested. With no plans, we hopped onto a train and rode it until Evie saw a neighborhood that looked nice.

Evie liked the look of this guy.

We walked through a park and a residential neighborhood dotted with tiny shops and 20-story apartment buildings with pots of geraniums on their balconies. We smiled at Polish toddlers and people walking small dogs. We ate Italian food in a sidewalk café. Evie found a 10 Zloty bill on the street, declared it lucky, and left it for our server because you have to pay good luck forward.

 

Italian pizza in Poland: highly recommend

Tomorrow, we’ll visit some tourist sites. We’ll eat something Polish. And we’ll gear up for the big adventure, the heart of our trip, the journey south to Krakow. Czesc, Polska. I can’t wait to get to know you better.

Chaos and cabbages: 5 days until Poland

For 18 months, I’ve dreamed of visiting Poland to research my family’s history and to share it with my daughter. Last fall, I booked the flights. I persuaded my mother to join us. Three generations of women are going to explore our ancestral homeland.

When it was far away, the Poland project looked like a grand adventure, cinematic in scope, with a novel and film as inevitable outcomes.

A few weeks ago, as the date approached, it began to feel like something else.

I was walking in downtown Minneapolis, hurrying to a meeting I was late for, when it dawned on me: I didn’t have an international driver’s permit. These things have a way of popping into my head when I can’t do a thing about them. My trip was a month away. The website said to allow 4-6 weeks processing time for the permit. I felt like I was falling. That night, I learned that the AAA office could issue a permit on the spot. It was the feeling of falling quickly, then being swept up to safety just before I hit the ground.

It’s a feeling I know all too well.

I felt it again last week, when I was looking at my flight itinerary and realized that there was a full day between my connecting flights, a 28-hour Toronto layover that threw our whole schedule into disarray. The free fall lasted 40 minutes on hold with Air Canada, and the upsweep arrived when a friendly ticketing agent said it was no problem at all to adjust the dates.

I am not an organized person. In my professional life, I rely on conscientious teammates and forgiving bosses. Sam plans our family vacations down to Excel spreadsheets with packing lists. My job is to show up, be fun, and write about the adventure.

The Poland Project wasn’t supposed to be like this. My sweeping vista of cultural and historical discovery had morphed into a to-do list, a set of tasks, a million details. It coincided with a major work project that involved 4 trips in 6 weeks, the end of the kids’ school year, soccer season, and too many volunteer commitments.

Friends asked how excited I was for Poland, and I replied with an exasperated sigh and a list of all the things undone. I didn’t have plans with my cousins or a rental car or any clue how to charge my iPhone on European voltage. The Poland project felt like a term paper I had left until the last minute, and I was living the middle-aged version of a caffeine-fueled all-nighter in the campus computer lab.

Last week, I flew to Seattle for work, on a plane without WiFi. Those lost hours of productivity filled me with panic: The unread emails! The texts languishing in the ether! The lost productivity!

On that flight, I did something so old-fashioned that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done it already: I read a travel guide about Poland. I savored the pictures and reminded myself that Poland wasn’t just another chore left undone: it was also cobbled streets, old churches, busy marketplaces, cheerfully painted cottages dotting verdant hillsides.

This was the page that changed everything.

The simple, hearty foods of Poland. The knots of pretzeled bread and the varied salty meats. I read the Polish names in my head, and they harkened back to my childhood and my mother boiling cabbage on the stove, pounding chicken cutlets at the kitchen counter. I thought of my daughter and how much she loves the kabanosy sausages from the Eastern European deli in Minneapolis.

Food brings us home.

Pictures of food in a book reminded me that I’m going home, not to Fargo, but to a home that’s generations deeper, at once familiar and full of surprises.

The details will be sorted out. They always are. Yesterday, I did the one thing that has always been so helpful and so hard for a disorganized overachiever like me: I asked for help.

Sam and I are making a spreadsheet.

And I will show up. I will be in the moment. I will write about it.

The Marchies are 10.

My daughter’s 10th birthday marks another milestone: The friendships I made on a now-defunct Internet forum have lasted a decade. It startles me even more than the fact that my tiny newborn is now a YouTube-watching, long-legged tween who texts me funny GIFs and penguin emojis.

I started lurking on the Babycenter.com board for March 2007 due dates shortly after I found out I was pregnant, and I began posting in earnest when Evie was a newborn. I was lonely and bored and realized that if I positioned myself just right, I could feed or cuddle the baby while typing on a laptop. I found people: funny, smart, interesting people who were grappling with the sweeping life change brought by a tiny baby. Friendships formed, quick and fierce. Someone invited me to a private forum, away from moderators and public web searches.

In those heady early days, our connection was intoxicating and all-consuming. We talked about everything that mattered to us: our husbands, our jobs, our health concerns, our favorite books. We agreed that our mothers know exactly how to push our buttons (because they installed them), and we promised ourselves we’d do a better job. And, of course, we talked about our kids. Our Marchies. Every doctor’s visit and development milestone was rich territory for conversation. While our IRL (In Real Life) friends would politely smile and indulge us for a few minutes as we talked about our baby, the March moms asked all of the detailed questions: “Does gripe water work?” “Where did you get those baby leg warmers?” “Talk to me about swaddling.”

Our first online community was a discussion forum with 100 members. We prided ourselves in getting along with no drama, ever, but that’s not how large groups of people work. As our friendships drew closer, there were secret, gossipy conversations which then became fodder for more gossip. Small groups began to spin off. The center could not hold.

I remember the weekend it fell apart for the first time, just shy of the Marchies’ first birthdays. I recall crying in front of my laptop, calling my best friends, sometimes hearing their “real life” voices for the first time, and pleading with them not to quit the forum. I realized that all of my closest friendships could disappear into the ether as quickly as a person could click “Delete” on a website.

Our group was like a forest of trees with an entangled root system. No individual could extricate herself without becoming tangled in the whole mess. When connections between a few people became toxic, everyone felt poisoned. The biggest fights became fires.

I recall at least two conflagrations, and a few small flare-ups. Each time, we lost a few members but most of us emerged from the ashes and decided that what we had together was worth the risk and the pain. We rearranged and replanted, a little bit wounded and a little bit stronger.

Our group changed shape as technology changed. We stepped away from our laptops and online discussion forums, and we found each other on Facebook. As the Marchies went off to preschool and gymnastics and play dates, we carried our conversations in our purses. Some of us developed closer friendships than others, and we gave up on the utopian ideal of a drama-free community and accepted one another as people who might not always agree, but remained connected nonetheless.

Siblings followed the Marchies in waves. I didn’t seek out a July pregnancy board with Felix; instead I commiserated with the March moms who were pregnant with their second children at the same time.

We have held each other up through illnesses, divorces, and the rawest of grief. When one of us suffers, we all feel it. We rally together PayPal campaigns, send flowers, and explain to confused relatives how we know each other.

We know each other from the in-between spaces in our lives. The sleep-deprived chats when we were awake nursing our babies, now the quick Facebook posts from our phones while we wait through piano lessons and soccer practices. I’ve heard that the closest friendships come after spending hundreds of hours together doing small, ordinary things. This is why good roommates and neighbors have a lifelong hold on us. So it was with the March moms; our forging ground was the lonely banality of motherhood, and the conversations were digital but the connections were real.

I’ve learned so much about friendship from this group. You can’t keep score of which friends are closer to each other than you. If you want to meet up with people in person, you have to take the time to plan things and it’s always worth it. You can’t be sensitive to every slight or keep track of every misplaced word. Well-intentioned advice is still a gift, even if it’s not one you wanted or particularly like. Even digital gardens require watering.

I’ve also learned a lot about parenting, which is one of those jobs that changes as soon as you get good at it. It truly does take a village, and my children are being raised by dozens of moms (and a few dads) who have been with our family every step of the way. Not only have our kids grown up together, so have we.

The Marchies at our first Midwestern meetup, 2009

West/Midwest IRL,2011

Wisconsin IRL, 2015. It's become a thing.

Why we march: A letter to my daughter

Dear Evie,

When you live through an important time in history, you carry it for the rest of your life. You will tell people what it was like. They will ask what you did, even if you were only a kid.

I'm afraid we are living in those times, and here’s where we start. 

We are showing up at the state capitol tomorrow morning, where we will walk with our arms linked and our heads high, holding signs that express our fierce commitment to a better America.

It’s going to rain. We will be cold. We will spend a lot of time waiting in traffic and standing in crowds.

I will bring an umbrella for you. I will hold your hand in the crowd, which will hopefully be large, but probably smaller than the State Fair. In the unlikely case that people get rowdy or mean, I’ll steer you to safety.

You’ll be exposed to adult language, as we learned when I was Googling sign ideas and you looked over my shoulder. I hate that I had to explain to you what sexual assault has to do with the president, and why a person would carry a sign to point out that her body is her own. “Isn’t it obvious?” you asked.

That conversation, awkward as it was, convinced me that we should march together.

Protecting you and keeping you safe is an important part of being your mom, but it’s not the real job. My real job is to send you out into the world as an informed, caring, and brave person. The kind of person who will make this world better.

We won’t make any new laws or get a new president just for showing up.

But, God willing, we will get a few things: The comfort that we’re not alone in our concern for America’s future. The strength that comes from walking alongside others. New friends and new ideas for where we can show up next, make our voices heard, and drive change in our community. The most memorable social studies lesson of your fourth grade year.

Hot cocoa. We will absolutely, definitely get hot cocoa.

Love,

Mom